I’ve been using WebGrab+ for the last couple of years, but only looking at the Freeview OPG data and mostly for identifying movies for recording. I had some correspondence with Matt Huisman 1.5yr ago who was working on an updated v2.0 of his IPTV EPG, and I did some testing of it on Plex. Was looking very promising at the time but I don’t think he ever released it - seems to have lots of other projects on the go. He was getting data from Freeview website, Sky website, and TVNZ API (I’m not sure how you access that…) to get season/episode data etc. Glad to see someone else has taken up the baton given that the Plex EPG was (and probably still is?) rubbish…
Anyway, a few notes based on a quick comparison of my movies list vs. yours (note I only have 8 channels configured - 1,2,3,Bravo,Maori,Prime,Choice,Duke)
I have “Fly me to the moon” appearing twice (rather than once) - tonight 7pm, tomorrow 2pm, maoritv
You have a film titled “Saturday Feature” which I have as “Walkabout”, tonight 8.30pm, maoritv
I have a film “Runaway Millionaires” which is not in your list, tomorrow 8.30pm tvnz1
Other than that all the same
Pretty similar here. I’m using the new Freeview app APIs, the TVNZ API (which I got my digging into their website), ThreeNow, SKY, ChoiceTV and HGTV APIs and then the typical combination of TheMovieDB, IMDB and TheTVDB.
The Plex EPG doesn’t exist for New Zealand now, since they changed provider
Intentional. It appears both on the Freeview app and on the website (which use different data sources).
Will fix. The data I use is from the Freeview app (with some data supplied from the website), so I’ll just have to mark that one to be replaced with website data as well. Thanks.
Seems to have been misidentified as a TV show. I’ll figure out a way to properly identify it, identifying movies is definitely the trickiest part of this whole process!
Yes I found identifying movies challenging as well - particularly only working from one set of data.
Similarly in latest data there is is a movie ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ 8.30pm Sep8 tvnz1.
Looking at my config I think I have identified these misc movies on tvnz1 by duration > 4500s (1:15) and (CridSeries) is empty and channel = 1 (TVNZ 1)
Yeah looks like thats marked as confidential on both the Freeview website and app as well (plus through the TVNZ api, even though its not on the site yet).
Hmm. I might look at doing something like this. Improvement of movie detection is definitely high up the priority list.
I wondered if anyone has experienced any problems following an update to the NZ XML EPG today? I am running 1.17.0.1709 of Plex on a Synology NAS. (Although I tried downgrading to 1.15.5.1554 but encountered the same issue).
The EPG seems to load to just over 40% and then the Plex server either crashes or the guide toggles between an empty grid and displaying the “The guide is empty” message.
I wondered if this may be caused by EPG content as I removed DVR device and added it again with another EPG and had a similar result.
It could well be user error on my part but I thought I’d confirm if data in the current guide was giving other NZ Plex users issues before trying alternatives to resolve.
Similar issues here, Windows 10 machine running PMS 1.17.0.1709. I am unable to view the program guide, just loads and loads then crashes the browser window.
CPU usage is high when Plex should be idle with the Plex Media Server process between 40-50%, jumps to 100% when trying to view the guide from Firefox - DVR Schedule page works fine showing future shows to record.
I’ve not played around with my setup for months so its not something you’re doing @Dave_WRC
Thanks @GeoffNZ, I have experimented removing and adding my DVR without some channels to see if I can isolate if the error was due to some specific content but after a few attempts I gave up. So now I have removed my DVR so at least Plex will run and I can watch existing content. Daylight savings time started this morning - I wondered that could have caused the EPG some issue?
I am wondering the same thing. I had the high CPU problem, but a reboot of Windows 10 cured that (restarting Plex didn’t). TVNZ 1 is missing from the guide, it did appear briefly but showed only ‘Unknown Airing’. There is some TVNZ 1 data in the the xml file but it is missing stuff eg ‘1 News at 6pm’ is nowhere except channel 6. @shea9872 Anything you can help with?
Looks like daylight savings messed the XMLTV up a bit (e.g. TVNZ 1 was missing entirely). It appears to be correct now, and it seems to be working correctly on 1.17.0.1709.
Unfortunately, I’m not able to fix this for next time, since I can’t reproduce what happened! So, I’ll just have to keep a close eye on it next daylight savings.
any other kiwis noticing live tv does not start the first time sometimes but works the 2nd?
it looks like this is because every PMS update they remove aac_latm_decoder.dll from the PMS codecs folder, so it always has to redownload it the first time you play a channel hence you get a random error message, then it will work the 2nd time you try.
the error probably depends on your plex client, i get a different error in android tv than plex web or PMP for example. what plex client are you using?
if you know PMS has updated and it doesnt work, checking the PMS server log for a line containing the below confirms thats whats really happening
DEBUG - HTTP requesting GET https://plex.tv/api/codecs/aac_latm_decoder
yea that sounds like a different issue. i hardly use live tv in plex its always been unreliable. the latm codec been removed and redownloaded has been happening since they released live tv.
the android live channels just works everytime. your epg is excellent tho.
Seems to be an issue with the data source (official Freeview app), as the shows aren’t appearing there either. There’s not much I can do, except wait for them to fix it up.
