OliveTin for Channels: An Interface for Misc Channels DVR Scripts & Tricks

You'll need to install Portainer -- and, I believe there are several online guides for doing that on Synology. No special version of OliveTin, which is one of the beauties of Docker, as the idea is to be cross-platform.

One unique thing about Synology, is that any directories that need to be created when deploying a Docker container need to be created prior to deploying the container, or deployment will fail. Other than that, it's pretty standard.

@bnhf Is it possible creating a way like you have it for manual recordings but be for schedule recordings. For example, Dallas Stars went to streaming only on Victory Plus. I have a script setup in Home Assistant to open the app and start to play but I haven't found a way to automate the schedule of the games. Like if I had all the dates that they were playing I could input them in or pull from a set of data like a Google Sheet or something but just an easier way of automating recordings that don't have guide data. Thanks!

Since the games would be at various times on an irregular set of days, it's not like we could just setup a schedule to record every Monday at 8:00pm, right?

I wonder if you could create a custom channel source, that would be just be a channel for the Dallas Stars, and then simply provide your own XML guide data -- which probably could be done with a Google Sheet, although there are likely more elegant ways. That way, a CDVR recording pass could be set up as usual.

OliveTin has a built-in static file server which could host such an XML file locally on your LAN, and be used in a custom channel source.

That is correct.

That sounds like a great idea. How would I go about creating my own XML guide data?

I don't have the experience creating XMLTV files but if I wanted to try, I would ask for help from an AI, such as chatGPT. :wink:

Here is an example created by chatGPT:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<tv>
  <channel id="channel1">
    <display-name>Channel 1</display-name>
  </channel>
  <channel id="channel2">
    <display-name>Channel 2</display-name>
  </channel>
  <programme start="20240917180000 +0000" stop="20240917190000 +0000" channel="channel1">
    <title>News</title>
    <desc>Evening news program</desc>
  </programme>
  <programme start="20240917190000 +0000" stop="20240917200000 +0000" channel="channel2">
    <title>Movie</title>
    <desc>Action movie</desc>
  </programme>
</tv>

I'm guessing you probably need the channel IDs in there so that Channels DVR can match them with the channels that it knows about.

What @mjitkop posted above looks reasonable as a starting point, and although you could use a regular editor or spreadsheet to manage it, something along these lines would probably be easiest:

1 Like

Also, for the complete format that definitely works in Channels, open one XMLTV file used in one custom channel source, if you have one.

@bnhf @mjitkop thank y’all! I just asked ChatGPT to and it created it. I didn’t realize AI was this useful to understanding how all of this works.