Listings Grabber

The grabber is the code that provides TV listings info for Myth.

What makes it a bit complex is that Myth is used worldwide - and there are lots of different ways to get listings data.

Fortunately there is already an opensource system that we can use - XMLTV.

XMLTV is the work of Ed Avis and others. He's created an XML format that copies with the complexities of TV listings info - google for XMLTV for more info...

XMLTV provides a variety of 'screen scapers' (1 or 2 for each country) - programs that visit a website and try to interpret the text as tv listing info. This is used by mythfilldatabase which then converts the XMLTV format and passes it to MythTV.

Some places provide raw xmltv or other machine readable text (eg the North American and now the UK Radio Times grabbers) - this is much quicker and more reliable.