Whose EPG should I use and why?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Whose EPG should I use and why?

Acrux

56 posts

Master Geek

#37039 6-Jul-2009 16:59

I am currently on the home straight of getting an EPG from Haventech feed into BigScreen EPG into Win7 (32bit beta) Win Media Center. I have both Sky set top box and a freeview DVB-T tuner

My question is where do these EPG's come from, why should I use one over another, are there any differences etc? I am assuming these are done by the good grace of individuals to help out the wider community. How up to date are they all?

browned

636 posts

Ultimate Geek

#231902 7-Jul-2009 09:39

Acrux: I am currently on the home straight of getting an EPG from Haventech feed into BigScreen EPG into Win7 (32bit beta) Win Media Center. I have both Sky set top box and a freeview DVB-T tuner

My question is where do these EPG's come from, why should I use one over another, are there any differences etc? I am assuming these are done by the good grace of individuals to help out the wider community. How up to date are they all?

Well fancy seeing you here.

Due to an issue with my Win7 Media Center last night I decided the easiest solution was a rebuild, I wanted to do a fresh install anyway as I had upgraded the last few Windows 7 builds and didn't like a few things I had setup earlier.

Anyway, this enabled me to move more to haventech for the main EPG, I like this better as it offers genres and colour coded EPG by default as BSE and Win7 pick this info and do the rest for you.

I previously use reven.co.nz's xmltvnz scrapper tool to download all Freeview information. Now I just use xmltvnz for ChineseTV, tvCentral, and TV3 Plus1 I think. I don't think XMLTVNZ pulls genre information only tv show name, start and finish time, and a rating like Adult, PG etc.

Anyway, I would recommend haventech, I decided to use the channel numbers this time as well. So I renamed the channels in BSE to the Freeview defaults picked by Media center, and changed the channel number (top left selection box out of four channel/sub channel boxes in BSE).

Oh and I used the X4xx channels in haventech for TVNZ/Media Works, these are from Sky feeds so contain the genre info. The x9xx channels are freeview feeds but do not contain any genre info so no colour coding.

BTW the rebuild took about 3 hours (starting at 5) to get Win7 installed Freeview scanned, Media Center configured, BSE setup, Anydvd HD, PowerDVD installed and upgraded, Virtual clone drive installed, Media Browser installed (although not fuctioning properly) Windows Home Server connector and media connect addin installed and setup and all libraries setup. I was then able to watch Topgear episode, and then start on recorded Desperate Housewives for the wife, then we watched recorded CSI as well as entertain and bath the baby before going to bed at 10.45pm. I love my Media Center

cheers
db

Home Server: AMD Threadripper 1950X, 64GB, 56TB HDD, Define R6 Case, 10GbE, ESXi 6.7, UNRAID, NextPVR, Emby Server, Plex Server.
Lounge Media Center: NVIDIA Shield TV 16GB: Kodi18 with Titan MOD, Emby.
Kids Media Center: NVIDIA Shield TV 16GB: Kodi18 with Titan MOD, Emby.
Main PC: Ryzen 7 2700, 16GB RAM, RX 570, 2 x 24"

BlueToothKiwi

282 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#232017 7-Jul-2009 13:30

I decided not to bother adding third party EPG - I am happy with the 3 hours of EPG I get from Windows 7 Media centre default set up. With Vista I used to get "." until the program acutaly finished !! But somehow the Win7 seems not to have that problem.

P.S> Acrux I see you also had problems with ATI card from the bottom of your message re your setup. I am having the same issue

Tim

Tim M, Auckland
Blog: http://paddler.co.nz

Acrux

56 posts

Master Geek

#232098 7-Jul-2009 15:59

Thanks Tim, need for an EPG it is more so my flatmates can do recordings than anything. The EPG is available for the freeview channels on DVB-T as part of now next. However we also have a Sky SD set top box which goes in via a S-Video connector into a HVR-2200 card and the media center changes the channel via a IR blaster LED. With the addition of all those Sky channels an EPG makes more sense.

As for the video card you may have to wait for a updated Catalyst driver from ATI. The NVidia card cost about $90nz and just works. Hardware decoding in Win7 on the video card so 1% CPU useage and all the video dropout, or blue screens, no audio etc all went away. I used the 8400GT from Gigabyte got it from PBTech on Queen St (didn't even know they had a city branch till last week!) Nice card DVI out so needed a DVI to HDMI cable, passive cooling to so quiet.

BlueToothKiwi

282 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#232123 7-Jul-2009 16:41

Acrux: The NVidia card cost about $90nz and just works.

OK - this is pretty much everyone is saying - so I am going to order it tonight - Just trying to figure out which one - Should I go for a higher spec card (e.g. 9500GT as opposed to 9400GT), or higher memory (1GB as opposed to 512MB).

Tim

Tim M, Auckland
Blog: http://paddler.co.nz

Acrux

56 posts

Master Geek

#232137 7-Jul-2009 17:15

Have a look at http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=83&topicid=35692&page_no=2#229759

Nety said that the 8400GS is fine up to blueray playback. I don't play PC games so i don't need anything higher.

Acrux

56 posts

Master Geek

#232848 8-Jul-2009 23:58

db thanks for the tips on which version of channels to use in the EPG made perfect sense once I got my head around it all. Got my EPG working perfectly almost now. Now just the SM Greats giving TV1 listings to figure out :-?

timwelch

93 posts

Master Geek

#232902 9-Jul-2009 10:08

Has anyone successfully pulled the Sky EPG from the Optus D1 Sat and pulled the Sky video from a STB in Windows 7?

I have a Nova-S card getting Freeview (and therefore the Freeview EPG) and a MCE150 getting Sky on the S-Video port but I'm hoping that from this explanation I should be able to get the Sky EPG as well without resorting to a third-party tool such as BigScreen EPG.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

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Asmodeus

1015 posts

Uber Geek

#232942 9-Jul-2009 11:16

timwelch: Has anyone successfully pulled the Sky EPG from the Optus D1 Sat and pulled the Sky video from a STB in Windows 7?

I have a Nova-S card getting Freeview (and therefore the Freeview EPG) and a MCE150 getting Sky on the S-Video port but I'm hoping that from this explanation I should be able to get the Sky EPG as well without resorting to a third-party tool such as BigScreen EPG.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Yes I used that method when I first installed Win7 and it does work. You do get those scrambled channels in your guide (unavoidable) and those 1 minute recoprdings in your recorded tv folder (can be dealt with using the batch file deleting solution) though. You also need to use the my channel logos program if you want logos too

mruane

420 posts

Ultimate Geek

#232944 9-Jul-2009 11:17

Try searching for DVBTOXML. That was a utility I recall using some time ago from the GBPVR site which did what you want. I am not sure if its still around, but you could try searching the forums at www.gbpvr.com. When I last checked, Google only reported a handful of links and all where to that site.

Cheers Mike

Acrux

56 posts

Master Geek

#234795 13-Jul-2009 16:27

Tried to use another EPG today and have broken Media Player. I removed the other provider in BSE and put in the new one. This all went cleanly.

Then I thought hmm better do a cleanout of the Media Center database by using the command line reset mcupdate.exe. Somewhere along the line my aerial wasn't lined up correctly so it only tuned about 9 channels on DVB-T instead of 16 so I told it to delete the channels hoping to scan again. Word of advice, don't try this at home! Several resets and reboots later it now goes throught the whole tuning procedure but upon returning tho the main page it thinks it still needs to run the livetv setup and won't let me in. Tomorrow I think it will be a reinstall of Win7, perhaps the 64bit version this time.