Genre/Category: Other/Unknown

Skye Cairns

In kodi's EPG virtually all Genres/Category is listed as Other/Unknown. The xml file is fine with the proper Genre/Category such as Drama, SitCom etc. Is there some way to correct this or at least remove Other/Unknown from Kodi's EPG? Searched thru my XML file and see no mention of Other/Unknown. I'm using Internal XMLTV TV_Grab_file to populate my EPG in Kodi. thanks. Skye

ace golfer

Skye Cairns wrote:

> In kodi's EPG virtually all Genres/Category is listed as Other/Unknown. The xml file is fine with the proper Genre/Category such as Drama, SitCom etc. Is there some way to correct this or at least remove Other/Unknown from Kodi's EPG? Searched thru my XML file and see no mention of Other/Unknown. I'm using Internal XMLTV TV_Grab_file to populate my EPG in Kodi. thanks. Skye

Facing same issue. Did you find a solution?

Skye Cairns

My work around probably won't work for you if you like colours. I've made all the genre in KODI other/unknown so that the guide is colourless that is black and white. I then put the genres from XMLTV file as part of the description along with the first aired date. Keep in mind that at least in North America there can be more than one Genre for a given TV Show. In my example the Genre is listed as Dance/Music/Reality/Variety. I'm trying to attach a screen shot of what I mean. The screen shot is what will appear at the bottom of the EPG once you select a show in the guide. HTH. Skye

Skye Cairns

One further note.

If all you want is to change other / unknown to get the colour coding to be correct you'll need to run a litte program to convert the genre from XMLTV file to a genre Kodi understands. It uses some European standard that does even have SitCom as an option. Anyhow here's a snippet of my program to do that:

If UCase(myStringCat) = "FILM" Then myStringCat = "Film / Cinema"
If UCase(myStringCat) = "MOVIE" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
If UCase(myStringCat) = "ACTION" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
If UCase(myStringCat) = "HORROR" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
If UCase(myStringCat) = "HISTORICAL DRAMA" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
If UCase(myStringCat) = "ROMANTIC COMEDY" Then myStringCat = "Romance"
If UCase(myStringCat) = "MINISERIES" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
If UCase(myStringCat) = "DRAMA" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"

If UCase(myStringCat) = "CRIME DRAMA" Then myStringCat = "Detective / Thriller"

HTH BTW there are over 100 choices of genres to be converted.

ace golfer

Skye Cairns wrote:
> One further note.
>
> If all you want is to change other / unknown to get the colour coding to be correct you'll need to run a litte program to convert the genre from XMLTV file to a genre Kodi understands. It uses some European standard that does even have SitCom as an option. Anyhow here's a snippet of my program to do that:
>
> If UCase(myStringCat) = "FILM" Then myStringCat = "Film / Cinema"
> If UCase(myStringCat) = "MOVIE" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
> If UCase(myStringCat) = "ACTION" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
> If UCase(myStringCat) = "HORROR" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
> If UCase(myStringCat) = "HISTORICAL DRAMA" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
> If UCase(myStringCat) = "ROMANTIC COMEDY" Then myStringCat = "Romance"
> If UCase(myStringCat) = "MINISERIES" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
> If UCase(myStringCat) = "DRAMA" Then myStringCat = "Movie / Drama"
> If UCase(myStringCat) = "CRIME DRAMA" Then myStringCat = "Detective / Thriller"
>

> HTH BTW there are over 100 choices of genres to be converted.

Thanks. I opened XMLTV file in text editor and found each show has multiple categories that Kodi probably won't understand. Any guide to run your script? I have somewhat unique situation. XMLTV file is created by Windows zap2xml.exe. But TVH is in Windows Subsystem Linux. Both Win and Ubuntu can access the same XMLTV file. FWIW, this is my daily scheduled task:
4 am: Windows creates XMLTV file
6 am: TVH reads XMLTV with tv_grab_file grabber

Skye Cairns

My process is similar. I run a VB program in Windows 7 that runs the zap2xml and then it runs some read/writes to get the xml in the format I want. I then copy the downloaded file to a laptop that is running Linux. You wouldn't need to do all of this. All you would need to do is run some program to read you xml and replace the genre with appropriate genre. Something like if genre=Other/Unknown call Genre sub routine. I have attached a file that lists the genres I looked at. HTH

ace golfer

I figured it out. This is my windows batch file to get EPG from zap2it and change category for TVH backend + Kodi frontend.

> zap2xml.exe -o temp.xml -u userid -p passwd -d 10 -S 1 -D -A "new live" -E "amp apos quot lt gt" –F -8
>
> powershell -Command "(gc temp.xml) -replace '>Reality<', '>Show / Game show<' -replace '>Game show<', '>Show / Game show<' -replace '>News<' , '>News / Current affairs<' -replace '>Drama<' , '>Movie / Drama<' -replace '>Crime drama<' , '>Movie / Drama<' -replace '>Sitcom<' , '>Comedy<' | Out-File -encoding ASCII xmltv.xml"

Skye Cairns

Congrats. Time for some golf :-)