EPGs in Australia can drive you mad

23 July 2007, 5:28 pm

Hi all, it’s been a long time between posts but I’m back with an update on the TV on PC thing.

I have tried a few different applications over the intervening weeks and they have their own frustrations, but most of it centres around the EPG situation in Australia. Namely, it’s very hard to get one working. I’m happy to report that, finally, the free to air stations have agreed on allowing a free EPG service to be provided in Australia (gee, they only started talking about that last century).[more]

So, while the Australian networks have been getting their act together, I’ve been trying to get the My Cinema 3000mini to work with various media centre software. I don’t have media centre because I’m running Windows Vista Business edition.

But I haven’t managed to get a couple of the other offerings going.

The annoying this is I don’t actually have a favourite. But anyway, here is my experience with the different free software on offer.

GB-PVR – I think this is probably the most useful of those I tried. I was able to hack a driver for the 3000mini and was able to tune television stations into it. That was all very successful. Trying to load an Australian free EPG was a disaster.

Media Portal – very good looking program, but sadly I wasn’t able to work out how to connect the 3000mini. This was very annoying as it looked pretty cool. I will write to the developers and see if they can help with the 3000mini. I was able to get a rough EPG going using some xml file that was converted from the web.

Web Scheduler – this isn’t actually a media centre, but it is a rather useful PVR program for the web. I was able to get it working and I even managed to time record a program using the EPG. This was very exciting, but you’ll still need this and one of the other programs to play back your recordings.

So neither of these was the full package, although each has something going for them. Not having tried Media Centre yet, I am getting the sense that all of this PC TV thing is still a little hit and miss, particularly for open source software.

I do look forward however to an increasingly sophisticated open source media centre player emerging.

For the time being, I think I’ll stick with the purpose designed PVRs such as those being sold now by LG, Sony, Humax, Foxtel (IQ) and many others.

» Post Ad Purchase: Intext Link

Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit Stumble This Post