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Simple guide to Talpa

In the Netherlands the broadcasts of the Talpa channel have a timeslot on Nickelodeon, but the Talpa TV schedules get their own "channel" in the generic XMLTV data ("92", Nickelodeon is "89").

Here is a simple manual to combine the output of a specialised Talpa grabber with your current Dutch XMLTV files.

If you want to tweak your XMLTV files even more, and combine your Dutch XMLTV and Talpa files with the (much better) BBC listings from the RadioTimes grabbers, check out the extensive guide here.

Preparations

What you need is:

Install and configure all software as described in the packages. The grabbers need to know which channels to grab, so pay good attention to that. I stored grabbers plus CleanXMLTV tool together in a directory on C:\PROGRAM FILES\XMLTV, but you may want to do different.

Combine the outputs

If you would run the grabbers, and a test run never hurts, you will have two files. That may not be practical. So, how to combine them?

It is not so difficult. What do we need to do?

  1. Since Talpa broadcasts on the same channel as Nickelodeon, the grabber that gets the Nickelodeon data will have a large block "TALPA" from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m. It is best to clear that block.
  2. Make sure that the Talpa grabber saves the data with the same ID as the Nickelodeon grabber, to make it easier to stitch everything together.
  3. Make it an easy procedure.

Ok, here are the steps to follow:

1. If you use Amontillado's TVGids_to_xml grabber, this works all in the background. You can use your built-in Windows Task Planner for that. Open "Scheduled Tasks" (Dutch "Geplande Taken") under Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Scheduled Tasks (Dutch: Start/Alle programma's/Bureau-accessoires/Systeemwerkset/Geplande Taken). Make the grabber run daily after 4 in the morning (because the online TV Guide they get their data from refreshes after 4 a.m.).

2. The Talpa grabber can work from a simple batch file. Let's create it.

Open the Windows built-in text editor Notepad (Dutch "Kladblok") or any other plain text editor you may use. If you do not use Amontillado's grabber, but the XMLTV collection, put the command to launch that grabber in the first line. Amontillado's grabber is best not put in the batch file, but run separately by the Windows Task Planner.

3. On the second line (or the first), write the command to clear the TALPA block from the output of your generic grabber (i.e. XMLTV grabber collection or Amontillado's TVGids_to_xml. Note that in the following line you have to change "TVGidsWin.xml" to the name your XML file has:

The --cet and --kenmerk bits are not very necessary, but you can leave them in to improve the output.

4. In the third line (or the second line) you put the command to launch the Talpa grabber. You need to include options to make sure it uses the same channelID and displayName as the other grabber. You can run the generic grabber (that gets the Nickelodeon part) once, and in the first part of the output file you will see the proper channelID and displayName.

5. You could improve some on this file, but you may be fine if you do not use the following line:

6. Now you add the command to combine the output of both files. Note that you may need to change the names of the files in the following line, if you did not use the "tvgidswin2.xml" and "talpa.xml" or "talpa2.xml".

This means the new combined XMLTV guide will be saved under the name "dutchguide.xml".

7. Save the batch file as "getdutchguide.bat" (or another name, but with extension .bat).

8. Use the Windows Task Planner to run this batch daily at least 30 minutes after Amontillado's, if you use that, or preferably at least 30 minutes after 4 a.m. (because TV guides are updated at 4 a.m.).

That's it. Point your PVR software to the dutchguide.xml file and you're all set.

Support
Feel free to contact me. I will try to help you if you have questions. Do never expect major programming work.

Joost Smits, jsmits@prize.nl

Updated: 19 December 2005

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