MHEG-5 for EPG purposes

[Sam NZ]

Hi there,

Our DVB-T broadcast in New Zealand transmits full 7-day EPG data over
MHEG-5, as opposed to the EIT which only gets current/next data.
There are currently no interactive features of the streams that I know
of for now.

We are looking to integrate this EPG data into MediaPortal (and
possibly Windows Media Center when DVB-T H.264+AAC support comes
around) rather than relying on sometimes unreliable XML feeds. Not to
mention that MHEG-5 EPG integration would eliminate the need for
internet connectivity for a full EPG.

What is the status of the EPG side of this project and can we help in
any way?

Cheers,

Sam

[dmm...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I've never considered MHEG-5 EPG as the TV guide is broadcasted by EIT
in the UK, which DC-DVB is quite good at decoding

However it should be possible to decode the NZ EPG via OpenMheg. How
exactly is the EPG transmitted, is there a spec? or do you have any
example files?

The OpenMheg parser should be able to decode those files fairly
easily. Does the NZ MHEG spec have any difference to the UK one, as
that could catch out it. Having this data would allow me to figure out
how much effort is required.

If the EPG can be parsed, then it should be fairly simple to write a
piece of software to extract the TV listings and present them in any
other format. The parser in in OpenMheg is decoupled from the user
interface as a separate DLL, making integration with other software
easy.

Cheers
Dharmesh

[Rhys.G...@gmail.com]

Hey,
I'm also interested in this, I do a little MediaPortal development in
c# but this lower level DVB stuff might be a little over my head but
I'm keen to get involved in anyway I can. I'd be keen on writing a
MHEG5 EPG grabber plug-in for MediaPortal TVServer.

As it stands, OpenMheg will talk directly to the the BDA driver, but
in MediaPortal we'd need to extract the mheg5 stream and feed to the
the OpenMheg parser. Am I on the right track at all hear?

I'll go have a look at the OpenMheg source now and see if I can
understand at all how it works; can anyone point me in the right
direction as to where I can find some general Mheg5 info, I really
have no idea how it works!

Cheers,
Rhys

[dmm...@gmail.com]

Hi,

OpenMheg essentially needs a stream to MHEG data,
that usually comes from a dump to file, or all in-memory.
If MediaPortal can dump the MHEG, probably via the BDA driver, then
OpenMheg can 'see' it.

I don't know how the EPG is encoded, but MHEG-5 has objects called
'Visibles',
which the GUI layer in OpenMheg renders.
If the EPG data is encoded in such a way, then it would be fairly easy
to write an adapter GUI to pull the relevant data out.
If its encoded in a 'non-standard' way, then changes may need to be
made to the core interpreter, which is a bit harder.

If I had a sample of the EPG dump, then I could probably give a
detailed list of changes needed.

For more info on MHEG, have a look here:
http://dharmeshmalam.com/initiative/attachments/M5EG%20Report%20-%202006.pdf

Cheers
Dharmesh

On Oct 13, 7:58 pm, "Rhys.Good...@gmail.com" <Rhys.Good...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Rhys.G...@gmail.com]

I'll see if I can't get a dump of the mheg epg; it should just be a
regular mheg app, it just happens to contain epg info, right? I'm
trying to look at the code for MediaPortal tswritter.ax filter to try
to understand how the data streams are extracted from the ts I guess
this is where I'd have to grab the mheg data, but yeah I don't know c+
+ and this is very quickly getting out of my depth! but I'll see how I
go! (I didn't know c# until the need arose!)

Thanks for that document you wrote Dharmesh it's really impressive,
I'm making my way though it now.

Regards,
Rhys

[Dharmesh Malam]

To extract the mheg files, a component called a DSM-CC is needed which de-multiplexes the data from the broadcast stream.
If tswritter.ax contains one, then it should be pretty easy otherwise writing one from scratch is quite a task.

DC-DVB has a excellent DSM-CC and is now open source, so that could be potentially used.

2008/10/16 Rhys.G...@gmail.com <Rhys.G...@gmail.com>

--
Dharmesh Malam

[Rhys.G...@gmail.com]

Does openmheg not contain a DSM-CC? how else can it run mheg apps from
the TV card? Ok promise I won't ask any more questions until I've done
some reading and have the foggiest idea of what I'm talking about!! I
don't want to waste anyone's time especially since I don't know if I'm
gonna have the time to pursue this my self.