Annoyed by the fact that there is no good tv-guide on the xbox's XBMC
application, I've started to create my own. I've made it a bit more
general and also added options for recording tv content using a Linux
server.
xmlTVDaemon is a perl script that runs as a daemon on a linux server
and periodically reads an xmltv file. Frontend applications can
communicate via a simple protocol with this server. Currently only one
frontend is available and that one is a python plugin script for xbmc.
How to update the xmltv is up to you, look at xmltv.org for more info on that.
You can download the script and the plugin for xbmc here
Screenshots:
Usage:
Run the xmlTVDaemon.pl script on your linux server like this:
-D
for running as a daemon, -s indicates the settings file (read the
settings.txt for more info) and -o for the log output. Use absolute
paths.. (if you want to place files on some exotic place, don't forget
to use sudo for the right permissions..). You can use -h to get a
(small) help screen.
Copy the xbmcclient.py and
xboxsettings.txt to your xmbc scripts folder and run it, use the
xboxsettings.txt for setting the ip address and port where your server
runs.
There is a 'record' button in the script (the xmlTVClient will run a
command (mencoder..) at the apprioprate time then) but I haven't tested
it yet because my 1 ghz server is currently to slow to record smoothly,
so if someone wants to try it be my guest :). For recording you
probably also need to edit the freq.txt file, which holds the channel
name to freq conversion information, you can set the freq.txt with the
-f parameter. I already created an example freq.txt with the info for
the dutch casema network.
The script only works with the simple xmltv format (not the
elaborate program descriptions), mostly because the dutch tv script I
use crashes when it wants to parse those ;)
As a side note: I added a 'tvguide' button to my skin with
<script>q:\scripts\xbmcclient.py</script> so I could
conveniently use it in xbmc
The controls you can use in the python frontend are these:
left and right digital pad : previous and next channel
left and right analog trigger : scroll up and down in the program list
back : exit the script
I did this as a hobby project because I wanted a tvguide in xbmc,
and I place it here because I think other people might find it usefull.
I don't give ANY guarantees on wether it will work or even totally destroy your xbox (but I don't think it will ;) ).
Questions and bugreports can be directed at
, but please don't rely on me replying fast, because I do have other stuff to do in real life ;). The python script forums on xboxmediacenter.com
are often also a good (and fast) source of information . You're free to
add to this code, I release it under the GPL License, but if you
add/fix something usefull please let me know so I can add it to this
version.
