* drac2000 * wrote:
> Now that zap2xml is not an option anymore ;)
zap2xml was only "not an option" for about 4-5 days. The developer of that program fixed it to work with the changes on the Zap2it site. Do read the release notes for the latest versions, and pay particular attention to the (otherwise undocumented) -8 and -9 options (only use -8 if you have "starred" your favorite channels). The developer says the -9 option is "not recommended" but I think he doesn't fully understands that without it, changes in channel numbers on a listings site could make the guide data stop working in Tvheadend. He was trying to solve one problem (duplicate listings) without understanding that he was creating another (listings that would disappear if a station or cable/satellite service changes channel numbers). At least he did provide the -9 option the next day, I just suspect he still doesn't get why people wouldn't want channel numbers in their channel ID's.
One big remaining problem with the new Zap2it site is that favorites don't work as they did before. In the past, you could add favorite channels from multiple geographic areas to your favorites list, but you can't do that anymore. Well, strictly speaking that's not true, you can still do that, but Zap2it will only display channels from whatever geographic area you last specified, and if you have "starred" favorite channels and click the button to show those, it will only show the "starred" channels from whatever geographic area you are currently viewing the listings for. In the revised zap2xml, you can use the -8 option to select only your "starred" favorites, but it will still only show the favorites from the current geographic area. And also, many cable and satellite services will put the same channel on multiple channels numbers, so if for example the same channel appears as channel 200 and 1200, if you use the -9 option WITHOUT the -8 option you will get the listings for both channels even though they are duplicates. If you favorite (star) one of the channels (doesn't matter which) and use both the -8 and -9 options, you will get the first one (channel 200 in this example) even though you may have "starred" channel 1200, but you won't get duplicate listings.
As for edit4ever's software, I just wish it didn't primarily depend on a Kodi addon for configuration, since some of us don't run Kodi on our Tvheadend backends. Sure, you can muck around in a configuration file and maybe make it work the way you want, but it wasn't designed for that use and AFAIK there is no unified instruction document (outside of posts in this thread) explaining all the options. I appreciate his efforts, and it's always good to have multiple options, but I already know how to use zap2xml so making the leap to the new version didn't take as much mental effort on my part. That said, if edit4ever ever publishes a single guide to setting up his software (without using Kodi) or even just a list of all the configuration options, I may take another look at it. Or if he comes up with a configuration utility that will work on a server (doesn't require the presence of a desktop, because Tvheadend doesn't) then I will definitely take another look. On one level I'd much rather run something written in python than perl, because perl programmers tend to use language quirks unique to perl that makes their programs nearly impossible to understand by anyone not well-versed in perl, whereas python is much more readable - even if you don't know enough to write python code, you can usually figure out what a python script is doing, especially if the programmer left any comments in the code. But from a user's standpoint, I don't care what language it is written in as long as it works, therefore for now my tendency is to stick with the software I already know.
