Data Sources

Data Sources

TVMagazineCockpit has no programme data of its own. It reads three public TV-magazine websites. You choose one in the settings. The sources differ in how much they deliver.

	TV Für Alle (tvfa)	TV Movie (tvm)	TV Spielfilm (tvs)
Website	tvfueralle.de	tvmovie.de	tvspielfilm.de
Default	yes
Programme list per channel	all channels in one answer	one request per channel (up to 50 entries)	two page requests per channel
Description	long text	none	from the programme's own page
Subtitle / episode title	yes	yes	from the page
Year	yes	yes	year, with country
Category, genre	no	yes	yes (from the list)
Picture	yes	yes	yes (from the page)
Trailer	no	no	when the page has one
NEU badge	no	no	yes
Details loaded per programme	no	no	yes, one page each

The ids that identify a channel at each source are in the channel dictionary.

Which to choose

• TV Für Alle is the lightest: one request per day for all channels. Good for a quick overview. It has descriptions and pictures but no trailers.
• TV Movie gives categories and genres, but no description in the details.
• TV Spielfilm gives the most (description, trailer, NEU badge) at the price of many more requests: two list pages per channel, and one detail page per programme you look at.

What is requested, and when

Source	List	Detail
TV Für Alle	https://tvfueralle.de/api/broadcasts/<date>	none
TV Movie	https://proxy.xceler8.io/v2/epg-search?channelId=<id>&airTime=<date>T04:00:00.000Z&limit=50 (with the Referer of tvmovie.de)	none; pictures from images.tvmovie.de
TV Spielfilm	https://www.tvspielfilm.de/tv-programm/sendungen/?channel=<id>&date=<date>&page=1 and &page=2	the programme's own page

Requests are made by a background thread, never by the screen itself, so the box stays responsive while data loads. Everything downloaded for the day is kept in the cache; nothing is requested twice.

Reliability

• TV Für Alle and TV Movie use JSON interfaces, which change rarely.
• TV Spielfilm is read by parsing the HTML of the pages. If the site changes its layout, programmes or details may be missing until the plugin is updated. If that happens, switch to another source in the settings.
• All three depend on third-party websites. A site can be unavailable, change its terms, or block requests.

Time zones

Times from the sources are converted to your box's local time.

Changing the source

In the settings (MENU). After saving, the plugin clears the screen, deletes the cache folder (/data/TVC, because the programmes of the old source cannot be reused), and loads the new source. A channel that the new source has no id for disappears from the pages (see Channels).