Display EPG as grid?

Giles Puckett

Noob question: I'd like to have TVH display its EPG as a grid (like most PVR's do) instead of the default sorted list. Is this at all possible with an addon or some such?
Currently on 4.2.2-32 LibreELEC (raspi)

Robert Cameron

If you view your EPG feom within Kodi, it is shown as a grid.

Giles Puckett

Yes I usually do :-) but occasionally I need to record something via TVH's web interface, as Kodi is not always able to talk to TVH (that's another story) or I'm on another device that isn't running Kodi. It seemed like a good idea to have a grid EPG directly in TVH, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to have thought so...

Martin Underwood

I wholeheartedly agree with Giles's request for the EPG to be displayed as a grid, with time (horizontally) and channel (vertically), as all other PVRs display their EPG.

TVheadend should be self-contained for the purposes of scheduling recordings, and shouldn't have to rely on Kodi to give full functionality. I much prefer the UI of TVheadend on a web interface to the clumsy 10-foot UI of Kodi. The only thing stopping me using TVheadend (without Kodi) is the poor display of the EPG.

All it needs is a radio button on the top-level Electronic Program Guide screen, to allow the user to select either a time-versus-channel grid or an event list. Ideally the grid would allow you to press numerical keys in succession (eg 1-0-1) to move the focus of the grid to the listings for channel 101 (which is BBC One HD in the UK), with other keys moving the grid vertically or horizontally:

PgUp/PgDn - scroll the grid vertically to display more channels in order of LCN (channel number)
CursorLeft/Right - scroll the grid to a later/earlier time

Ctrl-CursorLeft/Right - scroll the grid +/- 24 hours

Look at how NextPVR on Windows implements the EPG. Maybe you could look at the UI of NextPVR for other things like ability to schedule when EPG updates take place (eg small hours of morning when it's unlikely that programmes will be recorded that may conflict with EPG grabbing). The only reason I'm considering moving away from NextPVR is that it's not been ported to Raspberry Pi, and I'm thinking of using the RasPi as a lower-power PVR device than having to leave a Windows PC running 24/7.

Saen Acro

Neutrino style EPG is best for me last 20 years

there is ticket for this

https://tvheadend.org/issues/1133

Martin Underwood

Just to clarify: is Neutrino style the time-versus-channel grid that most other PVR software uses?

Paul M

I hacked up a simple now/next grid epg
https://tvheadend.org/d/6108-i-have-written-a-better-epg

Paul M

P.s. I would be delighted if my simple epg grid was rendered obsolete by the feature appearing in TVH itself.

Paul M

some progress with my web EPG

https://tvheadend.org/attachments/download/6952/Screenshot_20180924_231517.png

Em Smith

It's starting to look good, but I do think you'd be better trying to just implement it in Tvheadend's epg.js directly since it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

So, it already has an updating epg data store, data filtering (such as channel tags), info dialogs for programmes, access to user's recording profiles, watch in browser, etc.

Plus, there's already a button in the top left for switching between different views, so it could be added there as a grid option; though I'd guess it would probably be easier initially as a separate tab.

Instead of your table, you'd probably use a layout widget, add a few text fields that are sized by the hour, and a couple of icons for record/info/play that just hook in to existing code.

The tough part will be working out what to do about scrolling to avoid rendering loads of channels x load of hour slots for people browsing on devices with limited memory.