XMLTV For Linux

XMLTV is an open source, free and multiplatform application written in Perl and designed to provide a collection of utilities for managing your TV viewing experience. It works with TV listings stored in the XMLTV format, which is based on XML.

XMLTV supports grabbing TV listings from numerous countries, including Canada, UK, Ireland, Germany, Finland, Austria, Spain, Netherland, Hungary, Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, as well as Romania.

The idea of XMLTV is to separate out the backend (gather the TV listings) from the frontend (organize and display TV listings for the user), and to implement useful functions, such as the ability to chose your favourite TV programmes.

The program is written in Unix Shell and Perl programming languages, and it relies on various Perl modules, including Term::ReadKey, Date::Manip, File::Slurp, LWP, XML::TreePP, XML::Twig, XML::Writer, Lingua::EN::Numbers::Ordinate, Lingua::Preferred, Term::ProgressBar, and Unicode::String.

To get started, you will have to download the latest release, save the archive on your Home directory, unpack it, open a Terminal app, go to the location where you’ve extracted the archive file (e.g. cd /home/softpedia/xmltv-0.5.66), and run the ‘perl Makefile.PL’ command to compile the program.

When attempting to compile XMLTV, you will be asked to choose which optional components you want to install, as well as to choose grabbers for various front-ends and countries for managing listings. Choose ‘yes’ if you’re OK with the default settings or choose ‘no’ if you want to configure XMLTV to suit your needs.

XMLTV is a cross-platform project, supported on all GNU/Linux distributions, as well we on the FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is currently compatible with 32 and 64-bit instruction set architectures.