[Davidsilva]

\im running ubuntu 18.04 and the latest stable tvheadend release doesn't work with ota sky uk tv data. can anyone tell me how to downgrade to an older version?

[black_eagle]

Code:

$ apt-cache policy tvheadend
tvheadend:
  Installed: 4.3-1292~g9b9ee68~xenial
  Candidate: 4.3-1292~g9b9ee68~xenial
  Version table:
 *** 4.3-1292~g9b9ee68~xenial 500
        500 https://dl.bintray.com/tvheadend/deb xenial/unstable amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     4.3-1288~g66d6161~xenial 500
        500 https://dl.bintray.com/tvheadend/deb xenial/unstable amd64 Packages
     4.0.9-16~g63c1034~xenial 500
        500 https://dl.bintray.com/tvheadend/deb xenial/stable amd64 Packages

That tells you which installed version you have, and which (other) versions you have available to install (if any).

Code:

sudo apt-get install tvheadend=4.0.9-16~g63c1034~xenial

Forces apt-get to install the version specified.  Note that the data from a later version is unlikely to be compatible with an earlier version and that that may cause issues, in which case,

Code:

sudo apt-get purge tvheadend

  before re-attempting to downgrade.  Obviously this will entail setting it up from scratch again.

[Davidsilva]

You are a legend worked perfect, I now have full OTA guide on Sky UK.

[elsmandino]

\im running ubuntu 18.04 and the latest stable tvheadend release doesn't work with ota sky uk tv data. can anyone tell me how to downgrade to an older version?

 Could I ask what issues you have been having with the Sky OTA grabber, please?

Does it not work at all or are you having a few issues with some of the data entries?

[Davidsilva]

It didn't work really. It would only pull in a few entries. Would always time out and was pretty much useless. Installed 4.0.9-16~g63c1034~xenial, set the mux to 11778 and it pulls full guide data in 3 mins. A huge improvement over the latest build where it appears broken. I now have series link/ timer recordings work great in kodi. Its nice to go back to how kodi/tvheadend used to be. Id go as far as saying its been 18 months since the guide data for sky UK has worked properly.

[elsmandino]

Thank you for that.

The reason I was asking is that I have recently changed bouquets - from Freesat London to Sky London.

I made the change as I noticed that loads of channels (Channel 4 HD, Scuzz) had suddenly been dropped from Freesat and I could get them back with the Sky bouquet.

I use the Schedules Direct webgrabber and, with its dedicated Freesat lineup, I never needed to do any OTA scraping.

However, I noted that there are some extra channels that I can now pick up but are not included in the Schedules Direct's Sky lineup - a good example being Paramount.

I thought I would just use the Sky OTA grabber for the missing EPG data but noticed that the channel info was really odd - it often provided no details at all for the current program and the following hour (but bizarrely it had details for the subsequent hours) and I noticed that whilst some programs had full details, some just had the title and nothing else.  It is really inconsistent.

It sounds like the cause might be the exact same issue as you - I will check the version of TVH that I am using.

[black_eagle]

TV guides, that's generally the thing we want the best, but is difficult to achieve.

Recently, I discovered a site called http://koditvepg2.com/ which has a decent xml guide for UK freeview/freesat (no fiddling around with WG++ any more !).  BUT, the channel icon info isn't compatible with TVH, so I wrote a couple of scripts to sort it out.

Firstly, we need something to actually download the guide data.  Put this into a file called 'update_tv_xml_data.sh'.

Code:

#!/bin/bash
echo "************************************************************"
echo "                                                           *"
echo "               Starting xml tv-data update                 *"
echo "===========================================++++++++++++====="
wget -r -O /home/xbmc/scripts/raw_guide.xml http://epg.koditvepg2.com/GB/guide.xml
echo
echo "wget completed"
echo
python /home/xbmc/scripts/guideiconfix.py
echo "Guide data ready"

Make it executable (' chmod +x update_tv_xml_data.sh')

This is what will grab the xml file from kodiepg and then correct it for TVH.  Obviously, change the paths to fit your own scenario and where your files are located.

Next:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

with open( '/home/xbmc/scripts/raw_guide.xml' ) as guide_input:
    with open ( '/home/xbmc/scripts/guide.xml', "w" ) as guide_output:
        for line in guide_input:
            if '<icon src=' not in line:
                guide_output.write( line )
            else:
                first_marker = line.find( '|')
                new_line = line[:first_marker]
                if '" />' in new_line:
                    guide_output.write ( new_line + '\n' )
                else:
                    new_line = new_line + '" />\n'
                    guide_output.write ( new_line )

That's the contents of 'guideiconfix.py'. Again, paths will need correcting to your own machine.  TVH on my machine is set to import '/home/xbmc/scripts/guide.xml' via the 'internal XMLTV grabber /usr/bin/tv_grab_wg++' (which has been edited to reflect the path name of the guide). ((first one in the list as there are two!!)).

All this is called from cron at 02:15 every day.  Edit your cron with 'crontab -e'.  Add this line at the end.

Code:

15 02 * * * /home/xbmc/scripts/update_tv_xml_data.sh

  Again, substitute your own paths for mine !!

Turn off ALL the OTA grabbers (and the EIT DVB grabber if you have it turned on) in TVH and just leave the single grabber enabled.  On my setup (4.3-1292~g9b9ee68) it's the one immediately below the external grabber.  Now re-run the internal EPG grabbers and TVH should pick up that guide and import it.  You should now have channel icons (if you have enabled 'update channel icon' under 'Configuration/channel/EPG/EPG grabber') and show icons where available.

Tested with TVH 4.3-1292~g9b9ee68, Kodi 18.0-BETA1 Git:20180826-f21b477 (Estuary skin) and the UK guide from kodiepg.

Note 1.  You might/will have to tell TVH which channel guide to associate with which channel after this as some are not automatically assigned, but you only have to do this the once.

Note 2. Koditvepg2 produce guides for most of the world but I have only tested this with the UK version !  It includes some Sky pay channels (Premier League, F1, etc etc) and 494 channels in total.

Note 3.  For the UK, this guide is populated with icons and data from www.radiotimes.com.

Disclaimer.  This is not an advert for the website, merely a method that I have used to populate my EPG with some decent data without having to mess about with WG++ config files etc.  These scripts work for me but ymmv.  I make no claim that any of this will work, or be suitable, for anyone else.  Feel free to copy, alter or reproduce these scripts but I accept no responsibility for any issues you cause yourself by doing so.

[Krobar]

I get the same issue with the Freesat Bouquet. No C4 and a few others are missing. Must be a bug in the bouquet implementation but when I asked on the TVH forums others said the same bouquet worked for them.