tv_grab_be1p

Usage

Overview

Output TV and radio listings in XMLTV format for many stations available in Belgium. The data comes from the Sanoma magazines' websites: Tele Moustique and Teve Blad.

Usage

First you must run tv_grab_be --configure to choose the language, grab mode and which stations you want to receive.

Then running tv_grab_be with no arguments will get about 6 day's of summary only listings for the channels you chose.

If you want to grab detailed information (such as episode name, detailed descriptions, actors) then use the --slow flag when both onfiguring and running the grabber. The configure mode will prompt you for selection criteria for when the grabber should retrieve detailed information for programmes (selected by start time, category, and channel). This makes grabbing slow (hence the option name!)

Note that different stations ar available in French and Dutch modes due to the listings differences from the two sites. The data is also different -- the French site has more detailed info for the french language channels, and the Dutch site has more info for the Dutch language channels.

Some channels (BBC World, Euronews) although listed, have such bad listings data that you would be better off using the tv_grab_uk_rt grabber, and then merging the resulting files with tv_cat!

It is perhaps worthwhile to use the --config-file option to maintain one config file with a selection of channels for each language, then using tv_cat to merge the resulting XML files.

--configure Prompt for language, grab mode and which stations to download and write the configuration file (see also --slow)

--config-file FILE Set the name of the configuration file, the default is ~/.xmltv/tv_grab_be.conf. This is the file written by --configure and read when grabbing.

--output FILE When grabbing, write output to FILE rather than standard output.

--days N When grabbing, grab N days rather than as many as possible.

--offset N Start grabbing at today + N. N may be negative.

--quiet Suppress the progress messages normally written to standard error.

--slow Slow mode: get detailed information for specified programmes. With --configure, this enables the configuration routine to prompt for the criteria which programs have to match for detailed information downloading. Otherwise, this enables the grabbing of detailed for programmes matching the defined criteria.

--trace Show debug information (if Log::TraceMessages is installed)

--gui OPTION Use this option to enable a graphical interface to be used. OPTION may be 'Tk', or left blank for the best available choice. Additional allowed values of OPTION are 'Term' for normal terminal output (default) and 'TermNoProgressBar' to disable the use of Term::ProgressBar.

--list-channels Dump channel information for all channels but no programmes. This grabber needs a config file first before the channels can be dumped.

--capabilities Show which capabilities the grabber supports. For more information, see <http://membled.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/XmltvCapabilities>

--version Show the version of the grabber.

--help Print a help message and exit.

Warning

In --slow mode, unning this grabber requires very many web page fetches (one per channel per day, and then one per programme selected for detailed information) from a very slow web site.

The number of web page fetches can be limited by limiting the number of programs to get detailed information for (by start time range, category or channel). This is defined when run with --configure --slow or in the config file.