Hi all,

So I finally got around to setting up my VMC machine with Freeview DVB-S (Arrr no HD in Timaru!!), and last night wanted to get the RPG up and running. I battled finding a solid / easy guide, and I didn't want to use xmltvnz (which most people seem to be using). Not to take away anything at all from the awesome work by Reven, but I just prefer using totally free tools (not to mention the fact that I wanted to get it working NOW at 3am on a Sunday morning!!)

What I am using is the excellent Freeview listings at http://epg.pvr.geek.nz/epg/

The main problem I had was working out how to take the data at pvr.geek.nz and get it working in BladeRunner. Questions like 'where do I get a channelinfo.xml?! (or what even is that file)' were rampant. Keeping in mind that I'd never touched any of this stuff before last night, so it was fairly daunting initially. But I eventually got there.

I thought I'd put together a couple of utilities to make this easer for people in the future. There's probably already better ways out there to do all this but we'll see how it goes. There's certainly room for improvement here, but I figured I'd see how this one went down before investing any significant time.

xmltv2ci - XMLTV to ChannelInfo
This first one is a bit more technical, it takes an xmltv format xml file (such as those from pvr.geek.nz), and generates a ChannelInfo.xml that you can use in BladeRunner. Very simple C# command line application, only requirement is .NET 3.5 (You should have this if you keep your Vista box up to date).

Download: http://evadosoft.com/epg/xmltv2ci.zip (inc. source)

One-click EPG
This one is for everyone - it automates pretty much everything that needs to be done to get the EPG working in VMC using the listings at pvr.geek.nz and BladeRunner. Also requires .NET 3.5 (And working TV in VMC). As long as your PC is fully up to date you should be sweet.

It does the following (via a single script):

1. Installs BladeRunner


2. Sets up a bunch of scripts/apps (like wget, 7zip) for downloading the EPG


3. Creates a ChannelInfo.xml from epg.pvr.geek.nz


4. Installs and configures IIS for BladeRunner


5. Does an initial BladeRunner execution


6. Performs the VMC EPG registry fixes needed for BladeRunner


7. Schedules BladeRunner to run daily at 6pm

Download: http://evadosoft.com/epg/VMC-EPG-FreeviewNZ.zip

Installer
To do all this simply download the installer zip file, extract it to a folder on your machine. Inside you will find a file called 'Install.cmd'. [b]Right click it[/b] and select [b]Run as Administrator[/b] (Very important!!!).
NOTE: It may seem like the script has stopped part way through (a line with 'start /w pkgmgr') .. it hasn't! It may take several minutes here. You will know the script is done when you see 'Press any key to continue . . .'

It should then go through the motions and do all of the above for you - no need to do anything else. Once this is complete, you should have a working BladeRunner install, with IIS configured to serve up the EPG from your local machine. BladeRunner will refresh the EPG each day at 6pm :)

VMC setup

Now you can go into VMC, Settings -> TV -> Guide -> Set Up Guide Listings. I used the 'Australia' region. Go through the wizard until you get to the postcode part.

Unconfirmed
At this stage minimise VMC and double click the file called 'epg.reg' from the zip archive and add the registry data.

Go back into VMC and enter '0000', and complete the wizard. Hopefully it will download the EPG data!! :D

Finished
You should be all good to go now. Note that you may have to use the 'Add Listings to Channel' feature in VMC to map the EPG listings to the correct channel in VMC, I had to do this for channels 1/2/3 to get the guide to work for these channels.

Acknowledgements
Massive thanks to the Geekzone community, as well as the xpmediacentre.com.au community. Also, the operator of http://epg.pvr.geek.nz/epg/ is a total legend!

I'm no licensing expert so I really hope I'm not stepping on any toes by bundling everything into the one zip. I've acknowleged the source for all third party stuff in a file called about.txt inside the archive. I had a quick glance at the licences of each component and I *think* I'm ok here, but if anyone has any issues certainly let me know!!!

The major third party tool here is BladeRunner Pro, which is originally from http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/community/downloads.php?do=file&id=60 :)

I haven't been able to extensively test this yet so I'd appreciate details of any problems or issues encountered. If it doesn't work, please let me know and I'll try and figure it out (be sure to supply details!). Knowing me I will have forgotten some key detail, so apologies in advanced for this!

Comments welcome :D