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EPGPurge TAP ​

Introduction ​

This is a small TAP program to purge old EPG entries on a Topfield TMS PVR.

It fixes the following problems in the TMS PVR:

  1. After each minute boundary, the tap purges the EPG of all program entries older than the current + previous program on each channel and also ensures the current program is updated to match the current time of day. This stops old program info being displayed on the info display, and old program info being stored in recordings.

  2. Stops the guide display from jumping back a large period as you move the cursor up or down the display.

To install the TAP, upload it to the ProgramFiles/AutoStart folder on your PVR using ftp, or copy it via a USB flash stick. There is no configuration or user interaction required for this tap. It merely runs in the background and fixes these issues. Ensure you delete the FixCurrent tap if you had it previously installed, as this tap replaces it.

I developed this on my Australian TF7100HDPlus model PVR but it should work on at least all other Australian TMS models, i.e. TRF-2400, TRF-2460, TRF7170, and TRF7160. I have tested the app using both ICE and FTA EPG data.

Read the latest documentation, source code, or download the latest built TAP.

Author ​

License ​

Copyright (C) 2012 Mark Blakeney. This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Change History ​

v1.0:

Original version for guide display, based on this tap.

v1.1-MGB:

Imported to github and added the following:

  1. Also forces EPG purge after returning from playback or timeslip to realtime TV.

  2. Made code slightly more efficient and made some minor cleanups.

  3. Fixed typo bug in SUBSTATE check.

  4. Fixed end time range bug. Programs start on the start time and end just before the end time, i.e. range = [start, end).

V2.0 - 2011-12-22:

Rewrote and renamed my version EPGPurge to add the following enhancements:

  1. Deletes old EPG entries rather than marks them as expired. There is no need for old EPG data anyhow and deleting them subsequently makes the processing much more efficient as we then only have to process typically 2 events per channel each run (previous + current) rather than potentially hundreds of old events.

  2. The FixCurrent tap converted each programs start and end date+times into an internal time number biased against an arbitary epoch. However this is unnecessary as we only need to compare date+times against current date+time and since the MJDHM format embeds the date and time in significant digit order that means we can compare them directly and thus save significant CPU overhead avoiding the time conversions.

  3. Runs just after each minute boundary to purge and adjust the EPG. Since the TAP is now much more efficient (running typically only 2 iterations per channel as per above comment) we can run it each minute and catch all "edge" conditions where EPG data is otherwise sometimes seen to be out of date.

V2.1 - 2012-04-13:

Add check for no EPG data.

V2.2 - 2012-04-29:

Always runs after each minute boundary now. Runs in all modes, to always ensure that the EPG is updated. Apart from the other problems addressed before this version, this should also now ensure that recordings capture the correct program info data.

v2.2.1 - 2012-06-20:

Only do EPG purge on IDLE and KEY events. I do not know of any problems before this but FireBird recommends avoiding processing on the other TAP events so may as well be sure.

v2.3 - 2013-02-18:

Added TAPID function to appear in TMSCommander tap list.