Big Screen Blog

As part of the Big Screen EPG (for Windows 7) product offering – a core important component (which hasn’t yet been announced/released) -  is the ‘by Remote’ client application.  This product aims to provide  some of the functionality previously provided by Webguide (currently available only for Vista Media Center) – with a focus on the PVR side of things. (such as browsing/searching the EPG and managing scheduled recordings).

‘Big Screen EPG - by Remote’ (codename) is designed to target both 2 ‘ and 1 “ clients – by providing a Silverlight 2 client for the desktop (which is hence usable on most versions of Windows and Mac o/s) – an XHTML expierience (Mobile site) with reduced functionality - as well as an iPhone optimized HTML site. 

The ‘server’ product is currently deployed as a single .exe file (only 400k in size) – which contains it’s own inbuilt Web Server (so no need to install IIS or Casini) – and all required content (such as the Silverlight .xap) and host pages/images are delivered right out of this single .exe as well (and are embedded as resources).  In a simple configuration - users can then expose the required ports via their firewall - so this client can be accessed from remote locations (over the internet) – or via the local network.

Please Note : Currently, this product is only designed to view EPG Data imported to Windows Media Center 7 by Big Screen EPG – and will not allow access to EPG data provided by Microsoft (or EIT) providers.

‘by Remote’ Silverlight 2 Client

While the UI (and product) are still a work in progress - some screenshots of an early version of the Silverlight 2 App are pictured below (click for full sized images) -

             loading page                                                                EPG Browsing

             popup program info                                                       view upcoming recording

              series browser                                                        series keyword searching

The client app is very small/lightweight (and designed to deal with slow upload speeds from your internet connection) – and all requests/responses are compressed (and encrypted) between server and client.  Typical download sizes while using application (which is data being served up from your machine) - may be 20-50k for a day’s worth of raw EPG data (when browsing EPG – you can view an entire day without reloading more data) – smaller then a lot of image files you’d download. 

A nice feature on this product (which I believe is different that a lot of the other remote recording clients on Vista) - is that when you make scheduled recordings it does ‘proper’ series + program recording (if applicable) – rather than just doing ‘Keyword’ recordings (which can not always work as expected).  This is made possible by the fact that you’re browsing metadata from your own machine – rather than from some shared server/epg store.

‘by Remote’ iPhone Web App

The iPhone app (further behind in development) -  uses a .NET version of the iui toolkit – which provides an optimized iPhone Web App. This gives you the commonly used sliding menu/touch aware UI so the experience is much more user friendly. (and requires a lot less requests to the server due to use of javascript etc  to store nested sub menus in initial request).

The mobile experience for by Remote will be a subset of important functions found in the Silverlight app  (as it’s not practical to browse entire epg’s on a small device).

A couple of (sorry- blurry) screenshots are below :

The XHTML version (targeted for Windows Mobile, Blackberry etc) will also provide a similar set of reduced functionality.

‘by Remote’ Server / 7MC Integration

The server for this (as mentioned above) contains it’s own built in web-server – and is designed to be accessed wherever you have internet or network access to your Windows Media Center 7 machine.  (and doesn’t require Live Mesh, WHS or any other remote/connection framework to get to your machine).  At the moment the prototype is a windows .exe – but this will be converted over to be a windows service (so noone needs to be logged into your local machine).

The server also has the ability to act as a proxy to other Media Center Servers – so rather than expose every 7MC machine in your house to the internet (and remember a bunch of ports/addresses) – you can just access a single server – which in turn will relay (and get response from) the other media center machines that are pre-configured (and provide a friendly access page with a directory of configured machines).

Down the track – I’m also considering developing a WHS addin version of this product (which would then act purely as a ‘proxy’ server) – but am not convinced yet about whether there’s enough users out there to justify it.

-     -     -     -     -      -

The ‘by Remote’ client will be made available over next couple of months – and will be offered as part of the Big Screen EPG product.

Also – depending on how soon Silverlight 3 is released – an ‘out of browser’ (standalone desktop app rather than inside browser) version of this will also be on offer.

Stay Tuned…

This past weekend – v0.4 of Big Screen EPG (a 3rd party EPG Importer for Windows 7) was launched to beta testers.

As per previous post – the beta program for this product is now public – so you can signup yourself (via your bigscreenglobal.com account) and get started straight away.

This version is a significant enhancement upon previous releases – some highlights including :

• .MSI Setup Program (with Program Menu/Icons etc for easy setup/configuration – no more messing around with command prompts and windows explorer)
• Online Registration Wizard – with new expiry date to 1-Sep-09. (v0.3 will expire 1/Jul)
• Substantially improved (and rewritten) XMLTV Processing Engine – supports lots of new metadata.
• New processing engine now supports huge EPG feeds (such as those used by US and Canadian users containing 200,000+ programs) - whilst keeping a low memory/cpu footprint.
• Substantially Enhanced UI with new lots of new features/smarts.
• Media Center ‘Reset Tool’ Wizard – which clears/resets the Media Center Configuration DB (taking you back to ‘first run’ state in Media Center)
• Scheduled Tasks Manager - for creating/automating BSE Processing Tasks via Windows Task Scheduler

v0.4 also now utilizes Serial Numbers/Registration as per other Big Screen products (rather than just having a hardcoded expiry date in the executable) – and introduces part of the new licensing model which will be available on the final version of Big Screen EPG.

Determined via your Serial Number – Big Screen EPG will run in one of 4 modes (nb: Not yet finalized) -

-  Trial Version - (Currently hardcoded to expire on Sep-1 – but will likely be extended). In future this trial period will be 30-90 days from  activation (TBD) – and will allow full usage of Big Screen EPG product (without limitations).  Once your Trial has expired – you will now be able to continue using the product in a limited ‘free’ mode – or upgrade to a paid version.

-  *FREE* / ‘Lite’ Version – as indicated – you will be able to use Big Screen EPG for free forever (once trial has expired) – but it will run with ‘reduced’ functionality – such as being restricted to 4 days of guide data, less ‘bling’ (no Series Artwork and other enhanced Metadata such as Actors/Credits) and other restrictions.

- 'Standard' Subscription – allows full usage of Big Screen EPG on 1x Media Center machine for period of subscription (will be offered in 6 month, 1 year and 2 year renewable periods).  Pricing is TBD.  Additional Services such as Remote Recording Management (and other goodies) will also be rolled out soon.

- 'Pro' Subscription – Same features as Standard Versions – but can be run on multiple Media Center machines inside a single residence. (for those hardcore users who have several HTPC’s around the house). Pricing is TBD.

Note that the Paid Subscription services will be introduced/available sometime after Windows 7 Final Version comes out and the current ‘v1’ Big Screen EPG product is finalized.  The Trial Version (and automatic fallback to Free mode once trial expires) is available in the current public v0.4 beta.


Some Screenshots are below ….

New UI – now with a horizontal tab layout (which is now available via the Start Menu and via Desktop Shortcut). This new layout makes provides a lot more screen realestate

Scheduled Task Manager - automates the creation/management of the scheduled task for processing new EPG data.

Media Center ‘Reset’ Wizard – runs a Media Center Database Reset – with lots of friendly warnings.

Enhanced ‘Add Dummy Channel’ UI – adds default program information for Channels which don’t have EPG Data. The updated version now downloads a list of ‘known’ preset stations from bigscreenglobal.com (currently only Australian DVB-T channels appear in this list).

More Advanced Options –  such as the ‘Language Settings’ tab which allows you to specify what your preferred languages are (for XMLTV feeds which has metadata for multiple languages).

Activation/Reverify Wizard –  similar to that featured on the Big Screen products for Media Center – this will activate and ‘reverify’ your serial number with the online server (and latest expiry date/registration details can be set without reinstallation).

Since the Big Screen EPG Private Beta fired up in February this year – users have been (automatically/anonymously) submitting stats on their TV watching and Series recording habits to the bigscreenglobal.com website.  These stats are compiled each time user’s process a new XMLTV feed (an XML file containing custom Electronic Program Guide data) and import it into Windows 7 using Big Screen EPG. Then over on the bigscreenglobal.com website – every 30 mins or so - some background tasks have been processing, crunching and matching up the submitted data - to produce a real time TV Ratings system. (code named ‘pvrWatch’)…

In order to make these stats viewable by the public (via their browsers) – a web application has been created (powered with Microsoft Silverlight v2) – which allows users to browse / search this data – and provide a little eye candy along the way.  (Nb: a Media Center ‘Addin’ version of this application is also nearly ready and will be launched soon).

Since pictures tell a thousand words – here’s a quick run down on what this application is all about.

[pvrWatch Home Page]

When you launch the application (in your browser) – the following ‘start page’ is shown. This page gives you a quick overview of the ‘Top Recorded Series’ and ‘Most Watched TV’ – with tabs to nominate which country/region you wish to view.

NB: Currently only Australia, New Zealand and UK are provided (due to most of the users in the private beta being from Australia/NZ) – however the ‘global’ rankings (for series) are collated across all users (from all countries).  As the beta expands – and enough users from other countries are submitting stats – then these countries will also be added here.

You can then click through to view more details on Top Series and Most Watched TV (via the buttons at the bottom).
 
 

[pvrWatch Top 50 TV Series]

The Top 50 TV Series charts are compiled from the Series Recording Requests they have set up in Media Center.  On the home page – you can view the top 8 Series – and also view items for ‘Whats Hot/Whats Not’, Top Rated, New This week and more.
 

You can then drill down to an entire list of the Top 50 Series. For each entry – there’s some information such as a Star Rating, Relative Percentage Bar (compared to the most recorded series) – plus information on the ‘Previous Week/Months’ ranking. (so you can see if the Series is gaining or losing popularity – similar to a Billboard Music chart).
 

 
In (upcoming) future versions – user will also be able to drill down on a TV Series – and submit their own Star Ratings, Comments and Recommendations (which in turn will feed back into the EPG that gets imported to Media Center via Big Screen EPG).

[pvrWatch Most Watched Television]

The ‘Most Watched Television’ charts track users live tv viewing habits – and provide a ‘live’ Ratings system (similar in concept to the Neilson and OZTam ratings systems we have in Australia).  These stats are compiled by adding up the minutes each user spent watching a channel.  Currently the Most Watched ratings are available for Free To Air and Pay TV channels – in Australia, New Zealand and UK.

 

If you’re viewing Free To Air channels – there’s 2 views – one by ‘Channel’ and another by ‘Broadcaster’.  

Since there’s actually a lot more unique channels (or services) than what is displayed – these are grouped into parent ‘channels’ (which may have unique line up of programs).   For example – the entry ‘NINE’ covers results from the channels Nine Digital, Nine HD Digital, WIN SD + Win HD(Regional) and any other regional affiliates that essentially show the channel Nine schedule.

The ‘Broadcasters’ tab then groups results into the parent ‘Broadcast’ company – for example   TEN Network will include results from Ten Digital, ONE SD/HD (Network TEN’s sports channel)  + all the regional stations showing their content.  Similarly ‘ABC TV’ will cover all results from ABC 1, ABC 2, ABC HD, ABC Dig Radio, ABC Dig Jazz etc.

Australian Ratings by Broadcaster :
 

You can also use the inbuilt Search form to view historical results (by Month, Week, etc), nominate a different country and chose between Free To Air and Pay TV results.

Check It Out for Yourself….

If you want to check it out for yourself – you can either

a) sign up for the Big Screen EPG (and you’ll be provided with a direct link into this application from your account menu)

/or/ 

(for a limited time - so readers without Windows 7 or Big Screen EPG can have a look)

b) visit the page http://bigscreenglobal.com/epg/livestats.aspx?   and enter the password ‘tunedin’. 
(nb: if you are signed into bigscreenglobal.com already – you won’t be asked for the password).

Stay tuned for more….

More Interactive features (and some other interesting charts) will be added over time (so keep visiting to see what’s new).  As mentioned above – a Media Center Addin will also be made available (probably alongside the next BSE update) – so you can view pvrWatch from inside Media Center.

The ‘private beta’ program for Big Screen EPG (which was Invite/Application only) – has now been opened up for public consumption. This means you can now sign yourself up without having to send me an email (and then patiently waiting for me to flick the switches so for you).  Please see below for some step-by-step instructions on how to join.

The version available for download via the beta is v0.3H (released on April 2nd 2009) – and has been given a good workout by several hundred users around the globe.  The v0.3H beta release is hard wired to expire on July 1, 2009 – however new updates will be made available via the program before then (that will extend the trial to a much later date). 

The main reason for the hard coded expiry dates is that like Windows 7 itself – this program is still a ‘work in progress’ – and critical updates may still be required to address issues with current/future Windows 7 beta versions. I’m also still making a lot of changes to the product itself – such as substantially enhancing the backend (stats submissions and other future goodies) – and also still need to make a nice user friendly installer (and fix other bells and whistles to make it a lot easier for less technical folk to use it). 

One other area which is currently the focus of development for the next version (v0.4?) is the ability to efficiently handle massive XMLTV feeds (such as ones for US/Canadian Users which can contain 150,000+ programs for a 7 day period). Although v0.3H can now handle these feeds – it uses a huge amount of memory (while processing your feed) – which is less than desirable.

Please Note : This product will ONLY work with Windows 7 Media Center (tested on Windows Beta 1 / build 7000  &  Windows RC / build 7100).  Vista and Vista+TVPack is not supported by this product (and it’s unlikely they will be supported in future by Big Screen EPG.)  - so apologies to the many people who have asked about these older versions of Media Center.

How to Sign up for the Big Screen EPG Public Beta

1. Sign up for an account on bigscreenglobal.com if you don’t have one (this is completely free).
         visit this link for account creation >> bigscreenglobal.com Account Signup Form
   
2. Once you’ve signed in – visit the ‘My Account’ page. (click the ‘account’ link on the top menu on any page of bigscreenglobal.com)
   
3. Once you’re on the ‘my account’ section – click the submenu item ‘Big Screen EPG’. (see below)
   
   
   
4. While you’re not registered - you will be shown the Welcome/Join page page (see below) – click the link at the bottom to sign up.
   
   
   
5. On the sign up form (see below) - fill in the details - ensure you agree to the Terms and Conditions (by checking the ‘I Agree’ checkbox) – and click ‘Continue’ to signup.
   
   
   
6. You’ll be sent a welcome email / success page on completion – and then you will be able to access the Big Screen EPG download (and some other goodies – see next post).  The download page (see below) will then be shown to you when you click on the ‘Big Screen EPG’ link in your ‘my account’. (once you’ve registered – you won’t need to sign up each time).

          <<< Image is supposed to be here - but Windows Live Skydrive is now broken!! >> (will fix it when Microsoft fix it).... 

That’s it – happy EPG’ing – and look out for new releases of Big Screen EPG coming (very) soon. (if you register – you’ll be notified when they come out).

When I set up Windows 7 (Media Center) as the main HTPC in our household back in January – I also decided to take the plunge and install a LG Combo BluRay/HDVD drive (which I picked up for around AUD$110) . Prior to that – all BluRay playback was being handled by a Playstation 3 – which worked well – but since I didn’t have the proper remote control – it was a little bit painful trying to use the PS3 joystick.

In the past – I’d been more than happy to use the inbuilt DVD player in Media Center (in Vista and TVPack) – which seemed to do everything I needed. In the Windows 7 Beta however – the inbuilt DVD playback had a few random issues that was making it frustrating to use (such as randomly pausing playback - restarting the dvd).  Also – now that I was armed with a BluRay player – I wanted to also use the same machine to play these back too.

The combo drive was bundled with a free Cyberlink PowerDVD v7 lite version– but this seemed to have a lot of issues running on Windows 7 – and it’s BluRay support seemed to be quite outdated (didn’t work with most new titles I tried – and was restricted to 2 ch audio only). On top of that – that version was very much a 2 foot only experience – requiring a mouse and windows desktop (not MC remote friendly). It also wasn’t the latest version – as v8 was available for some time.

So BluRay playback ended up on the PS3 again while I waited for something better.

Then in February - Cyberlink released PowerDVD v9 – which boasted a bunch of new features (such as support for latest BluRay titles) – and full Media Center integration.  So I decided to see if this would give me the solution I needed.

To my delight the new version was able to play (almost) all the bluray titles I threw at it – however there was a major bug which meant the application could only be launched if your vertical resolution was 720 or higher. (on my RPTV the optimal resolution to use for 720p is slightly less than 720).   So I basically had to change the desktop resolution before I started it – meaning also that it couldn’t be launched from Media Center (which was also running in resolution <x720 vertical pixels).

So I gave up for a while - as I couldn’t do too much with v9 either.

But then - at the end of March – an update patch was released for v9 – fixing the problems with the resolution check. All of a sudden I was able to use it and give it a proper test – and have been pretty pleased with the results. I’ve been a happy PowerDVD 9 user ever since – and it’s now been a few weeks since the PS3 was called upon.

So here’s a few thoughts on using PowerDVD v9 with Media Center (as the Cyberlink site doesn’t provide much information on this side of things).  NB: The picture below is taken from the Cyberlink site – and looks ‘similar’ to the 10 foot ui’s you get with the Integrated mode.

Media Center Integration

The Media Center integration is done pretty well – and when playing media from a disc (DVD/BluRay) – you can pretty much get by with only your remote control. For part of the experience – Cyberlink have provided some 10 foot (Remote Control/TV Friendly) UI’s – and while you’re watching media – most of the standard and special buttons on your Media Center Remote seem to work well (ie. DVD Menu/Info, Chapter Skipping etc). 

One issue I had was that there didn’t seem to be any way to trigger playback of DVD movies from the hard drive (the hooks into media center seemed to only work for dvd/bluray discs) – so you need to launch PowerDVD v9 (via the MC start menu icon) – and then use your mouse to open the dvd hd directory (which is all 2 foot).

Another small issue was that as I have multiple rom drives in the machine (2 x DVD, 1 x Combo DVD/Bluray/HDDVD) – when I inserted discs – I had to sometimes tell the PowerDVD application which of the drives to launch the movie from (even though Media Center is able to determine which drive contains the new disc – it doesn’t seem that the info was being passed through to PowerDVD ).

Also – as expected – no Media Center extender support is provided. (and is strictly for your main console only)

PowerDVD 10 foot UI

The way the UI works – is that when the PowerDVD  10 foot UI is being displayed – you’re using a custom ‘full screen’ desktop application developed by Cyberlink (and Media Center shell is minimized to the task bar) – rather than it using a MCPL (Media Center Presentation Layer) application being hosted inside MC itself (as you would normally do with addins).  This sort of makes sense – as due to a number of technical requirements – the actual playback can’t be done inside the Media Center video viewport itself – so would need an external (non MCPL) application to do it’s thing anyhow.

However, the PowerDVD 10 foot UI is a little bit shabby looking – and a big visual anti-climax after navigating to it from inside the spit and polish of the Media Center UI.  I think Cyberlink may have been better off relegating all the 10 foot screens (prior to playback) to a MCPL application – which would then launch the external fullscreen player as the final destination. 

Playback

I won’t go into the actual playback quality/decoding etc of PowerDVD9 – as it’s a given that Cyberlink are one of the industry leaders in producing dvd playback software - so as you’d expect - this side of things are all excellent.

One small complaint was that in comparison to Windows 7 Media Center (DVD Playback) – the sub-picture overlays don’t look quite as nice (ie. for captions). I think this is possibly due to Media Center using some anti-aliasing effects when rendering the captions (making PowerDVD’s version look a little chunky).

Overall Conclusion

The product is excellent if you need a way to playback BluRay titles on Media Center – and if you’ve got it installed – it’s also good for DVD playback. (although you’d probably be hard pressed to chose a reason to use it over the internal MC player if that works for you on the Windows 7 beta).  It’s probably a little pricey if you compare it to the cost of the o/s (USD$99 for full Ultimate version)  – but a lot cheaper than purchasing an external player.

What I’d like to see…

Since Cyberlink obviously have good technical knowledge on working with BluRay/DVD’s codecs and disc formats (at a low level) – a killer feature would be a realtime transcoder combined with a MCPL host application (for the playback). This way it would not only work perfectly on extenders (as content could be streamed in a codec that is supported by extender device) – but it would also provide a really tightly integrated experience in Media Center – without having to switch in and out of an external application.