Archive for the ‘Electronic Programme Guide’ Category
ozTiVo Channel Updates
Posted by banger@epgstream in Announcements, Electronic Programme Guide, XMLTV: Guide Pack on June 7th, 2009
Well it looks like the ozTiVo guys have redefined (and renamed) some of their “One” and “SBS” guide listings! Everyone will be happy to know that “SBS2″ now has guide listings and “One HD” and “One Digital” listings have now been broken down by their individual states.
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:
- Launch the “XMLTV Download Settings” application.
- Navigate to and click on the “Channels” tab.
- Click the “Download Channel List” button.
- 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.
- To add your “SBS TWO“ channel, type “sbstwo” in the search box and select by checking the SBS TWO channel for your region.
- Click the “Save Changes” button to save your updated channel list.
- 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:
- Launch Windows Media Center.
- Navigate to: Tasks->Settings->TV->Guide
- Perform a “Get Latest Guide Listings” to import the newly added channel data.
- 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? 
IceTV Win! Now what do their subscribers get …
Posted by banger@epgstream in Electronic Programme Guide, Random Thoughts on April 22nd, 2009
Well it looks like IceTV has finally had things go it’s way with a landmark win in the Australian High Court today! The High Court ruled that IceTV’s electronic programme guide did not breach Nine’s copyright.
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.
Daylight savings comes to an end!
Posted by banger@epgstream in Announcements, Electronic Programme Guide, Windows Vista & XP, XMLTV: Guide Pack on March 31st, 2009
Well it’s that time of year again when daylight savings comes to an end and all the various states go back to “Queensland” time again.
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
My first look at Windows 7′s EPG sub-system.
Posted by banger@epgstream in Electronic Programme Guide, Windows 7 on January 16th, 2009
Well I installed the Windows 7 beta yesterday and I have to say it looks good … Well, more specifically, Media Center looks good! Media Center looks polished on the outside with plenty of new features including the possibility of sports and IPTV features!
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Free*EPG MCE Service Discontinued (Free-To-Air)
Posted by banger@epgstream in Announcements, Electronic Programme Guide, Free*EPG on October 13th, 2008
Our Free*EPG and ozTiVo Microsoft Windows Guide Service feeds for Australia will be discontinued from Sunday, 20th October 2008.
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 …
XMLTV? Time to kick-start that ‘ole project off again!
Posted by banger@epgstream in Electronic Programme Guide, Free*EPG on December 18th, 2007
Originally Posted by jrobbo, Oct 31 2007, 06:17 PM
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?
What is Free*EPG?
Posted by banger@epgstream in Electronic Programme Guide, Free*EPG, Windows Vista & XP on July 25th, 2006
Free*EPG is a pilot Electronic Programme Guide service developed by epgStream.net that provides guide information for your XP Media Center device. This Australian service is free for all registered members and is intended for personal, non-commercial use only.
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!
Analogue and Digital Tuners – Both Now Supported!
Posted by banger@epgstream in Electronic Programme Guide, Free*EPG, Windows Vista & XP on July 12th, 2006
We’ve finally *implemented* guide listings for digital tuner cards as well as the old analogue ones!
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.
Analogue Tuners Only – For the moment anyway!
Posted by banger@epgstream in Electronic Programme Guide, Free*EPG, Windows Vista & XP on July 11th, 2006
Our Free*EPG service (at the moment) is only geared for analogue guides (and hence analogue tuners only)! Silly us thought that everyone had analogue tuners too… we’ve been using analogue for sooooo long we kinda shrugged off the digital side of it while watching TV on the sofa!
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?
Free*EPG MCE Service Now Available (Free-To-Air)
Posted by banger@epgstream in Announcements, Electronic Programme Guide, Free*EPG on July 7th, 2006
A week of blood, sweat and caffeine finally produced a living, breathing programme guide service! We call it Free*EPG … only because we weren’t creative enough to come up with another name for a free EPG service.
