epgStream.net is going to to unavailable for the next 7 days while we are on holidays. This will mean new or replacement licenses will not be issued between Sunday, 11th of October and Monday, 19th of October.

Sorry about the week of downtime but after 6 months of intense contract work it’s time for a quick break!

Work, travel, babies, marriages, puppies and illness! It’s been a heck of a few months for us here at epgStream, but it looks like September sees our calendar clearing!

Yup, it looks like there is a good chance things will be settling down and we’ll be able to pick up on our hobby projects this coming September/October! This is great because it gives us a chance to unwind and also to crank up epgStream.net.

Bigger news (incase you haven’t already heard on the grapevine) is that we’ve been approached by a third party who has expressed interest in purchasing our client/server software solutions. This could present quite an interesting scenario having a full-time business entity take over development and support of our EPG products!!!

Sorry for the delay in a response, but work is killing me … I’ve even had to put off a climbing trip to Thailand because of mountain of commitments!

Trustwave

The malware contains advanced management functionality allowing the attacker to fully control the compromised ATM through a customized user interface built into the malware. This interface is accessible by inserting controller cards into the ATM’s card reader.

SpiderLabs analysts do not believe the malware includes networking functionality that would allow it to send harvested data to other, remote locations via the Internet.

The malware does, however, allow for the output of harvested card data via the ATM’s receipt printer or by writing the data to an electronic storage device (possibly using the ATM’s card reader).

Analysts also discovered code indicating that the malware could eject the cash dispensing cassette.

Major Australian banks, such as the Commonwealth Bank, are currently running Windows XP on their ATM networks. This new type of malware could be used here in Australia where economic conditions are prime to make illegal fraudulent activites appealing … Why bother going to the trouble of breaking into or stealing an ATM when you can just hire a 14 year old kid to hack into one!

Learn more about this issue by reading Trustwave’s Malware Briefing.

Additional references: wired.com cnet.com computerworld.com

#1 – Broadcast EPG Data

I really thought I would hate the EPG data broadcast by the television networks, but I have to say I’m satisfied with it. I’m not saying I’m impressed by the quality and consistency of TV network data, but at the same time I’m not saying I’m disappointed by it! I can definately see the quality of programme data improving with FreeView providing a unified EPG stream and a move toward MHEG-5.

I normally scan the TV guide for the upcoming week at least once to make sure all my favourites are recorded and to see what’s new. Just keep an eye out for multiple names for some of your favourite shows like “The Simpsons”, “All New Simpsons” and “The Simpsons Marathon” … But once you’ve worked out and recorded all the variations then you’re set!

#2 – Colour Coded Programmes

Annoying at first, but the colour coding of different genres has grown on me. My niece especially likes it because she knows her children’s programming by colour … (she can’t read yet).

At least the TV network are taking the time to categorise the shows they broadcast!

#3 – Intelligent Recording

Don’t you just hate when you schedule your favourite show to record and the show before it runs overtime? You end up missing the last 30 minutes of your show and then get an ear bashing from your better-half because the “stupid Media Center” isn’t doing it’s job! Not so anymore …

It seems that when shows run overtime, the TV networks are performing “last minute” updates to their broadcast EPG, which Media Center is smart enough to detect. This means Media Center automatically adjusts your recording’s end time to ensure all of it will be recorded! Take that live television!

#4 – Seek Preview

One thing I hated about the old Windows 7 and Windows Vista video playback was seeking backwards and forwards. Jumping 10 seconds backwards and 30 seconds forwards gave you a kind of epilepsy as frames jumped about. Now the latest Windows 7 RC version has a “mini” preview window that allows you happily seek without interrupting the main playback. Once you’ve found where you want to be in the preview window, Media Center then jumps to it!

The bad news is that we can’t update the channel changes until Monday night, being the long weekend and all. The good news is you can just update the channels yourself with the following, simplified steps:

1. Launch the “XMLTV Download Settings” application.
2. Navigate to and click on the “Channels” tab.
3. Click the “Download Channel List” button.
4. To add your “One HD“ channel, type “one-” (notice the hyphen) in the search box and select by checking the One HD channel for your region.
5. To add your “SBS TWO“ channel, type “sbstwo” in the search box and select by checking the SBS TWO channel for your region.
6. Click the “Save Changes” button to save your updated channel list.
7. Click the “Close” button to exit the “XMLTV Download Settings” application.

From there it’s just a matter of re-downloading your guide data by launching the “XMLTV Download” application. Once the XMLTV download has completed, perform the following to see your new channels:

1. Launch Windows Media Center.
2. Navigate to: Tasks->Settings->TV->Guide
3. Perform a “Get Latest Guide Listings” to import the newly added channel data.
4. Perform a “Add Listings to Channel” to include the new channels. First select the TV channel, then select the guide to use.

Simple as that. If you need to edit the channel name of time zone settings then launch the “XMLTV Download Settings” application, select your channel and “right-click” it for more editing options. Likewise if you want to edit more channel information, just launch the “Guide Service Proxy Settings” applications for more options.

Needless to say, most users should be familiar with this configuration … Unless we’ve spoilt you with our Guide Wizard application?

This new discount code let’s you experience the Quickflix “Movie Lover” subscription (valued at $26.95/month) and gives you access to 3 DVDs at a time, for a total of 10 DVDs per month.

If you’re really serious about your movies and want even more value for money, it might be worth checking out Bigpond Movies who are offering you 12 DVDs for only $29.95/month (or 14 DVDs per month with a 12 month subscription).

Bigpond (37,000+ DVDs) gives it away at only $2.14 per DVD compared to Quickflix (36,000+ DVDs) at $2.70 per DVD! Only for the serious DVD copying watching household!

Anyway, visit QuickFlix and enter the following code to get your free 10 DVD rental offer! 

icetv10free

One thing I can say is that the spammers are getting better with their content and formatting, not perfect, but better. Phishing’s main downfall here appears to be grammar and spelling which always makes something “tingle” on the back of your neck, even if you are new to the phishing experience … You know we’re all going to be in trouble when the phishers finally get someone to proof-read their emails!

Just remember these simple tell-tale signs that someone is phishing:

• You are not addressed by your full name or other personal information.
• You do not appear to be emailed directly. Rather you are part of a BCC list.
• Spelling does not appear to localised for your region. e.g. “Authorised” (Australian) vs “Authorized” (American).
• Links you are asked to follow do not belong to the actual organisation the email appears to be from. e.g. http://sydney049.com/monwealthbank.com.au/login.aspx belongs to the “sydney049.com” domain and not the “commonwealthbank.com.au” domain.

Remember, if in doubt then pick up the telephone and give the organisation a call directly (though don’t use the phone number from the email)!

Check out some of the better phishing emails the Commonwealth Bank have had to issue alerts for:

I’m a regular user of QuickFlix myself and have been happy with their service and DVD selection. I’ve been able to score my favourite TV series and movies from yester-year plus some top new releases!

My only gripe is that you don’t get some of the more popular new-release movies right away so you have to wait a while before it arrives in the mail. I guess this is probably the one and only draw-back of the “no late fees” system that QuickFlix offers and that is that people hang onto the DVDs longer … meaning you have to wait longer for a popular new-release or children’s DVDs …

Gift Voucher Codes

• “dollardestiny” – 1 month subscription, total of 8 DVDs (8 per month).
• “rickhart” – 10 weeks subscription, total of 10 DVDs (only 1 per week).
• “icetv2mth” – 2 months subscription, total of 8 DVDs (only 4 per month).
• “NRMA_M4M211208″ – NRMA members get 1 month free + 10% off for 4 months! 

How QuickFlix works?

Head over to the main www.quickflix.com.au website and find the “Start your FREE trial” section (right) and enter your discount code. From there you’ll be invited to register and enter your personal and credit card information.

Once you’re all signed up it’s a pretty simple process of building a queue of which DVDs you want, then waiting for them to be sent out by post! Generally you can get only rent 2-4 DVDs at a time, but when you’re finished watching one, just pop it back into the free return envelope provided and QuickFlix will send the next DVD in your online queue.

Not interested in QuickFlix DVDs? Then go for IceTV’s EPG discount!

If you want real value for money over the next twelve months for your Electronic Programme Guide (EPG), I’d recommend using the following IceTV discount codes when purchasing a new subscription from over at www.icetv.com.au:

• “qfx-12month” – $49 for 12 month subscription.
• “IceTVcelebratesHighCourtwin” – $60 for 12 month subscription.
• “petervogel” – $24 for 12 months subscription.

Final Word

I guess IceTV are starting to look towards the future and we might be seeing some new deals popping up (fingers crossed), but the best deal we can hope for is a permanently reduced EPG subscription rate! All I need is an electronic programme guide … I can get everything else off the net!

If anyone from QuickFlix is reading this … Hurry up and get more copies of “The Might Boosh” in! Oh, and if you’re not from QuickFlix then try using multiple credit cards for multiple bites of the discount codes (shhhhhh…).

We [IceTV] realise we couldn’t have won without the continued support from all our customers, so as a token of our appreciation… we’re now giving back!

Hooray! Maybe IceTV don’t have to worry about court costs anymore and are going to cut costs after many, many months of over-charging? Wrong! Read on …

IceTV are offering $30 off new subscriptions, making their yearly subscriptions now $69/year, but it expires on the 22/5/2009. Huh? Shouldn’t this cut be permanent seeing IceTV now have a monopoly on the EPG market, unburdened by threats from TV network Nine?

“IceTV is giving back” … Not really! Unfortunately this looks like another short-term subscription money grab. I would have thought that “giving back” to all their loyal subscribers would have meant a rebate on existing subscriptions! Finding a $30 cheque in your letterbox from IceTV would be giving back, but instead subscribers are forced to buy an additional year’s subscription to take advantage of their appreciation.

*SIGH*, back to using free EPG data for now …

IceTV subscribers have been actively providing financial support to keep IceTV going during these past periods of court action. Subscriptions prices have been high and product development fairly low (I mean an iPhone application doesn’t really cater for the vast majority of subscribers) with most existing services not evolving over the past 12 months.

Hopefully IceTV will recoupe the majority of court costs brought about by Nine’s actions, allowing them to really start to deliver some value for their $99-$156/year subscription. 

When you step back and look at it, is a reliable TV programme information (date, time and description) really worth a whopping $99/year? “No!”. Now obviously there is some cost involved generating the data, but after the EPG is compiled it’s just data … Data that can be replicated in an instant and distributed very cheaply over the wonderful free network we all know as the Internet. With a well designed system, there should be very little logistical cost difference between servicing 1000, 2000 or even 10000 subscribers, so in theory prices should get cheaper with more subscribers!

Why don’t we see massive price drops in IceTV’s subscription rates as they start to accumulate a bigger subscription base? Well it’s probably because there hasn’t been any commercial competition to help drive prices down … And you know IceTV’s prices can go lower … We’ve all seen their 50% off subscription offers around Christmas and High Court trial dates. Kinda like the Angus & Cootes when they have their “50% off gold, diamond and jewellery sale” and you realise they’ve been fleecing you every other day of the year except for sale day … And they’re still making 5-10% markup during the sale!

I’d like to see, if possible, IceTV’s prices come down further by offering different subscription levels for data and services. Really let the average user pay for the services they want to use, not the services the *might* use (i.e. iPhone app.).

For instance, I’d be interested in the MXF/XMLTV and native Windows Media Center services (and maybe even the desktop widget), but I’m not that interested in paying for the IceTV Interactive remote scheduling and iPhone features that I’d never use. As an example:

[*] MXF/XMLTV Guide Gateway – Base $25/yr
[X] Windows Media Center Guide Gateway :: Add $10/yr
[X] Windows Desktop Widget :: Free
[ ] Mac Desktop Widget :: Free
[ ] Windows Interactive + Web Portal :: Add $10/yr
[ ] Mobile Interactive + Web Portal :: Add $5/yr
[ ] iPhone Interactive + Web Portal :: Add $5/yr

So in the above example, I’d be willing to hand over $35/year for a basic Windows Media Center guide service with no frills attached. Hopefully IceTV will reduce their prices soon otherwise you might see other EPG peddlers start to open their doors for cheap $$$ business … Heck, there is no reason why the EPG can’t be outsourced to India even!

Hmmm … epgStream.net could even outsource their EPG generation to India for $5/year per subscriber …

You can read more on the court summary here or Peter Vogel’s personal comments on the ruling here.

If, for example, you selected your region as “NSW” then your One HD channel would be missing. However if you selected a more specific region, such as “NSW – Sydney (CBD)”, then you’d be watching your One HD sport in all it’s glory …

The configuration has been updated so you should be able to re-run the “Guide Wizard” to update your Windows Media Center settings to get One HD information again.

All you’ll need to do is run the our “Guide Wizard” application again and it will automatically configure these new changes. After that just open up Windows Media Center and perform a manual “Get Latest Guide Listing“.

Enjoy!

Actually in all probability this email probably isn’t Australian and it seems to have been doing the rounds for at least the past six month. The sentence structure and content of this email just doesn’t seem to sit right with me. The mention of “permanent email address“, “failure to comply” and “this error” all seem fairly excessive for such a trivial “verification” activity. Oh, and the “Apologize” is a big poke in the eye too!

Just in case you were interested in following this verification link, it would take you here:

http://thesmclan.com/deeefiance/includes/netbank.com.au/bankmain.html

Phishers are definately pulling up their socks these days and I hope to hell my dad doesn’t get emails like this because I know he’ll be one of those people who click the “Verify Your Email Address” link … God bless his trusting heart!

Excuse me while I give my dad a call!

More Information: http://www.commbank.com.au/security-privacy/online-security/latest-security-alerts.aspx 

This weekend, in conjunction with our daylight saving changes, we’ll be updating our XMLTV: Guide Pack channel mappings. This will mean that if you run our “Guide Wizard” application on or after Sunday, 5th April 2009, you’ll see the following channels defined: 

• (#1) One HD
• (#10) Ten Digital
• (#11) One HD
• (#12) One Digital

Users won’t have to re-run their channel scan setup again to view these new channels. All you should need to do is perform a manual “Add Channel Listings” from within your Windows Media Center setup.

Tasmania, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and South Australia will wrap up daylight savings on Sunday, 5th April 2009. Western Australia will finish earlier on the Sunday, 29th March 2009 (err… last week).

We’ll be doing a bulk update of our XMLTV Guide Pack online configuration so all you have to do is re-run our “Guide Wizard” application on Sunday morning and you times should be back to normal!

Don’t forget to set your wall and digital clocks back 1 hour @ 3:00 am and remember that your Windows XP and Vista machines should automatically adjust the time for you!

Reference: Implementation Dates of Daylight Savings Time within Australia

Thumbing through (or should I say clicking through) my diary tonight and realised I’ve only spent about 10 hours in total over the last 14 days working on the compiler. To my surprise, the majority of that time was spent on designing and developing the user interface!

As I’ve mentioned previously, the core of the wmcGuideCompiler7 is complete and runs happily as a background task keeping my test Windows 7 box topped up with EPG goodness from ozTiVo.net. The main issue, as always, is configuration and how to let users sensibly configure their settings without having to hack at XML or flat-file configuration files. So, before I release the alpha, I’ll be finishing off the user interface … So, it might actually turn into a beta by the time it gets released!

Anyway, in the meantime if you have any suggestions/comments on functionality or some useful information then feel free to email me directly at the address below. Just remember time is always tight and I don’t have the luxury of IceTV‘s resources or Niall‘s commercial investment in getting this up and running …

Yeah baby! This Friday the 13th I’ll be preparing for a night of drinking, eating and yelling at the big screen TV while I re-live the UFC 96 experience. On the fight card are a few of my favourite fighters: Rampage, Jardine, Matt Brown and Matt Hamill.

My picks for the UFC 96 main card events are gonna have to be …

Light Heavyweight: “Keith Jardine” over “Quinton Jackson”
Heavyweight: “Shane Carwin” over “Gabriel Gonzaga”
Welterweight: “Matt Brown” over  “Pete Sell”
Light Heavyweight: “Matt Hamill” over “Mark Munoz”
Lightweight: “Jim Miller” over  “Gray Maynard”

The real holy grail PPV event will be UFC 100, scheduled for July 2009. The fight cards leading up to the 100th look pretty good (Evans vs Machida, Hughes vs Serra, Franklin vs Silva, Lesnar vs Mir), so hopefully we’ll be seeing some great fights for the 100th UFC event!

Personally I can’t wait to see the Randy Couture vs Brock Lesnar re-match … In their last epic match-up Randy was doing surprisingly well against Brock until he got clipped by one of Brock’s “ham fists” which sent him to his knee. I wasn’t impressed technically by Brock’s hammer-fist TKO, but ya gotta give respect to his pure clobberin’ power.

Until Couture vs Lesnar re-match happens I was hoping to be content to see Brock knock the snot out of Frank Mir in UFC 98, but due to Frank Mir’s knee injury this fight may be postponed till UFC 100. I was disappointed with Frank’s f&%#ed up attitude during The Ultimate Fighter Season 8 where he squared up against opposition coach Nogueira (great guy). In this TUF season Frank seemed totally self-centered and was acting more like a rock star than a MMA coach … Anyway, the only thing I’d say to Frank is:

“Mr Rock Star, may I introduce Mr Ham Fists … Enjoy your lunch!“

Always in the back of your mind you think that one day, some blue-chip company will send you that golden $$$ email saying that they want one of your existing domain names. In reality, this very rarely happens unless you happened to have owned pizza.com …

Check out this email I received yesterday …

Hi,

my name is Peter Bauer and I would be interested in buying your domain [ED: Removed] from you. Are you interested in selling it? If yes, how much would you want for it?

I would prefer to pay you via paypal. And just incase you are wondering how I got your email, anyone can get that info at whois.net

Regards,
Peter Bauer

The first thing I noticed was that it seemed to be written by, well, someone who had a good grasp of the English language. Unlike some of those Russian or Chinese phishing emails you get, this one actually has a good flow and correct punctuation. Could it be someone legitimately wants to buy one of my domain names?

Nahhh…. I don’t think so! This is a little bit of a spin on the usual phishing attack. This time, instead of attacking the masses, someone is targeting domain name owners and trying to pry their PayPal details out of them.

It was the last sentence of this email that struck me as strange … “anyone can get that info at whois.net“. Actually, all my domains are managed by Domains By Proxy who scan and forward domain administration emails to my real address. It looks like “Peter Bauer” is just scanning domain name listings and sending out emails to the domain administrators hoping to get a nibble from someone.

“Peter” also slipped up in the fact that all mail forwarded by Domains By Proxy are one-way only so, even if I did want to reply, I couldn’t unless “Peter” embedded his email address in his original email (which he didn’t … but it could be peter.bauer79@gmail.com).

Damn … Back to work tomorrow!

The “Revolution” competition is geared towards, and I quote, “bouldering for the masses” and features a new scoring system, an extended duration and a cheaper entry fee. Normally, ASCF competitors would climb for 2 hours and be scored on their best 10 climbs. In the new “Revolution” format, competitors climb for 3 hours and are scored based on two criteria: (1) your top 8 climbs and (2) the total sum of all your climbs.

This second criteria is pretty novel and lets competitors win simply through good ‘ole climbing attrition. Basically this means that mere mortals who don’t have the goods to climb the 8 hardest climbing problems set, can simply try and blitz the field by climbing as many of the “easy” climbs as possible.

New format, same problems!

The one thing I hate about these climbing competitions is that unfortunately some of the competitors, both male and female, don’t mind taking shortcuts and cheating. The competition format tends to be on an “honesty” system where you actually “tick” off all your climbs … and in 99% or cases everyone is honest, but it’s that 1% that erk me.

I remember seeing some climbings falling off climbs or using extra features and then happily ticking off the problem. Great for their score sheet, but crap for everyone else if these less-than-honest folks walk away with prizes. I even remember one guy I’ve been climbing with for ages entering the “Beginners” category and, of course, winning … “But I haven’t bouldered in ages.” was his justification!

How do we solve this annoying problem? Well, we can’t really unless every single climb is monitored by an official which would incur great cost.

See you guys at round #3 in April!

It goes without saying that I’m totally p*ssed that I didn’t keep an eye on the competition calendar but looking closer at the competition poster (right) I can see that my home gym, Climb Fit, isn’t participating this year… That would explain why I haven’t seen the usual collection of bouldering competition information plastered around the gym this year.

I’d better get back into some serious training … The 2nd round is in two weeks out at Brookvale!

1. THE CLIMBING CENTRE, PENRITH 27 & 28 FEB
2. NORTHERN BEACHES ROCKHOUSE, BROOKVALE 20 & 21 MAR
3. HANGDOG CLIMBING GYM, WOLLONGONG 1 & 2 MAY
4. THE SUMMIT, BLACKTOWN 22 & 23 MAY
5. SYDNEY INDOOR CLIMBING GYM, ST PETERS 19 & 20 jUN

7/3/2009 Addendum

Looks like I was wrong … The “Tour De Corde” is actually a new competition for sports rope climbing! I should have realised but my French isn’t too good, I should have picked up on “De Corde”!

A closer look at the http://www.sportclimbingaustralia.org.au website reveals that the NSW bouldering series start in July! I’ll have to plan the wedding around the competition rounds…

Our current service provider, <name withheld for the moment>, has had shocking service levels since the beginning of this year. Mysterious outages, conflicting support staff reports, unexplained server configuration changes and slow responses are making me think long and hard about whether we should stay with our current service provider.

Is the current economic recession forcing service providers to replace their previously outsourced Indian support crew with trained monkeys who work for bananas rather than Rupees? Based on the past couple of weeks I wouldn’t be surprised … 

All our website service up-times have dropped from an acceptable 99.9% down to a miserable 95.0% … I hear you saying a 5% drop doesn’t really sound all that bad, but it equates to roughly 438 hours (18 days) per year of down-time! Worst of all it seems to happen on the weekends …

What this means for most people is that they will experience a level of frustration when they try to connect to our website/services only to find them offline. Lately users have been faced with the following unfriendly message:

Server Error in ‘/’ Application
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Apparently, all our .NET web application versions were reset to v1.1 by someone other than us … I’m pointing the finger at service provider staff, who naturally deny it. Oh and our IIS application pool keeps needing to be manually restarted due to recent “undetermined” reasons.  

What this means for epgStream.net is that we have to keep a constant eye on what our web hosting support are doing, which is in effect periodically double checking them to make sure they don’t make any mistakes.

After complaining quite a bit, I’ve been asked to upgrade our hosting service but to be quite honest the last plan upgrade we were told to upgrade to should have *more* than covered our requirements.

I am not convinced I should upgrade our service plan (again) based on the amount of support staff cloak & dagger I’m experiencing. I’m thinking quite seriously about moving everything offsite to another hosting provider such as GoDaddy.com.

Hopefully you’ll pick up a few helpful hints and tips so diamond ring shopping for your special girl won’t be too overwhelming!

Angus & Coote

I felt a little uneasy when I walked into the Angus & Coote on Pitt street in Sydney city for the first time. It was lunch time and there were dozens of women standing around chatting and examining items of jewellery, all excited by the (suspiciously) massive 20-50% discounts that were being offered. The sales ladies all seemed to be in their late 40′s and bulging out of their uniforms, which did nothing to enhance the angelic euphoria I was feeling about buying a ring.

I slowly backed out of the store and decided to take a different approach to buying my engagement ring …

Diamond Ring Research 

The first thing most people do when they want to learn about something new is to Google it, and that’s exactly what I did! Nothing to be ashamed of and I learned just enough of the diamond “lingo” to not look semi-retarded when talking with a jeweller.

It seemed that, rather than purchase your ring “off the shelf”, it’s better to purchase your diamond and ring setting separately. You can see diamond traders/brokers who only specialise in diamonds and have access to large international diamond stocks. Similarly you can then find a jeweller with a large selection of ring bands to set your new diamond with.

After a few phone calls to local diamond traders and piecing together various bits of media information I figured that, in my opinion, I needed to look for 5 important, ranked factors when purchasing a diamond: Certification, Cut, Clarity, Carat Weight and Colour.

#1 Certification

Always, always look for a diamond that has credible, internationally certification. Diamond certification laboratories around the world have the specialised equipment to empirically rate many aspects of a diamond which mere mortals (like you and I) couldn’t discern with the naked eye. In Australia, most jewellers seem to be quite keen on ratings from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA).

GIA certified diamonds always come with a detailed online report and a serial number that is laser etched onto one of the tiny edges of the diamond, which is only visible with a microscope. Remember that not all diamonds are made equal and this type of diamond ranking helps you make sure you are getting what you pay for.

#2 Cut

I have to say I was a “cut” Nazi. The diamond had to have an excellent cut for me to even consider it. A diamond’s cut determines how much light is reflected back and the more “ideal” the cut, the bigger the sparkle. For a GIA diamond to be considered excellent it’s cut, polish and symmetry should all be “excellent” (a “good” or “very good” just won’t cut it!). Besides the sparkle, these triple excellent cut diamonds seem to hold their value better because they are more desirable. 

#3 Clarity

Clarity seems so hard to measure because unless your diamond has a noticeable crack or a fossilised fly in it, you can’t tell the difference. Under a x52 magnification microscope everything becomes clear and you’ll soon notice “inclusions” that reduce the value of a diamond.

GIA rate diamond clarity from flawless {F/IF} all the way to included {I1/I2/I3}. Flawless {F/IF} diamonds tend to be museum or investment pieces so you can cross those off your list straight away. Likewise you should cross included {I1-3} ratings off your list because if you girl looks hard enough she’ll start to notice cracks, specks, dots and other bits in the diamond.

You’ll want to look somewhere in between such as the “very, very slightly included” {VVSI}, the “very slightly included” {VSI} and the “slightly included” {SI} gradings. {VVSI} ratings typically mean there is only 1 or 2 faults in the diamond and are very difficult to detect by a trained, microscope wielding professional. {VSI} ratings are still a pretty good deal and you need a microscope and a bit of patience to find the inclusions while {SI} ratings mean even you could find the inclusions yourself if you had to.

If you decide to go for the lower clarity ratings such as {SI} and {I} then be aware that this may effect the “sparkle” of your diamond as light is either absorbed or warped by the internal defects. Also you might want to watch out when you drop your diamond … Some of those microscopic cracks might just get bigger!

#4 Carat Weight

Now this is can make or break your diamond ring at first glance. If it’s too small then your girl is going to be embarrassed to show it to her friends. If it’s too big … well as far as your girlfriend is concerned it could never be too big! But size does come at a price and a diamond’s weight is “ranked” based on a series of ranges. This means that you just don’t pay a flat $500 per 0.10 carats.

Typically weight price range bands seem to be in increments of 0.10 with the price jumping exponentially from band to band. Diamonds within a weight band, say 0.70-0.79, are usually priced the same with proportional variations based on weight. Likewise for 0.80-0.89, 0.90-0.99, 1.00-1.10 and so on. You might find a 0.98 carat for $9800, a 0.99 for $9900 but that magic jump to the next weight band means you’ll be paying $13,000 for a 1.00 carat and $13,400 for a 1.01 carat.

Needless to say, as far as value goes, carat weights which are closer to the next weight band (e.g. 0.79 or 0.88) are better value for money, but are harder to find.

#5 Colour

The GIA colour scale runs from colourless {D} all the way to light {Z}. Diamonds become less desirable towards the {Z} end of the scale and tend to be yellow in colour. You’ll want to look for a diamond that is in the colourless {D}, {E} or {F} range because unless put side by side, they each appear to be … “colourless”.

Once colour starts dropping below {K} you’ll start to notice the difference, especially if you are used to looking at a colourless diamond. Let’s face it, shallow girls can be cruel when they compare rings and realise someone’s diamond is a little yellower than everyone else’s …

One final note on colour is an extra attribute called fluorescence. Fluorescence is an undesirable attribute that can make an “average” diamond appear to look great under fluorescent lights, so make sure you look at your diamonds under pure white light or natural sunlight. Try to get a diamond with a fluorescence rating that is “None” or at very worse “Slight”. 

 Meet The Diamond Traders

Over a period of two week I spoke to several diamond traders in the Sydney CBD by phone and ended up visiting only three of them, Diamond Specialist, Delphi Diamonds and Diamond Exchange. As well as explaining to me the basics of a diamond’s anatomy, each trader asked me the same two questions up front …

(1) “What is your budget?” – Giving the diamond trader a sense of your budget helps him guide you towards a particular diamond carat size and from there it’s up to you to work out the fine balance between your budget, clarity, colour and cut.

(2) “When do you need the diamond?” – Basically the diamond traders draw their stock from an international stock pile. Each trader has access to an international diamond list that they can order directly from and it can take anywhere between 7-14 days for your diamond to be imported. Knowing you have to wait for your diamond is a good thing because the realisation of having to wait makes you think more about your diamond … You can’t just purchase it on the spur of the moment.

Choosing The Diamond

Some diamond traders tell you about only a small amount of their diamond stock and can selectively push diamonds they want to get rid of. Other traders are open enough to display their diamond stock and prices online for you to search. 

Diamond Specialist in Chinatown was recommended by a friend and was the first trader I visited and my initial impression was a good one. A nice office with some heavy duty security made me feel like I was at the right place to buy diamonds. The company’s Korean owner, Mr. Kim, met with me and went through my budget and suggested a few diamond variations. The variation were numerous but it basically came down to increasing the cut quality and sacrificing the clarity … I decided to increase my budget so I didn’t have to compromise too much. I had a few more decisions to make so I told Mr. Kim I’d be back in a few days.

Delphi Diamonds on Pitt Street was next on the list and this company had a very similar professional setup to Diamond Specialist. To be honest the owner had some great looking settings and was very straight to the point, but he seemed too much like a 2nd hand car salesman. I didn’t really trust him but he did verify some of the diamond prices that Diamond Specialist had given me.

Diamond Exchange, located on Bridge Street, had a professional office environment and Ms. Paredes was very professional and friendly. They even had a microscope on hand to show you some of their stock diamonds and point out common features. Diamond Exchange also had a simple online diamond search engine, available on their website, which I could use to see how much cut/clarity/carat/colour effects a diamond’s price.

Trying To Buy The Diamond

After a weekend spent researching and comparing prices I was all ready to purchase a diamond from Diamond Specialist, but unfortunately the $AU dollar had headed south over the weekend and this effected the diamond prices dramatically. The diamond I was planning to buy had jumped in price by several hundred dollars due to currency fluctuations and no amount of negotiation with the owner would cause him to drop his price any more than he had already for me.

I hadn’t realised that all diamond prices quoted can change from day to day depending on the strength of the Australian dollar! I decided to wait a few more days to see if the Australian dollar would strengthen and it eventually did but, only marginally and, not enough to greatly affect the price in my favour.

This waiting gave me a little more time to scan through Diamond Exchange‘s online diamond list and to my surprise I found some great diamonds hidden among the thousands in the search list!

Now Mr. Kim from Diamond Specialist had guaranteed me that he would match any competitor’s price if I told him a diamond’s GIA certificate number. I promptly told him the GIA certificate number and price I had found from Diamond Exchange and he promptly dismissed me, thinking it was a ploy for him to lower his prices. Mr. Kim seemed a bit annoyed with me and then passed me onto one of his junior associates to continue sales enquiries. I explained the situation to the junior associate and I eventually talked him into agreeing to match the price!

I was ecstatic and they immediately took a deposit over the phone only but I was called back 30 minutes later to be told that the junior associate had made a mistake and there was no way Diamond Specialists could match Diamond Exchange‘s price on that diamond. The more I spoke to Diamond Specialists, the more I became disappointed with their impatient/”broken promise” customer service and the big banner on their website stating “We will BEAT and competitor’s price!!” … What a load of rubbish!

Buying The Diamond

Shaking off the bad Diamond Specialist experience, I was wondering why I just didn’t get the diamond from Diamond Exchange in the first place! Silly me for showing a little bit of loyalty to a Diamond Specialist in the first place …

Ms. Paredes indicated that it would take about 2 weeks for my diamond to come into the country. The only catch was that I had to pay in full, up front, for them to have the diamond imported into Australia. Paying that much for something I hadn’t even seen sounded a bit dodgy, so I decided to pay by visa card, just in case I had to scream “fraud” if I never got my diamond!  There was an extra 2% charge for VISA credit card purchases, but the card reward points more than offset the 2%.

Getting The Diamond

The diamond came in 10 days later and the hints of my paranoia were extinguished. Diamond Exchange actually offer an unconditional, 14 day money back guarantee on all “unseen” diamond purchases, just in case you find something wrong with the diamond.

Ms. Paredes cranked up the microscope and I got to see my diamond up close and personal. It’s quite amazing to see a GIA certificate number laser inscribed onto the girdle (outside perimeter) of the diamond. I was also shown the few microscopic inclusions present in my diamond, though it took a little while to find them.

Picking The Ring

Diamond Exchange have some of their stock ring settings displayed on their website and also in their Bridge Street office. None of the display stock took my fancy so Ms. Paredes referred me to their recommended jeweller, Gary from King Street Jewellers located in the Dymocks Building.

“What ring size is she?” Gary asked. I sheepishly pulled out an old ring she used to wear, but it was a bit beaten up and bent. Gary took the ring into the workshop and rounded it out in within a minute then took a size measurement. I was also imparted with a nugget of information which is that the engagement ring size (left hand) is usually half a size smaller than the right hand (assuming the person is right-handed). 

Next was the setting design choice and after picking out a hand-made, classical 6-claw Tiffany ring design, I just had to sign off on white gold or yellow gold. My girlfriend (ooops … now fiancé) doesn’t wear a lot of yellow gold nowadays so I was leaning towards of getting white gold. The price difference between white vs yellow was negligible but white gold, I was told, was better value at around ~AU$750 (ex-GST).

At the last moment I went with the third option which was Platinum at about ~AU$1300 for the ring alone! Platinum, as it goes, is classed as an extremely hard metal that is hypoallergenic and does not tarnish. White gold on the other hand does tarnish and appears to be slightly gray when compared side by side with silver or platinum.

Another credit card payment and 1 week later my new ring with the diamond mounted would be all ready for pickup! Diamond Exchange had actually sent my diamond over to King Street Jewellers during the week so I didn’t have to worry about the logistics of moving the diamond myself.

Insurance?

The week passed and the day to pick up the new diamond ring finally arrived on a Saturday morning. Just as I walked out of the jewellery store I thought “What happens if I lose it? Do I need insurance?” As I verbalised this to Gary he calmly said, “We do offer insurance, and we can offer you a cover note for the weekend.” Wow, an insurance cover note for your ring …

Insurance will cost you anywhere between AU$200-$500 per year in “diamond specific” insurance premiums, but I think I might be able to bundle it into our basic home and contents insurance … I’ll have to check that out on Monday.

Oh, most jewellers also do free re-sizing, just incase you got the ring size wrong. And, as an added bonus you can usually take your ring back every year to be professionally cleaned for free.

Want A 10% Refund?

Did you know you can get 10% of the total cost of your ring back if you travel overseas within 30 days of your purchase? Yup, as long as all the receipts are in the name of the person who carries the ring overseas, they can claim the 10% Australian GST back under the government’s Tourist Refund Scheme (TSR).

Oh, you’re meant to declare the ring on your way back into Australia (and pay the GST again), unless you decided to give it away as a “present” to a “friend” in the country you were visiting.

Final Words

• Remember to buy your diamond from a Diamond Trader and get your ring setting from a Jeweller.
• Make sure your ring is certified by an internationally recognised body, and not by the store’s in-house “jeweller”.
• Don’t feel pressured to buy your diamond straight away. There are thousands of diamonds available on the market and if one that you like gets sold, chances are a similar one will appear on the market the following week.
• Make sure you have a good idea of what your realistic budget is before you go diamond and ring hunting.
• Compare diamond prices and the effect a diamond’s cut, carat, clarity and colour have on price by using online “diamond” searches.
• Try not to buy mainstream “retail” or with those stores that offer those massive “20%-50%” discounts such as Angus & Coote. Their diamonds aren’t the best, but they aren’t the worst either. Unfortunately if you do you’ll end up buying from them you’re likely to be overpaying and your girl will end up with something really average.
• You can bargain on the price only if you shop around and try and get a “price matching war” going between traders. Also you can take advantage of small fluxuations in the currency market and buy your diamond on a day the $AU is strong.
• Go for the GIA “Excellent” cut diamonds. Your diamond will have a better resale value and it will sparkle that tiny bit more.
• Desirable diamonds always appreciate in value every year, so it’s not like waiting longer will actually get you a cheaper diamond (unless you go second hand).
• Don’t sweat it … Your girlfriend will love whatever ring you end up proposing with.

If you hadn’t already worked out from my previous QR Code entry, I proposed to my long-time-suffering girlfriend today so I’ve been busy this week getting a few things finalised for today! I won’t bore you with all the details but, needless to say, I did all the right things … “asked the dad”, “consulted the mum” and “got down on a knee”. Oh, and she said “Yes!”.

So without further delay (tomorrow) …

I think it’s about time to call for a handful of alpha testers next week to start giving me some feedback on all the base product features, and then hopefully if all goes well I’ll add those nice pretty features that users crave for a beta release!

We don’t need that many alpha testers, but I am looking to rank which users this first cut is available for:

1. You’ll need to be a current site sponsor and have an existing epgStream.net license.
2. If you are from Australia, preference will be given to NSW users, preferably Sydney.
3. Only a very limited number of overseas users (New Zealand included) are required!

Just flick me a private email to the address shown below and I’ll get back to you with some basic details as to when and how you’ll get your alpha.

Thanks a bunch!

An Instant DVD vending machine appeared out the front of my local Coles supermarket just after Christmas promising new release DVDs for only $2.99 per night! At first I walked past it thinking it was your standard Coke vending machine, but a second glace revealed a touch screen interface showing DVD titles and a place to swipe your credit card.

My “1st DVD Free” Rental …

To be honest my first impression was of distrust, but the lure of the 1st overnight DVD rental being free was enough for me to pull out my credit card and give it a go. I selected a DVD, entered the ‘DVD123′ free promo code and then swiped my credit card. Everything processed pretty quickly and I was asked for my email address at which I promptly entered one of my bogus spam-catching email addresses. A bit of internal whirring and a few seconds later the vending machine spat out my DVD!

Returning the DVD the next day (before 7pm) was just as easy as sticking the DVD case back in the same slot that spat it out. An hour later when I got home and checked my email and there was a confirmation notice that the DVD was returned on time and a special discount code for a “rent one, get one free” offer valid for the next 2 days. Sweet!

More “1st DVD Free” Rentals …

I decided to take up the “1st DVD free” offer again by using a different credit card and, as advertised, I got aonther free DVD rental! As I watched the machine process my rental I noticed the credit card verification was very quick … Actually too quick to register a transaction with any banking organisation (based on my experience in the financial banking system). Could it be that because I was getting my DVD for free they weren’t actually communicating with the bank? I mean it would be silly if they did try and validate a $0.00 transaction with the bank and get whacked with a processing fee.

The next day I turned up with all my current credit cards and all my old expired or “lost” credit cards and swiped every one of them. Every credit card I swiped I got a free DVD and believe me I was very happy to get something for nothing! The next day when I returned all the free DVDs I received a mountain of return confirmations in my inbox, lucky, because if I didn’t return them I’m not sure how these guys would have billed my expired credit cards?!? 

Even More “Free DVD” Rentals …

For whatever reason, I decided to visit the Instant DVD website where I noticed another offer for free DVDs if I referred 3 friends. As I’m pretty cautious about attracting spam, let alone inflicting spam on friends, I actually referred 3 of my spam email addresses just to see if I’d get emails for Viagra or pirate software. I received no spam (even to this day) and instead received a free DVD rental promo code for referring, and my 3 spam referral addresses received a special free promo code too! This was too good to be true as I grinned from ear to ear …

Over the next few days I used all my credit cards again and received 2 more free DVD rentals for each credit card for a total of 3 free DVD rentals per credit card. After I milked all my credit cards I promptly talked the girlfriend and friends into letting me [ab]use their credit cards … Oh what a joyous few weeks of free DVD rentals, that was until the machine slowly ran out of DVDs that I hadn’t seen.

“Rent One, Get One Free” Too?

Anyway, after using the Instant DVD vending machine for free, I was pretty impressed by the efficiency of the rental process they had and I now usually rent a DVD every 2 or 3 days from it. Every time you rent Instant DVD send you another “rent one, get one free” randomised promo code so really I’m getting 2 new release DVDs for a meagre total of $2.99. Though beware that if you don’t return the DVDs by 7:00pm the next day they’ll charge you another $2.99 per DVD!

Below is a summary of the free overnight rental codes available by using the Instant DVD machines. Just (1) select your DVD, (2) use the promo code and (3) swipe your card … Then repeat the whole process again for each promo code!

• New Customer = “DVD123″
• Referring Friends = “THANKS”
• Being Referred = “FRIEND” 
• You’ll also get a “rent one, get one free” code if you supply a valid email address.

Answer Questions, Get A “Free DVD”!

Another way to get a free overnight DVD rental code is by answering a quick, multiple choice survey. The survey only takes about a minute to complete and there are no tricky or uncomfortable questions like “Who would you like to watch DVDs naked with … your mum or your sister?”.

What? You’re Giving Me 5 “Free DVD” Rentals?

Now the icing on this delicious DVD rental cake is that Instant DVD are in the process of re-branding so they have asked their customers (via email) to choose which new logo they like better. Simple enough, either “I like logo A” or “I like logo B“, and for answering we get 5 more randomised free overnight DVD rental codes!

My New Best Friend … 

You know what? Instant DVD is my new best friend and Video Ezy is just a fond memory (especially since their prices just went up). And to be honest (after using the “rent one, get one free“ codes) $1.50 to rent a new release DVD is fantastic value, that is unless you can rent it for free!

Check out a Instant DVD vending machine location near you!

http://instantdvd.com.au/location-list.php 

Desperately Seeking Susan data:respons

The reason I’m keen for a wmcGuideCompiler7 beta/pre-release is because our current versions of Windows 7 are, obviously, still in beta. I’m sure that between now and the final Windows 7 release we’ll see some more Media Center features added, existing functionality break, and dozens of bugs fixed!

Cast + Crew Issues

One of the bugs to be fixed in the next few releases of Windows 7 include allowing custom “Cast + Crew” program information. The current Windows 7 beta allows us to load our cast information, but it is not displayed. 

On closer inspection though I think the “Cast + Crew” information being displayed is actually pulled from a Microsoft web service, much like it is currently for DVD information. This might explain why (if you look very closely at the picture shown above) the actor’s name plus their character’s name is displayed (in different fonts even)!

Other Annoying Problems 

There are a few little Media Centre issues that annoy the hell out of me at the moment, so if you are an “official” beta tester, make sure these have been ticked off.

• Faded EPG - Scrolling ahead in the guide to a future date the guide grid performs a “fast forward”, displaying the day you are currently up to. When you stop navigating ahead though the guide fades into the background and the more you fast forward the more transparent it gets!
• Metadata Searches - Trying to perform a guide search for a particular title, actor or keyword but nothing is showing up? Well it’s probably because your Windows indexing Service is sleeping because your machine is in “Power Saver” mode. Could be a few hours before you’re ready to search …
• Duplicating Channels – I’ve noticed that sometimes the scanned channel listings in the EPG replicate multiple times. This means you can sometimes end up with a page full of ABC1 if you leave Media Center running over night … 

* Thanks to “Alexander S.” for burning the word “Mike-rosoft” into my brain …

I just happened to catch a peek at Matt Hamilton’s Xbox LIVE avatar (left-side picture) on his Mad Props! website this evening which got me thinking about my own Xbox LIVE avatar and how long it’s been since I’ve visited him (right-side picture). This led to me reviewing my gaming profile, which then lead to turning on my Xbox, and finally saying :

“Just one game of Gears of War 2 in Horde mode!“

Famous last words for many a reformed COG junkie addicted to the co-operative network game play of Gear of War! 3 hours later I think it’s time for bed but I know when I get up extra early in the morning I’ll just have one more game … 

“Damn you Matt Hamilton! Damn you and your avatar …”

Errr anyway … If you’re interested in playing online the send me your gamer tag and we’ll do GOW2 some time.

Aside from my Bruce Schneier books, I really love my well-read “The Art of Computer Programming” (TAOCP) volumes by Donald E. Knuth and was happily side-tracked for a hour as I thumbed through some familiar chapters. Keen to see if there were any new Knuth editions published, I temporarily abandoned the library cleanup and checked on Amazon to find:

The Art of Computer Programming (Vol. 1-3) – US$149.18 

3 updated editions, a boxed set and all hard covered to boot!  How could I not buy these computing classics in the hopes that one day I could pass them onto my computer-literate grand-kids? Needless to say I promptly purchased these tax deductible references and then returned to the purging of my professional library.

Two weeks later (i.e. yesterday) this heavy boxed set turned up on my doorstep, and much to my surprise, in pretty good condition after being shipped from the USA. Ahhhh… nice white pages with no notes in pencil or dead mosquitoes stuck between the pages. Now I can take my tattered old TAOCP paperback copies to work and not worry so much if any “light fingered” work colleages are going to borrow my books for months at a time!

If you haven’t heard of Donald Knuth before then take some time out of your day to find out about his work. This is especially important if you want a better understanding of the “hows and whys” of software development fundamentals, or maybe just need to write lean, mean, industrial strength code.

Oh… errr… I finally sent off the sample Windows 7 EPG MXF data to Mike Hayton this morning for critique. I would have sent it last night but I was too busy flicking through TAOCP, Volume 2. Hopefully Mike will give it the thumbs up and we can start looking at releasing a new wmcGuideCompiler7 version!

The original plan was to release a new version of our Guide Service Proxy application which included a Windows 7 MXF guide compiler. After a little refactoring and a lot of reflection and I decided that we should bundle the compiler as a new application, rather than trying to stuff it into the currently stable Guide Service Proxy.

I spent pretty much late Sunday afternoon transplanting my existing work into a new, clean application base which now has the project name of wmcGuideCompiler7.  This new application base frees me from some of the limitations of the previous Guide Service Proxy base without compromising the great command-line and GUI functionality. You’d be surprised just how many painful lessons we’d learned working with XMLTV and Windows Media Center meta-data, all of which I don’t plan on forgetting with this new project! 

So what next? Well I’ll set aside an hour or two after work this evening and send Mike Hayton a sample MXF file for him to critique. Assuming I get the two thumbs up from Mike, I’ll try and arrange a beta or release candidate when I can scrape together more free time (or if one of my other contract projects are canned).

First of all, apologies to everyone who tried to access our support forum or download our software but couldn’t. Our web hosting company was having a few issues this afternoon but it looks like we’re back online and open for business again!

Today’s outage was the first for a long time, but boy was it a whopper! Almost 8 hours offline and our hosting provider was throwing every excuse possible at me like “emergency server maintenance”, “routing issues” or “temporary server upgrades”. Every operator I spoke to seemed to be giving me a different answer which leads me to believe that nobody in frontline support really knows what is going on so a lot of the “live chat” operators just spew out a few tried and tested responses ending in “… try again in an hour!” and hope that by the time you check back the problem has been resolved.

The limited knowledge of my “live chat” support buddies became even more obvious when I asked about the “99.9% Uptime Guarantee” that they brag about … As I figure it, %0.1 downtime per year roughly equates to 8 hours and 45 minutes of acceptable system maintenance and upgrades, but this outage had chewed up a good 8 hours worth so I had to be inline to make a guarantee claim if it happened again, right? Wrong!

Every support operator I spoke with kept telling me that I needed to check back in an hour, even though I just kept asking “Can you please send me a copy of the terms and conditions for your 99.9% Uptime Guarantee?“. Seriously, after asking this exact same question 6 times a support operator eventually confessed “Sorry, I can’t find the terms and conditions of it … I can submit a ticket to our senior technician …“.  WTF?

Anyway, it will be interesting to read the actual terms and conditions of my web hosting uptime guarantee. That is once a “senior” technician picks up my new support  ticket …

From

Dear Banger,

We noticed that you stopped using IceTV’s service with your media center a while ago. We’d like to invite you back by making you an offer we hope you can’t resist. $50 off.

Subscribe for an entire year for only $49 (normally $99). That’s less than $1, or less than 1/3 of a cup of coffee per week!

Offer ends midnight Feb 28, 2009 and is only valid for the account named ‘Banger’. Click the button below or click here to subscribe.

Yup, IceTV are on a recruitment drive again! Looks like if you are a old “Free Trial” customer you’ll be getting one of the above email messages from IceTV.

You have to give them points for persistance in always pushing the “coffee vs IceTV” value for money comparison. It’s gone from:

– “about a cup of coffee per week“, to …
– “just under a cup of coffee per week“, to …
– “about a 1/2 a cup of coffee per week“, and now …
– “less than 1/3 a cup of coffee per week“.

Anyway, with that extra money you guys save on your IceTV subscription, maybe you could channel some of it into the Victorian Bushfire Appeal 2009 or to Plan Australia? I’ve already sent off my $50 donation … and it’s tax deductable too!

“Oz” has been back and forth between Australia and the USA working on two pretty big e-commerce projects, but when she’s back in town she always finds the time to bake amazing chocolate brownies …

“Mike” is our graphic designer and part-time helper, but lately he’s been working hard competing with Indian and Chinese outsourcing. Not to mention too much time out in the sun in his youth sees him getting skin cancers cut out every month …

“Banger” (me) … Well at the moment I’m the only one here keeping things ticking over but it’s not easy. I’ve got some heavy-duty contract work going on which is keeping me from getting home early on a regular basis. As well as work I’m trying to maintain my regular sports (like boxing, hapkido, ju-jutsu and rock climbing) as well as study.

Anyway, next week Mike and I will make an effort to spend more time on epgStream.net and inparticular our Windows 7 compiler.

So until then, this is Banger signing out from an air-conditioned office in the Sydney CBD (pretending I’m working) …

Network Ten will launch ONE on 26 March 2009. This exciting new sports channel  will be viewable on Ch1 and Ch11 on high definition receivers.

Australia’s Network Ten have finally announced their ONE HD launch date with this message in their broadcast EIT data on channels 1 and 11. ONE HD will attempt to compete with Fox Sports and other free-to-air sporting shows by providing high quality, high definition coverage of Australian local sports.

This will be great new for sports fans as more and more sporting events wil be broadcast, but sci-fi and documentary lovers won’t miss out. High definition channel 12 will still be available for the all existing, non-sport based content so it should be business as usual! 

Hopefully with this big sports programming hole to fill we’ll all start to see some of the less popular sports being broadcast. I mean there’s nothing nicer than settling down on a sunday morning to watch cheese rolling …

Vista Media Center‘s EPG really looks like a dog’s breakfast breakfast compared to the new Windows 7 Media Center EPG. It’s great to see all more information loaded onto your screen and I don’t just mean all the extra attributes but the new injection of colours and the clean layouts of the information … It almost makes me want to watch more TV!

You’ll see a lot of the older features like the high-definition icons and episode names, but you’ll also see a lot more information crammed into the programme descriptions! New things like onscreen star ratings, premiere indicators or even the year of the movie help tip the balance when deciding what to record. The only thing I find really disappointing is that you can search for your favourite actor’s shows, but you can’t view the actors in the programme/movie synopsis.

Our current internal Windows 7 build of our Guide Service Proxy application seems to be running fine with no nasty Media Center crashes or loss of guide data. I promised Mike Hayton I’d have a quick word with him before releasing our first public beta, but there isn’t any reason why we wouldn’t release a nicely bundled XMLTV: Guide Pack update with this Windows 7 EPG compatibility over the weekend!

All this is great news for us here in Australia, and well actually for any other country without a native Microsoft guide service (New Zealand, South Africa, etc). Let’s just hope that all this initial work everyone’s been doing for the current Windows 7 Beta lasts through to the final version of Windows 7! Looking through the MXF EPG schema guts the EPG looks pretty solid, I’m just a little worried though that the MXF schema still says 6.x and not 7.x.

Beta testers … Start your engines!

It’s Alive! It’s Alive! 

I managed to dodge all the distractions of a lazy Australian Sunday and build a fairy clean, first cut version of a Windows 7 XMLTV to MXF compiler! Using XMLTV data from ozTiVo.net I was able to load guide data for 15 glorious channels directly into my Windows Media Center guide!

Lots of channel data, not enough channels!

My ASUS Windows 7 test machine is located in study which is good when I have to knuckle down and get some work done in peace. The only problem is that during the daytime, my very sad tuner antenna only picks up SBS channels which means I’m limited in the number of physical channels I can work with. If I happen to tune channels at night I get a much bigger selection … Go figure?!!

From the screenshot sequence above you can see what happens as I add the new XMLTV listing to each scanned channel (SBS, SBS HD, SBS2, etc). You’ll notice the affilate (or network) name after each custom guide listing appears as “epgStream.net”. In the final release of the compiler you should see this replaced with your actual TV network name such as “Nine Network” or “7″ in Australia or I might just keep it as simple as “XMLTV”.

For some extra contrast between channels I’ve overlaid “SBS 3″ and “SBS 4″ channels with “Ten Digital” and “Ten HD” XMLTV data respectively. It’s good to see the little “HD” symbol appear …

Metadata and beyond! 

The new Microsoft EPG schema become a little easier to use with more descriptive schema elements and less complex relationships and references. Overall, this makes the migration from XMLTV to the new MXF structure a much simpler and “flatter” affair.

The biggest improvement I’ve seen is in the handling of the rating, category and keyword referencing. Gone are the days of bit-shifting offset values to set and retrieve reference values which reduces the complexity of the compiler considerably.

How does it work?

Our Guide Service Proxy application has been given a new command-line switch to invoke the compilation and load:

wmcGuideServiceProxy /compile:MXF!6.0.6000.0 /compileSource:XMLTV.xml /load

This means that our application’s next GUI revision will need to be modified to accomodate some extra Windows 7 features, but at least it will be only one application to service all Media Center versions.

Where to next?

Next on the list of things to do is to integrate customised images into the on-screen EPG display. From a few articles I’ve briefly skimmed over it doesn’t look too hard to get this implemented … Though Niall has a few weeks head start over me so I better get cracking!

Any requests?

Sorry guys, I would have posted a little earlier today but had to help a friend of a friend purchase a Toshiba Portege R500 yesterday and have been setting it up for her. Check out these cool videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZboNKnG6oY

Reviewing Mike’s recently released documentation, the internal objects look very similar so hopefully it won’t take long to knock up a working compiler!

Wish me luck!

Loading in your own listings is not a supported scenario. If you try to load in your own listings and things aren’t working, please don’t expect Microsoft support on this. - Mike Hayton

It will be interesting to see what I’ve previously missed when trying to link the MXF channel and service data together. I’ll be looking into this sample more and eventually building a new compiler into our Guide Service Proxy application, but in the meantime you can check out his original post here.

This choice piece of new means that the dreaded hit-n-miss work of disassembling and testing the Windows 7 EPG is made a whole lot easier. Once Mike releases his notes we’ll look at updating our XMLTV: Guide Pack to handle good ‘ole Windows 7.

Mike, whatever Microsoft is paying you … It ain’t enough!

Now that I’m back into “work mode” after my holiday I started investigating the possibility of a custom Windows 7 EPG. After a quick review of Niall’s thread at XP Media Center I decided to roll the sleeves up and get to work! 3 hours later I wished I was back on holidays …

Remember LoadMXF.exe ?

I initially heard good things about LoadMXF which indicated I could load finely crafted EPG XML metadata into Fiji’s Media Center database. Then I started hearing bad things about the lack of Microsoft documentation so decided to have a look for myself at the new internal EPG infrastructure. I must admit I felt better when I glanced at Fiji’s internals as everything seemed normalised and nicely engineered, but it also seemed very complex.

Mike Mayton (Microsoft) hinted at providing some unofficial documentation he was preparing so I decided to wait till it was released before digging any deeper and re-inventing the wheel, so to speak. Unfortunately Mike hasn’t been able to generate any documentation yet, not really his fault as everyone is busy and he was going out of his way to help us Australian users. 

What should my MXF file look like?

The first thing I had to do was work out the basic structure of the MXF format, <MXF> … </MXF> right? Well after a bit of careful reflection (pun intended) and scavaging some local MXF files I determined you need at least the following, non-assembly elements to begin constructing your MXF document:

1. <Providers> – A registered source of EPG data. I presume you can load multiple provider data and hence merge multiple channel data!
2. <Programs> – The list of individual TV programme metadata including titles, descriptions and other bits and pieces you’d expect.
3. <ScheduledEntries> – When and “where” your TV programmes will be scheduled.
4. <Lineups>, <Channels> and <Services> – All the glue you need to bind your EPG to your computer’s region and tuner capabilities.

Looks familiar? Well yes it’s very similar in nature to the previous object classes used by Vista and XP Media Center, but there are dozens of new entities that help make up a really rich Media Center experience. Channel and programme logos, series information, promotions, channel merging, automatic title editing and much much more now seem possible! 

Running LoadMXF.exe for the first time …

“WOW!” I though, “This isn’t too bad after all. I’ve constructed my first MXF file so what was everyone making a fuss about?” – WRONG! I ran LoadMXF with my hand-crafted MXF file and … no errors on screen or in the log! My joy was short lived as searched through all the TV Guide options and I realised my data didn’t seem to be available in Media Center.

My data really is in there!

Perplexed, I double checked all my MXF element references and identifiers and re-ran the LoadMXF process again, but this time stoping and restarting the Media Center Windows Services. No luck.

I though I could sneak a peak at the Media Center SQLite database … Various free SQLite drivers all quickly failed miserably so I decided to have a look at the in-built “MediaCenter.Store.Sqlite” namespace. The only glimmer of hope was the ObjectStoreOpener class but alas it resulted in disappointment once again. When I have a little more time I’ll investigate the whole direct SQLite access arena again … Can anyone recommend one?

Onwards and upwards! Thankfully I found a MXF exporter class that managed to dump all the database data objects. On inspection of the output MXF dump I could see my previous MXF data had been loaded but why wasn’t it appearing in Media Center?

Looking a little harder …

I get the impression it’s quite possible to merge the EIT data with any custom loaded MXF data, but the trick is knowing how all Media Center’s internal data objects all relate to each other (should I be looking into the MergedChannel stored object?). I need to dig a bit deeper into the new Media Center beast to find out what I’m missing, or at least go on a Google rampage and find out what other developers have been doing.

Spoofing those Microsoft Guide servers

After a frustrating 3 hours I came to the conclusion that it might be worth hacking at the Media Center package download protocol to give me a better picture of what is going on between the Media Center client and Microsoft server.

An initial look at the data seems to be ok with the raw MXF data still being compressed before being encrypted. The only thing that seems to have changed with this raw data is that Microsoft are now using AES for encryption and SHA for hashing. For the life of me I can’t see why Microsoft even bother encrypting the data anymore, even more so that it’s typically streaming over a HTTPS connection.

What happens next?

Saturday is going to be a busy day so I might send a few emails and investigate this route more on Sunday. I’m not sure how much time I can spend on this now … Our other developer (Oz) is back overseas and I’ve got another full-time project I’m working on so any help, hints and findings would be greatly appreciated from everyone!

Simply use the “santascoming” discount code when purchasing a 12 month IceTV subscription to receive the discount. Full instructions on how to use the discount code can be found on our news page.

This offer is available for the first 500 customers or until midnight, 31 December 2008.

We value our existing subscribers—if you have the yearly ‘auto-renew’ option selected you will receive the discounted $49 price automatically, if your account renews before 31 December 2008. Existing customers can also top-up their accounts for the discounted price. So don’t worry, you won’t miss out on the savings!

We recommend all users start using our XMLTV: Guide Pack as soon as possible to avoid delays in guide updates. 

What happened?

The same ‘ole sad story: 10,000 Free*EPG subscribers, but less than 1% of ever donated for time and materials over a 2 year period … Kinda depressing when you think about it, but to the 0.85% that did make donations, “THANK YOU!”. Your contributions kept us fuelled up with pizza and kept us (mostly) out of the red when our bills arrived!

Well, we’ve been running this little dog and pony show since 2006. In that time we’ve made a lot of friends, been abused by a few tossers, and been part of a great community base, but during the past two years we’ve always been struggling to find funding and time to work on epgStream.net. After we hit the magical 10,000 user mark a few weeks back we realised that the amount of work and user support wasn’t going to get any easier, so we had to make a decision!

Unfortunately we can’t run this as a free service forever so we decided that it’s almost time for the Free*EPG Team to move on to our next project …

We all knew this day would eventually come and, if you hadn’t noticed, we’ve slowly been winding down our operations. Rather than leave all our subscribers high-and-dry, our exit strategy was to modify and release our Free*EPG server software as a client-based tool kit. The XMLTV: Guide Pack now contains tools and services that we’ve been working on over the past 6 months to allow users to access XMLTV and Windows Media Center EPG data, independantly of our epgStream.net servers. 

Can I still download guide data for my Media Center?

YES! Our XMLTV: Guide Pack will now replace our Free*EPG service and allow you to download XMLTV data or load guide data directly into Windows Media Center. This client-based application distributes the overhead of guide processing to individual users and provides a simple to use wizard interface to configure all aspects of your guide.

Is the “XMLTV: Guide Pack” easy to use?

YES! We’ve done our best to provide a simple to use Guide Wizard interface which allows you to simply pick your region and go from there! If you are still having problems then you can view our video tutorials available from our website or visit our support forum, http://forum.epgstream.net.

More technical users have the option of drilling down into the guts of the XMLTV: Guide Pack to access advanced configuration settings and features.

How long with the “XMLTV: Guide Pack” be supported?

Don’t worry, it’s only our Free*EPG service that’s being discontinued, not our whole epgStream.net website. As long as we have active feedback and support from people who use our software then we’ll be around to make enhancements (now that we’re gonna have heaps of spare time)!

The XMLTV: Guide Pack is much, much, much easier to support than our existing Free*EPG service. Basically the XMLTV: Guide Pack takes care of itself and you … But if you have any problems with the software or the guide data for your region, then please visit our XMLTV: Guide Pack support forum here:

If you don’t tell us about the problem then we can’t help you!

It seems that since last weekend (27/9/2008) a few anti-virus providers mistakenly identified our XMLTV: Guide Pack software as a trojan! This false-positive is due to an existing trojan in the “wild” using the same compression and packaging tools us. It now appears that our software’s “digital fingerprint” or “signature” now matches a generic signature used for heuristic scanning in some anti-virus software! 

Who would say such a thing?

The list of anti-virus providers currently registering a false-positive and their trojan “names” are as follows:

• Avast, GData – “Win32:Trojan-gen {Other}”
• AVG – “Generic11.AHCS”
• F-Secure – “Suspicious:W32/Malware!Gemini”
• Panda – “Suspicious file”
• VBA32 – “Trojan.Win32.Delf.djs”

Major anti-virus labs such as Microsoft, TrendMicro, McAfee and Norton have been diligent enough determine that our software is not a threat. If you wish to manually check our binaries yourself, you can use the following online virus scanning sites to check our binaries:

• http://virustotal.com
• http://virusscan.jotti.org 

How the “false-positive” affects you …

The result of this false-positive is that users will suffer from a range of issues due to their anti-virus software. These issues include:

• Visual Warnings – http://forum.epgstream.net/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=638
• XMLTV: Guide Pack running – http://forum.epgstream.net/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=646
• XMLTV: Guide Pack installation – http://forum.epgstream.net/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=650

What happens next?

We have contacted AVG and avast! directly to get them to rectify the issue and you can follow our information here:

• http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=39013.0
• http://freeforum.avg.com/read.php?4,104930

From here on in, we need for the anti-virus labs to generate a more specific virus signature which removes our software from the existing trojan’s “gene pool” signature. Until then, if you are effected, the simplest way to keep your XMLTV: Guide Pack running is to disable scanning of your “C:\Program Files\epgStream.net” folder which contains our software.

Existing XMLTV service users have several optionals available to them:

1. Users can use a VBA script called GuideDog to download their data directly from ozTiVo.net, which can be found at DVBForum.
2. Alternatively, Windows users can use our XMLTV: Download command-line application (with GUI configuration screens) which downloads and manipulates your ozTiVo.net XMLTV data. Registration is not required to be able to download your XMLTV data, but a “nag” delay is present … But once you’ve setup your installation, who actually sit’s and watches data download anyway?
3. Lastly, users can pay an excessive $99/year to download their XMLTV data from IceTV.

Uses wishing to use our XMLTV: Download client application are advised to install only the XMLTV Download and Common Tools features of the XMLTV: Guide Pack installation.

Many thanks to XMLTV users who have made donations in the past. If you have made a donation in the last 6 months and would like your donation returned (minus PayPal fees unfortunately) then please feel free to email to customer.service@epgstream.net with your details.

You’ll see a leaner, hand-coded epgStream.net website appear over the next few weeks so please forgive us as we rush to update documentation and forum FAQ’s to reflect this change.

Who’d figure that the Olympics would increase the demand for Media Center installations and guide data … To the point where we received 75 new registrations in one single day! Our service is now running at over 10,000 active Windows Media Center and XMLTV machines per month, and the number of new users is growing faster and faster every day! The unfortunate downside is that our bandwidth, time and cost requirements have also blown out over this Olympic period!

New users should consider using our client-based XMLTV: Guide Pack to access XMLTV and Windows Media Center EPG data this month.

Users with existing Free*EPG accounts will not be affected.

XMLTV: Download
This application runs on it’s own download cycle, and will download your XMLTV data from your guide provider and save it to the [default] “xmltv.xml” file. The download can occur at any time during the day or night.

Guide Service Proxy
This application is passive but always running. It’s sole job is to listen to Windows Media Center guide requests and then supply the guide information by processing the [default] “xmltv.xml” file.

Windows Media Center
Media Center runs on it’s own daily guide update download cycle, which is independant of XMLTV: Download‘s download cycle. To force Media Center to perform a guide update out of it’s regular update cycle you need to run the “Get Latest Listings” option from within the Windows Media Center guide settings menus.

So even though you might run XMLTV: Download to update your XMLTV data, Windows Media Center might not be ready to schedule a guide update until a later time.

If you’ve installed the XMLTV: Guide Pack, but not registered, you can perform a manual guide update by running the “XMLTV Download” application from your Windows Start Menu. If you want to see these guide update changes appear straight away, then you’ll need to run “Get Latest Guide Listings” from within Windows Media Center, otherwise you can wait until Windows Media Center does it’s scheduled daily update, at which time you’ll see your new guide data appear.

Version 1.00 of our XMLTV: Guide Pack has just been released to the public after many weeks of testing by some of our users!

XMLTV Guide Pack is a collection of custom built Microsoft Windows tools and utilities that allows you to download and manipulate XMLTV data! The XMLTV Guide Pack also allows you to seamlessly load XMLTV data into your Windows Media Center!

The pack currently contains the following tools and utilities :

• XMLTV Download :: Download XMLTV data from your favourite guide service!
• Guide Service Proxy :: Load XMLTV data into Windows Media Center!
• XMLTV Guide Wizard :: Easily configure your XMLTV and Media Center guide system in a few easy steps!
• XMLTV Merge :: Merges several XMLTV files into a single one!
• XMLTV: Alter :: Slice and dice your XMLTV data! Change time zones, channel names, create sub-titles and much, much more!

System Requirements

• Framework: Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (x86)
• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Service Pack 3; Windows 98; Windows 98 Second Edition; Windows ME; Windows Server 2003; Windows Vista Business; Windows Vista Enterprise; Windows Vista Home Basic; Windows Vista Home Premium; Windows Vista Ultimate; Windows XP Service Pack 2
• Windows x64 Installations - not officially supported, but A manual step is required after installation. More information can be found here.
• Windows Vista Media Center TV Pack 2008 – This Microsoft add-on is not supported by the current version of Guide Service Proxy.
• Windows 7 – This version of Windows is not supported by the current version of Guide Service Proxy.

 Setup and Configuration

Click Here to learn how to setup & configure the XMLTV: Guide Pack.

Download Information

Click Here to Download Your copy of the XMLTV: Guide Pack.

Our original service launched in 2006 provided a simple interface for Windows Media Center users in Australia to download their EPG. Only Sydney was supported in the early days, until we decided to incorporate data from the ozTiVo community which saw us distribute data nation wide. Today, our servers receive thousands of download requests every day for that precious EPG.

In most organisations this would be fantastic news with hundreds of new user subscriptions rolling in every month, but not for us … [Un]fortunately epgStream.net is a not-for-profit organisation and we are funded through the kindness of our subscribers, so it can be financially lean some months! The increase in user subscriptions to our service has placed more demand on our server and bandwidth resources, but there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in donations. We don’t require a lot of financial support, but Needless to say donations had run dry a few times leaving us “out of pocket” when our regular hosting bills arrived.

Our Pay TV subscribers count as a small part of our overall subscription, but consume over 50% of our costs and processing resources. This month our subscription base exceeded 10,000+ active users, but unfortunately donations and funding for this service have remained at a constant low for the past 12 months. This funding short fall means we are constantly out of pocket each month as we pay for hosting and registration costs.

Existing Pay TV users are advised to use our wmcGuideServiceProxy and xmltvDownload client services to source their EPG data. Please consult our brief FAQ on how to use these tools together by clicking here.

Many thanks to Pay TV users who have made donations in the past. If you have made a donation in the last 6 months and would like your donation returned (minus PayPal fees) then please feel free to send a private message with your information to banger@epgStream or email to customer.service@epgstream.net.

Free-to-air services will remain unchanged.

The Nine Network today won their appeal against last year’s decision in favour of IceTV.

Three Federal Court judges ruled that IceTV did breach the Nine Network’s copyright in its weekly program guide.

The exact implication for IceTV will be decided when the matter is remitted to the primary Judge, Annabelle Bennett. However IceTV have been ordered to pay Nine’s costs which could run into millions. Nine are also seeking damages, although these will be hard to prove.

Judges Black, Lindgren and Sackville ruled that Judge Bennett had erred on several crucial points. The full judgment can be read here.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCAFC/2008/71.html

Vogel Ross. (2008, May 8). Titanic Sinks Iceberg. Retrieved May 8, 2008, from http://vogelross.com.au/vrblog/?p=18

To get the ball rolling we’ve created a free Windows 2000/XP/Vista grabber named xmltvDownload which will allow you to download XMLTV data from ozTiVo.net or epgStream.net.

Read more about accessing our new XMLTV Guide Service 2.0 here.

 “The xmlguide.pl service will be discontinued on March 31, 2008. Please ask the author of your XML data grabber to update it to use the new API. Details can be found at http://minnie.tuhs.org/xmltv/api.html (MA)”

The above message has been haunting ozTiVo.net users and downstream guide providers for weeks now … and finally today it was replaced with: 

“The requested URL /tivo-bin/xmlguide.pl was not found on this server.”

A sad, sad day for many ozTiVo.net users when they go to download their daily dose of XMLTV data only to find their favourite guide service has been upgraded! If users are lucky enough then their local Media Center software has also been upgraded to handle the new guide request API … Otherwise it’ll be a busy day on the forums today!

Inconvenience aside, this new guide request API does have quite a few benefits. Users will gain more flexibility when it comes to selecting the amount of data to download, and ozTiVo.net’s servers can optimise the guide requests to reduce bandwidth and server processing loads. Check out this link if you are thinking of developing your own grabber …

Microsoft Windows users can download our free xmltvDownload application from this thread which will allow them download their XMLTV data directly from ozTiVo.net.

Originally Posted by forums@icetv.com.au

As part of our ongoing commitment to bringing new & exciting features to IceTV users in order to get the most out of your TV viewing experience, we are pleased to announce… IceTV Recommendations.

Now not only can you see what are the most popular shows on TV, you can also get a list of shows recommended to you based on your’s and other’s TV viewing habits. A list of IceTV Recommendations can now be found under the “Recommended” tab of the I Watch This website (http://iwatchthis.com.au/recommended) and will also soon be made available in the new-look IceTV Widget, once you have visited that page the recommendations will also show up under your “My Upcoming Shows” page (http://iwatchthis.com.au/myupcomingshows) allowing easy scheduling.

Please note if you do not use IceTV Remote or have never setup favorites under IceTV Remote or I Watch This you will not get any recommendations.

As this is a new system we are looking for any feedback that you have regarding how well the recommendations work for you. Please leave any feedback at http://www.icetv.com.au/iceforum/index.php?topic=991.0.

To unsubscribe from these announcements, login to the forum and uncheck “Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email.” in your profile.

You can view the full announcement by following this link:

http://www.icetv.com.au/iceforum/index.php?topic=992.0

Regards,
The IceTV Forum Team.

This information can be the stepping stone to a tradable commodity. Make sure some sort of compensation (no matter how small) is coming your way. This type of information, in it’s current state, is similar to a subset of Roy Morgan Research data sold.

Check out a previous dialogue I had with IceTV on privacy and data aggregation here.

While the outcome will be quite interesting in terms of copyright law as it applies to television schedules, it will have a particularly significant impact on IceTV as it is likely to dictate whether Nine will have to pay IceTV’s costs of defending the matter.

source: Vogel Ross Blog

If you notice channel data missing, incorrect timezones or incorrect data then please let us know!

On 11 February ABC TV will reset the numbering for our channels on the free-to-air digital platform, so as to make them more logical for viewers.

All epgStream.net users will notice the following changes in their existing channel names:

•  “ABC TV” now becomes “ABC1″
• “ABC2″ remains unchanged.
• “ABC HDTV” now becomes “ABC1 HD”

Windows Media Center Users

Users will have to perform a manual “Add Listing to Channel” to associate the new ABC1 and ABC2 listings to their respective digital channels. Additionally, all existing scheduled recordings for ABC channels may have to be re-programmed.

XMLTV Users

Users will may notice that the channel identifiers for ABC1 and ABC2 have been swapped around. This may result in ABC1 listings being displayed in ABC2 and vice-versa, so channel re-mapping may be required.

Source References

• http://www.abc.net.au/reception/
• http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newtv/on_your_tv.htm

This unfortunately means more time and effort for us to construct a new ozTiVo.net gateway as we cut over… We’ll keep you posted!

Read more about accessing this service on our forum: http://forum.epgstream.net/viewforum.php?f=18

Check out our first change with the inclusion of our support forum: http://forum.epgstream.net!

http://forums.dvbowners.com/index.php?showtopic=8596

Hey Guys,

As advised, tomorrows XMLTV guides (1st November) will be the last I will be generating. I will delete all of the caches tonight to ensure that everything is generated fresh tomorrow, so hopefully there will be at least 4 or 5 days of good data to keep you going until other sources become available.

I subscribed to IceTV today, and on first impressions, the data looks pretty good. IceTV contacted me last week and offered me a 12 month subscription with a 25% discount, and they have also extended that offer to anyone else who was using my guides and wants to switch over, just send me an email to dvbowners@jrobbo.com for details on how to apply. In the interests of full disclosure, IceTV have also offered to give me an extra months free subscription for anyone who takes up this offer, just want to make sure you guys know what I get out of this. If this is of some use to you, that’s great. Please note that this offer is only open until the end of November

Anyway, I wish you guys the best of success in securing a new, reliable source of EPG data, whichever source you use. FWIW, the whole reason I began generating the EPG guides several years ago was to help out the guys on this forum, and only on this forum, i’ve never advertised it or talked about it anywhere else but here. Unfortunately, word spread and it got the point where several thousand people were downloading new guides every day, and that’s the barrage of not-so-nice emails came from when things went wrong.

All the best

Cheers

John

Well bugger me! Looks like a really great XMLTV data source has dried up! The guys here at epgStream.net can really appreciate the heart-ache JRobbo went through putting together his guide and it’s a shame it’s come to an end! Mind you nobody told us (as it happened in October/November), but it should have clicked when we started getting quite a few enquiries about XMLTV.

Now that there appears to be a gap in the XMLTV providers, and we are generating our Free*EPG feed, we might look at providing XMLTV data … for real! The only thing stopping us before was the fact that you could just as easily get your data from ozTiVo!

Anyway, shows what a very delicate ecosystem the EPG world is. Anyone got a favourite XMLTV guide source they use or have heard of?

We’re all still waiting for Channel 9 to come to the HD party though … But in the meantime enjoy your Free*EPG HD listings! Thanks ozTiVo.net!

We were happy when we diagnosed the most recent missing multi-channel data issue and were busy reloading the data when *ZAP*, power off, lights off and non-UPS servers off. Now the only server without UPS just happens to be our epgStream.net Guide Database server, which after reboot proceeded to direct us to database restore from last month.

The long-and-the-short of it is we’re rolling forward the last 3 weeks worth of data and re-generating the guides for this week (then performing a backup). If you notice any guide channel data issues after about midday today let us know and it might have been something we missed in the restore.

You’ll find a picture of us somewhere in here …

• Our bandwidth consumption has been steadily increasing by 20-25% per month
• Users downloaded our guides a whopping 200,000 times last month (November 2007)!
• 75% of machines that connected to our service in November 2007 were VistaMC, 23% were MCE2005 (Rollup 2) and 2% were MCE2005/2004. Good ‘ole XP Media Center still hanging in there …
• The most popular Free*EPG user ISPs for November 2007 were … NSW: TPG Internet, VIC: TPG Internet and QLD: TPG Internet! Bigpond, WestNet and iiNet placed pretty poorly around the middle of the overall spread.

If we keep growing at this rate we’re gonna have to make Free*EPG invite-only!

The Simpsons – Season 19, Episode 8

Marge dreams that Keith Olbermann (guest-voicing as himself) chides her for fast-forwarding through television commercials. Marge tries her to make restitution by watching hours of advertisements, and she and the Simpson family take particular interest in an ad for Wes Doobner’s World-Famous Family-Style Rib Huts.

Once we start merging other guide sources, or ozTiVo add the new channel Nine and Ten HD listings, you’ll start to see all the HD programming appear in Free*EPG.

“SBS Digital” will become “SBS 2“.
“SBS Digital 1” will become “SBS“.
“SBS Digital 2” will become “SBS News“.
“SBS HD” will remain unchanged.

Our guide channel data will be updated accordingly and be available for download from 11:30am Monday, 4th June 2007.

What does this mean for you? Unfortunately you’ll have to re-scan your channels again using the Guide Setup option within Media Center. You also may have to re-program recording schedules for SBS programme series you are currently recording (e.g. South Park, MythBusters, etc).

So is there any good news at all? Those users who are finding their Media Center SBS channels disappearing may be pleasantly surprised …

http://www20.sbs.com.au/transmissions/

Excuse the poor quality of the graphs as they are pretty adhoc, but along the x-Axis you can see the TV Show being broadcast and along the y-Axis you can see the % of Airtime. The % of Airtime simply indicates out of the 6,000 or so airtime hours (about 39 weeks) sampled per channel in Sydney, what percentage of it was filled by that TV Show. Only those TV Shows that consumed at least 0.75% of airtime have been shown in these graphs.

As a rough guide, about 1% is equal to 65 hours, so we can derive some interesting observations …

• SBS shows a lot of news!
• ABC plays a lot of Play School … Almost an average of an hour per day between ABC and ABC2!
• Network TEN seems to show twice as much regional news as Seven or Nine!
• Oprah gets slightly more airtime than Dr. Phil!
• Network Ten gives us an average of about 30 minutes a day of The Simpsons!
• Channel Nine gives us an average of about an hour a day of Kerri-Anne!
• Channel Seven play a lot of old stuff … Sons & Daughters, Rafferty’s Rules, M*A*S*H, Blue Heelers, etc
• Ready Steady Cook consumes more airtime than A Current Affair or Today Tonight!

Remember this is a very general analysis … Just wait until you see the Weekday vs Weekend , Australian vs Overseas , Peak vs Off-peak, New vs Old, etc content. It’s really nerdy stuff but interesting to see what is being force fed (and when) down the viewers willing throat!

* The existing FOXTEL Digital setup service names will change to FOXTEL Cable
* New FOXTEL Digital setup service names will be created with correct timezones.

What this means is that all existing FOXTEL Digital feeds will be converted to use a GMT +10:00 timezone to bring programme times back into line. Existing FOXTEL Cable (Analogue) users who have been using our incorrect FOXTEL Digital service will notice their guide times will be out and they will have to re-run their guide setup and re-select our new FOXTEL Cable option.

Users in QLD, NSW, ACT and VIC will not be effected.

wmcGuideServiceProxy quite simply takes your XMLTV data, compiles it and loads it directly into your Windows Media Center installation. It integrates directly with Windows Media Center and works with Vista.

wmcGuideServiceProxy is very simple to use and does it’s best to self-configure with the only manual setting required being the location of your source XMLTV file (possibly downloaded by xmltvDownload). It consists of a only a single executable and a single configuration file.

wmcGuideServiceProxy is run from the command-line and should be running as a background task 24/7. At present it is a desktop application, but will be converted to a Windows Service at a later stage.

If anyone is interested in testing wmcGuideServiceProxy for us then we are happy to continue development of this product. You can download the latest version of wmcGuideServiceProxy from this link.

Simple Installation

First xmltvDownload …

1. Install xmltvDownload to “C:\Program Files\epgStream.net\xmltvDownload”.
2. Configure xmltvDownload to save it’s ChannelSettings.xml file to “C:\Program Files\epgStream.net\xmltvDownload”.
3. Configure xmltvDownload to write it’s xmltv.xml file to “C:\Program Files\epgStream.net\xmltvDownload”.
4. Configure xmltvDownload to download your guide data from your favourite source, either ozTiVo.net or epgStream.net.
5. Create a Scheduled Task to run xmltvDownload twice a day (morning and evening).
6. Run xmltvDownload at least once to get some ‘test’ data.

… then wmcGuideServiceProxy …

1. Install wmcGuideServiceProxy to “C:\Program Files\epgStream.net\wmcGuideServiceProxy”.
2. Edit the wmcGuideServiceProxy.exe.config file to read it’s xmltv.xml file from “C:\Program Files\epgStream.net\xmltvDownload”.
3. Run wmcGuideServiceProxy by double-click or command-line and select ‘Yes’ to the auto-configure option.

… now Windows Media Center …

1. Open Windows Media Center.
2. Navigate to Tasks->Settings->TV->Guide
3. Select ‘Set Up Guide Listings‘ option and proceed to setup your guide as-per-usual. Make sure you enter a postcode and not ’0000′.
4. Select ‘Get Latest Guide Listings‘ option.

… and finally Enjoy!

To get your latest guide update, simply perform a ‘Get Latest Guide Listings’ from Media Center, or just wait for Media Center itself to download the guide during it’s daily download.

Advanced Installation

You can download your XMLTV data on-the-fly from Media Center’s ‘Get Latest Guide Listings’ option … We’ll post about it later if we get some interest!

Multiple Media Center Machines At Home?

This is really cool! Configure one of your machines, named ‘A’, to download your guide data and then have all your other machines, download their guide directly from ‘A’! Saves on bandwidth… We’ll post about it later if we get some interest!

Make sure you put in a sensible comment and voice your opinion! Our current 1,627 signatures only represents a minority of Australian EPG market … We should be looking at at least 10,000 signatures by now!

Sign the petition now … http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/EPG_OZ/
Original forum thread … Australian EPG petition. Have your say!!

We’ve heard it’s a pain in the bum to add all the FOXTEL channels, but is anyone interested in testing this guide data for us?

“What services are you providing ozTiVo data for?”

We are currently only supporting Free-To-Air Digitial Channels! Foxtel should be along in the next fortnight as we after we fine tune the different guide regions.

“How do I get my ozTiVo data?”

If you are a new epgStream.net user or haven’t already run our Free*EPG Setup 1.0 application then you’ll need to visit the following link for instructions on how to get it set up:

http://www.epgstream.net/FreeEPG/XPM…6/Default.aspx

Once you’ve configured your MCE device to use Free*EPG, simple run the “Set Up Guide Listings” from within Media Center, enter your postcode and then just select the “ozTiVo FTA Digital” guide that is listed! From then on your Media Center machine will download the latest guide automatically or whenever you perform a manual “Get Latest Guide Listing”.

“Do I need to uninstall BladeRunner Pro?”

It might be a good idea to uninstall BRP and stop any associated scheduled tasks before running our Free*EPG Setup 1.0 application. This should reduce the chance of a conflict occuring when both EPG solutions are installed at the same time.

“Do I need to uninstall IceTV?”

No! You should be able to just run our Free*EPG Setup 1.0 application without any conflicts.

“My favourite ozTiVo channels don’t appear to be setup for my region!”

No problem … simply go to this forum and let us know what region you are from and what OzTivo channels you normally download!

“I was using your trial ozTiVo feed and now I get a guide download error!”

We had to change a few things between the trial and final implementation … Just run the “Set Up Guide Listing” wizard again within Media Center and you’ll be good to go! (for now)!

“How do I uninstall Free*EPG?”

Just run our Free*EPG Setup 1.0 again and you’ll be presented with an ‘Uninstall’ option. Selecting this will return your MCE guide settings to a pre-Free*EPG state!

We’ve finally gotten off our back-sides and have created a direct OzTivo feed for NSW TV Guide data! This will take a little of the bandwidth pressure of the OzTivo guys and give you a little more choice when connecting using our service!

In this trial, we’ll be updating our OzTivo data once a day so you’ll stay pretty much in sync for the bulk of OzTivo data. Once we get a problem-free run this weekend, we’ll expand to other states and maybe Foxtel!

You’ll now notice that during the ‘Set Up Your TV Program Guide’ wizard within MCE, you’ll be presented with an extra “TVGuide.org.au” provider to pick from. Simply select this and you are all set to receive OzTivo data!

To continue to provide our high level of telephone support to our rapidly growing customer base, IceTV is looking for relief staff to provide 10 hours/week (initially) telephone and email support. Hours will include evenings or weekends.

The ideal candidate will be familiar with IceTV’s products and be able to troubleshoot operation on popular platforms such as Microsoft Media Centre and Topfield PVRs.

Ability to attend the North Sydney office regularly is essential. Please send applications to support@icetv.com.au.

To unsubscribe from these announcements, login to the forum and uncheck “Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email.” in your profile.

You can view the full announcement by following this link:

http://www.icetv.com.au/iceforum/index.php?topic=417.0

Regards,
The IceTV Forum Team.

Looks pretty good and doesn’t pay that bad either! We might have to get some part-time work out of these guys!

GUIDE DOWNLOAD ERROR
The Guide could not be downloaded for the following reason: Guide processing error (Code: 23)

How do I get my Guide running smoothly again?

To get your guide running again you’ll have to use the “Set Up Guide Listings” wizard to reconfigure your client for our new server settings! You can access the “Set Up Guide Listings” wizard from Media Center by selecting the following options from main the MCE screen :

1. Select Settings, then
2. Select TV, then
3. Select Guide, then
4. Select Set Up Guide Listings

More detailed instructions about running the “Set Up Guide Listings” can be found in our Free*EPG installation document on page 7.

Why did the Free*EPG 1.1 upgrade cause this Code 23 error?

Well we made some serious architectual changes in this version and decided that rather than support both our old and new versions, we’d concerntrate development and support on the new one! Good news is that Code 23 shouldn’t occur again when we release our next Free*EPG version … honest!

We’re really sorry, but this small inconvenience helps guide the way for bigger and better functionality down the track!

This new service release will be activated on Monday, 14th August 2006.

Some of the service enhancements for Free*EPG 1.1 that you’ll notice on your clients are :

• Standard and High Definition programme listings for MCE
• ABC2 programme listings for MCE
• XMLTV feed for WebScheduler users

We just knew you were gonna ask … so here’s a few questions we prepared earlier.

Do I have to re-run my MCE Free*EPG Setup again?
No! The only tinkering you’ll have to do is run Media Center‘s “Set Up Guide Listings” wizard. Click here for more information.

With the additional HD channel will I now be able to see which shows are in high definition?
You’d think so, but no! We’ve added the extra HD channel so you can have one each for your SD and HD digital channels, but we haven’t added which shows are HD. Over the next week or two we’ll try and figure out how to tell what shows on the HD channels are actually HD …

Cool, WebSchedular! How about other XMLTV compatible applications?
We’re going to use WebScheduler as our first XMLTV release, then after a week or two start producing interfaces for other XMLTV feed systems.

Help! I’m getting a Code 23 error when downloading my guide!
If you are worried about the Code 23 error that has started to appear after the upgrade, then click here for more information on how to get things going again.

There are some great solutions out there already providing Media Center guide information including paid services like IceTV and free solutions like BladeRunner Pro, EPGRunner, ozTiVo, etc. If we had to compare Free*EPG to any of these existing solutions it would be a closer match to an IceTV model, but as our core services develop and mature we see ourselves heading towards an OzTivo style open community.

It’s important to note that our service is new and still under development, but very stable due to our development methodology. We only provide a 5-14 day guide updated every 3 days and detailed TV programme descriptions are available where possible!

If you’d like to see a feature developed in Free*EPG or you’d like to volunteer your services, then let us know and we’ll see what we can do! Just give us a little time and we’ll provide you with a great service!

You can find more information by visiting the Free*EPG homepage at http://www.epgstream.net.

Support

All support questions will be handled here at xpmediacentre.com.au so just post your question or problem and we’ll try and respond as soon as possible.

If you’ve got a super-personal question you have to ask and you’re embarrassed to post it in the forum, then you can email us directly on free-epg@epgstream.net.

Installation

All you’ll need to do is visit www.epgstream.net and run our ClickOnce Free*EPG Setup application using Internet Explorer and you’re away! Check out how easy it is to install and configure Free*EPG by downloading our XP Media Center installation guide here (1.64MB).

A big thanks to Mike (http://www.xpmediacenter.com.au) for doing such a great job running and maintaining this top notch community and setting up this forum for us to use!

We hadn’t planned on implementing digital guide listings just yet, but due to poll results on our website and constant requests from users, we decided we had better!

Though … because we rushed digital through, we took some shortcuts (which we’ll fix up later). Most notably is that we are using the standard analogue guide listings for ABC, SBS, SEVEN, NINE, TEN & TVS and passing them off as our digital guide. This means you’ll miss out on SBS News and ABC 2 (which are not part or a regular analogue listing), but we’ll be adding them real soon!

Remember to enter your local Post Code when performing a Set Up Guide Listings in Media Center.

If you only have digital tuners … and try to perform a Set Up Guide Listing then you’ll probably see a message saying There are no guide listings for your area… or something to that effect. It’s not a Post Code or region issue, … more a No Digital Listings issue!

Good news is … we have two shrink wrapped digital tuner cards that we’ll install into our test machines and see if we can’t get a digital listing (of the analogue stations) for you guys!

Before anyone flames us … for not supporting digital guides … it was on our agenda, but just not so soon! We do want to give you guys everything you need, but it’s one step at a time! Hey, it’s a free service right?