Difference between revisions of "Channel icons"

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(Storage Group/Services API fixed)
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for all the users that can run MythTV as well.
 
for all the users that can run MythTV as well.
 
==Storage Group Location==
 
As of 0.25, there is support for using [[Storage Groups]] for access to the icons.
 
 
To use storage groups for channel icons, you will need to create a new storage group named ''ChannelIcons''.  Move your icons to that location.  You should then go into ''mythtv-setup'' and remove the absolute paths, leaving just the filenames.
 
 
It is important to understand that this support is not yet feature complete, as both ''mythfilldatabase'' and ''mythtv-setup'' still download icons to the ''~/.mythtv/channels/'' directory, and attempt to retrieve them from that location, but if you run the applications on the same machine as the storage group is located, you can create a link from ''~/.mythtv/channels/'' to the storage group location as a mitigation.  Also, ''mythweb'' does not use storage groups for accessing the icons.
 
  
 
=Channel Icon Sources=
 
=Channel Icon Sources=

Revision as of 18:07, 17 October 2013

Channel Icon Download System

As of 0.21, MythTV includes a channel icon download system in mythtv-setup which will attempt to automatically download icons for channels in your database from services.mythtv.org. If it cannot find an icon it will present you with a list of options, an the ability to define your own search parameters.

To configure icon downloading in mythtv-setup:

  • run "mythtv-setup"
  • select "Channel Editor"
  • click on "Icon Download"
  • select either "Download all icons.." or "Rescan for missing icons.."


Universal Location

Starting with version 0.27, a single location for channel icons can be created on the master backend. The only symlink required is for mythweb. Remove it's .../data/tv_icons directory and link it to the chosen single directory. Make sure that the directory has read/write permissions for user mythtv and choose the same group that is used by mythweb, e.g. www-data. Make the new single location directory's mode 775.

Symlinks added for prior versions (or old channels/ChannelIcons directories and their contents) can be removed. Obviously after copying icons to a new directory as required.

If a ChannelIcons Storage Group doesn't already exist, follow the 1st 2 paragraphs in the Storage Group Location below. Then restart the backend then frontends.

The Services API (e.g. <backend>:6544/Guide/GetChannelIcon?ChanId=1021) endpoint works with this feature as of [d34c696].

Pre 0.27 Instructions

By default the icon will be downloaded to the /home/<user>/.mythtv/channels directory. This is not very friendly when you have multiple frontends and wish them all to share the icons. One method to get around this is to use a symlink for this directory that directs to a network located directory that all your frontends have access to, say /var/mythtv/channels for example.

Before downloading the icons, do the following, or similar as per your distribution:

rm ~/.mythtv/channels -rf
sudo mkdir /var/mythtv/channels
sudo chown <user>:<group> /var/mythtv/channels
ln -s /var/mythtv/channels ~/.mythtv/channels

You will want to run

rm ~/.mythtv/channels -rf
ln -s /var/mythtv/channels ~/.mythtv/channels

for all the users that can run MythTV as well.

Channel Icon Sources

One of the best sources of channel icons is http://www.lyngsat-logo.com/ . There, you can browse the available icons and choose those appropriate for your system. However, doing so can be a lot of work (requiring many page hits and a lot of time). Once downloaded you should put the resulting JPEG files into .mythtv/channels/ for the user running the front-end. To add them to a channel you will need to run mythtv-setup and go to the channel editor and specify the icon file name for each channel.

Another source of channel icons is http://www.iconharmony.com/ which is targeted for icons for the harmony remote. Some of the available icons are more stylized than the official icon (the person running the site is a graphic artist). As with the previous source, finding an appropriate icon can be a lot of work.

International Channel Logos