Color Catagories

[jeremyrem]

For my kodi setup it uses genre's name to look for an image file to use as an overlay.

But my theme lets me do that for more customization, without it, kodi converts the genre into a digit and it looks for a image with that as the name

[Epg Admin]

Do you have to do something manually or is it automatic?
What skin do you use if it's automatic?

Can you explain this in a bit more detail?

[jeremyrem]

Yea so I am using a modded version of Estuary... Estuary MOD V2 (https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=306757).

Even Estuary supports the color overlays however it handles it a little different.

For Estuary MOD V2 it has a toggle to switch from Kodi's standard colors for genres to a modded version that uses genre_names.png

I'll write a better report with folders and screenshots after work for you but this forum post shows some of how it works.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=329610

This shows with a modded line on top, and the backup uses the traditional file ##.png

'''

Code:

In your skin folder, find MyPVRGuide.xml
(Note that you should copy the original skin and switch to your copy, otherwise your modifications may be overwritten when Kodi updates).

Edit MyPVRGuide.xml to find the two lines containing -
<texture border="3" fallback="windows/pvr/epg-genres/0.png">$INFO[ListItem.Property(GenreType),windows/pvr/epg-genres/,.png]</texture>
and replace them with -
<texture border="3" fallback="windows/pvr/epg-genres/0.png">$INFO[ListItem.Genre,windows/pvr/epg-genres/,.png]</texture>

This will get Kodi to select a texture file with the same name as the genre, rather than with a numerical name given by GenreType.

The epg-genres folder must now be populated with texture files (each containing your chosen colour) and named according to the genre shown in your EPG.
(You can simply rename the texture files already there if you wish).
You can now have any number of genres and colours by adding files to the epg-genres folder.
Note that your EPG genre names must now also be legal file names, so if your EPG shows a genre such as 'Movies/Drama' you must make sure you change it to 'Movies-Drama' or similar.

'''

example of changing the default background

'''

Code:

Includes_PVR.xml
<texture border="3" fallback="windows/pvr/epg-genres/0.png">$INFO[ListItem.Property(GenreType),windows/pvr/epg-genres/,.png]</texture>

<texture border="3" fallback="windows/pvr/epg-genres/0.png">windows/pvr/epg-genres/48.png</texture>

'''

Should be home around 6PM EST and will finish the post then

[Epg Admin]

Cool!
Thanks!

[jeremyrem]

Sorry for the delay, having a hard time finding the non modded stuff but this may help

https://github.com/centuri112/epg-genres.colors

it works by having the user create a new folder called epg-genres with <Category>.png for each tag

I guess it may work best if you adopted a standard list of categories per show (if available) and trimmed any excess tags

[Kick4U]

Hello everyone!  The colored genres are based on the xml provided.

We need to make sure that this service uses the ETSI EN 300 468 standard for genre names.
The list of genres are shown under the Table 28 on page 40 of the link above.

Some examples of genres for news shows are (must be verbatim with slashes):
news/current affairs (general)
news/weather report
news magazine
documentary
discussion/interview/debate

It is possible to change the genre names in kodi for ones that are more likely used by this service. Please see this link for more information.
https://github.com/kodi-pvr/pvr.iptvsimp...for-genres

It would be amazing to a get a list of the genres used in this service so that a proper genre.xml file can be generated for kodi.  Otherwise, this service would need to ensure that the genre names are using the EN standard.
I've uploaded all the genres I found in the 250 channels I subscribed to. I wish it was more organized.


PS- I used webgrabplus in the past to aggregate my xml from websites and created an mdb to adjust all genres into the EN standard.  Perhaps something similar can be done?
You can search there forum for 'Practical? The use and effect of argument scope' to get more information on this.

[Epg Admin]

You know that every channel provides different categories how they like IF they even provide categories and even if we would run looping scripts on all 7500+ channels with their 7000 different categories to make them conform, there are channels from over 100 countries with almost as many different languages, right?

Alone the creating of the changing script would make too much work and running it would need processing time and power, which is not worth it.

To be honest, you can smear your ETSI standards into your hair.

Unfortunately we have to develop this service so that everybody with every language and geographical location can use it equally.

[jeremyrem]

What about a dumbed-down list of categories
<sports>
<tv>
Maybe: <tv gameshow | sitcom | talk>
<news>
<movie>
Maybe: <movie drama | action | etc >
<kids> / <kids edu | cartoon>
<sports>
Maybe: <sports football | baseball | hockey | tennis | etc>

and when a user downloads the list it will use their preferred language (in settings or what not)

Not sure how your backend is but if possible you can have the main epg have a variable for each epg category that will get replaced with the users preference on download or experiment with letting advanced users change it for themselves.

Personally I have tried adding something similar when I import by wget -O <file url> | sed -i <bunch of ident/append strings>, might give it another shot

EDIT adding list of categories currently provided at 11:09AM EST - It changes by provider so may be different tomorrow / next update
https://paste.jremi.com/index.php/view/5f889a74

[Epg Admin]

It doesn't matter how we wind it, the point is, that it has to be happening in the client software and not in the xml file, nor in our editor.

The IPTV app has to find a way to interpret the categories not the other way around.
We are still not an XML editor and still not responsible for inventing workarounds for other developers' mistakes and laziness.

We have ideas how to achieve this in our apps, but that won't be a universal solution.

We will add this to our apps for sure, because I like the idea too.
Although our apps already tell you the category of the actual show, next to all the other important information like episode numbers and actor names etc., so it is not really needed. It would just look good.

[jeremyrem]

yea the main issue for most is its not implemented at all and for those that it is implemented on its either full support or something half baked.

I originally thought this was to just get it working in Kodi though and thats what I was focusing on since the caterogy has to be unified for it to properly ident it and it does not support the /, it will only use the first word/group before a /

But I understand the universal usage you are trying to go for and there really is no way to determine which software people use and if/how it supports categories.