Overview

This part of the setup guide describes additional steps needed to make a custom version of the tvguide.com.no-provider.ini file for your location and generate a custom channels.xml file.

Feature

If you are in North, Central, South America or the Caribbean you can use the tvguide.com.no-provider.ini Site.ini file to grab web EPG data. You need to  customize the Site.ini file to get online listings for your local TV channels and generate a custom channels.xml file. 

Download tvguide.com.no-provider.ini

To create custom the Site.ini file open the  WebGrab+Plus webpage, select EPG Channels, and scroll down to Networks *to find *tvguide.com.no-provider.ini. Press the arrow to download the zip file. There are 3 files:

• tvguide.com.no-provider.ini, has  the web source specific rules that control how EPG data is grabbed.
• tvguide.com.no-provider_info.howtoaddprovider.txt, has text setup instructions.
• tvguide.com.no-provider_info.Countries&Providers.txt has SRVID for a number of countries and cities.

If you downloaded the INI Pack these files are located in the Networks folder. Copy tvguide.com.no-provider.ini to the  WebGrab+Plus data folder.

Setup Site.ini for your location

Go to the WebGrab+Plus data folder and rename the file you copied tvguide.com.LOCATION.ini with your location, for example tvguide.com.Buffalo-OTA.ini. You can use any name you want.  The Site.ini file needs the SRVID for your location and TV stations. If your country and city are in the Countries&Providers file you can use this SRVID.

For the USA the Countries&Providers.txt file has SRVID for generic timezones but this SRVID will not provide full EPG data for your local channels and programs. To get the SRVID for local TV channels do the following.

• Open www.tvguide.com with a web browser, select What's on TV, and select TV Listings
• In TV Listings, click on change location/provider

• Next set your zipcode, and press cable, satellite, or antenna

• this will display a list of providers (Buffalo Area Broadcast), right click (copy link or copy shortcut) on the provider you want to use, and paste the link in notepad (or another text editor). 
• In the link look for ServiceID=NNNNN.NNNNNNNNN, this is the SRVID you need for the Site.ini file. For example zip = 14702 and "antenna" has the following link,

www.tvguide.com/listings/setup/localizedone.ashx?ServiceID=20407.268435456&Zip=14702&provider=Buffalo%20Area%20Broadcast

For reference 2 zip and SRVID examples:

• zip = 14702, antenna, Buffalo NY,  SRVID = 20407.268435456
• zip = 94102, antenna, San Francisco CA,  SRVID = 20552.26843545

Edit your tvguide.com.LOCATION.ini file with notepad or another text editor, search for srvid=nnnnn, replace nnnnn with the SRVID for your location, and save/close the file.

Next look for the lines with auto_xml_channel_start and auto_xml_channel_end. The 6-8 lines with index_site generate the tvguide.com.LOCATION.channels.xml file. If these lines start with a * (comment) remove the * to enable channel list generation. Save and close the file.

Generate Channels.xml for your location

Next edit the WebGrab++.config.xml configuration file with a text editor (notepad), a XML editor (notepad++), or another editor

• Remove all of the channels in the channel list at the end of the file. Be careful not to remove the last line with </settings>
• Add the following line as the only channel and modify the file name to use your LOCATION (Buffalo-OTA) instead of provider-name

<channel update="f" site="tvguide.com.provider-name" site_id="0" xmltv_id="dummy">dummy</channel>

• find the line with* <timespan>0</timespan>* and verify the timespan is set for 0
• find the line with* <postprocess run="y" grab="y">mdb</postprocess>* and set run="n" to disable the mdb postprocessor
• save and close the file

Run WebGrab+Plus to generate a list of local channels

• Start > AllPrograms > WebGrab+Plus > WebGrab+Plus.exe (or desktop shortcut)
• After a few seconds this will create a channel list file tvguide.com.LOCATION.channels.xml for your location

Next edit the tvguide.com.LOCATION.ini file with notepad or another text editor, look for the lines that generate the tvguide.com.LOCATION.channels.xml file (see above) and insert a * to the beginning of the 6-8 lines with index_site to disable channel list generation. Save and close the file.

With these steps complete return to the main WebGrab+Plus setup guide using the custom  *tvguide.com.LOCATION.ini *and *tvguide.com.LOCATION.channels.xml *files.

Related

• XMLTV WebGrab+Plus