Providing TV listings
Contents
Requirements
Required skills:
- Using a command line/terminal
- Configuring software using text files
- Creating programs that read websites or other sources and convert them to other formats. The language you use to do this doesn't matter. It should be possible to use anything like VB or Java. Without such a program you would need to convert the data manually. We strongly discourage converting the data manually!
The operating system doesn't matter, the tools are written in Java and should run on any platform that runs TV-Browser.
Providing TV listings
There are three possibilities to get your listings into TV-Browser:
Excel/XML
We wrote a little tool to enter and extract data for one channel in a Excel sheet (we call such tools Primary Data Service or PDS).
Alternatively, it's possible to enter and extract the data to and from an XML file.
How this works is explained in the tutorial. It also explains the other tools you need to prepare the data.
Primary Data Service
There is also the possibility of writing your own PDS that reads the data from a website or some other source. Ofcourse, to implement such a service you have to know Java programming. If you do know Java read the guide about how to proceed.
Tips
TV data services
The third way to provide your listings is a program so called TV data services. (See Tutorial: Development of a TvDataService). These will be loaded directly into TV-Browser as a plugin. An example of such a plugin is the NextViewDataService.
This third possibility should only be used in special cases. The development is much more involved than for a PDS, and everyone who wants to use your service needs to install a plugin, while in the PDS case he only needs to enter an URL.
More tips
TV listings usage permit
To be allowed to use the listings of different TV/Radio stations an official permit of the broadcasting service is needed. An example mail can be found on the german site.
You should use friendly, but decisive wording.
Important: Don't forget to provide them with your name, address and phone number!
