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.

Microsoft’s Silverlight v3 Beta was officially announced today at the Microsoft’s Remix 09 developer conference – and adds a whole swag of new features to the existing v2 release – making it a serious contender to Adobe’s Flash.

As with the previous years Silverlight Remix launches (for v1 in 2007 and v2 in 2008) – the announcements were accompanied by the availability of a matching Developer SDK + Runtime Download, updated Visual Studio tools/integration and a new beta version of Expression Blend (now also in ‘v3’). To get these downloads – please visit this page on silverlight.net.

As I’ve been using Silverlight v2 (and previously v1) quite heavily for projects over the past couple of years – I’m really happy to see Microsoft putting so much effort and focus into this technology – and how rapidly it’s been evolving, with 12 month update cycles for major revisions.

There’s a bunch of new features which seemed to again have really captured what developers (and I hope designers) want out of Silverlight, some of these highlights (for me) include –

• Enhanced UI Support/Navigation targeted for LOB (Line of Business) applications
• ‘Out of Browser’ support ie. ability to write standalone desktop applications and widgets – (which of course also work with Mac O/S)
• MPEG4 video with H264/AAC Audio support, true 720P HD Video and support for extensible media format (via Raw AV Pipelines)
• Basic 3D and Shader Effects (like Blur and Shadow) – with ability to create your own shaders (via GPU Acceleration).
• Modal Dialog support and Deep Linking (allows you to bookmark pages inside your Silverlight App)
• Tighter integration with Local Environment and ability to communicate with other Silverlight Application Instances.
• .NET RIA Services – offers tighter integration between Silverlight and ASP.NET making it easier to develope multi tier scenarios (where ASP.NET is your middle tier).

For a more comprehensive list of what’s new (there’s over 50 new features) – please see this link.

What I like the most about Silverlight (and the v3 enhancements) – is that it makes RIA (and now LOB applications) really easy for .NET developers – by offering tight integration with Visual Studio and Expression (individually) - and allows you to maximize your code reuse (and ‘existing’ in house .NET developer skills) across Windows Forms, Server, WPF, ASP.NET and Silverlight applications.

As with the previous versions – a lot of the new features of Silverlight v3 are based on existing features previously offered in WPF (like the basic 3D and pixel shader support) - and then cut down/optimized in a way that makes sense for cross platform / RIA development. This means the learning curve for those developers already familiar with WPF is greatly reduced – and can hit the ground running on the new features.

Unfortunately – there’s one major hurdle for Microsoft to overcome in the short term – no pain second machine, no gain.  At the moment you can’t install the v3 beta developer goodness without crippling your existing Silverlight v2 development setup (ie. the VS2008 Tools for Silverlight v2 don’t work alongside the v3 beta). This is a big problem for me – as I have existing Silverlight v2 apps to support – and it means v3 beta won’t be able to make it’s way to my primary dev workstation any time soon. I’m sure v3 beta will make it to my laptop (not my main workstation) – but this means I’ll be less likely to spend quality time with it or attempt to write any real apps. Alternatives like running a VPC is not a greatly attractive option (too slow and would require me to install a whole new dev environment) – and neither is running a RDP connection to another machine (which would clobber the ability to see any smooth animation or hw graphics acceleration).

I really hope Microsoft sort out this v2 v v3 problem – as I’ve no doubt most developers who use v2 will need to develop both v2 and v3 applications side by side (even when v3 RTM’s later in the year) – and requiring a second machine is not a reasonable or realistic requirement.

Apart from that (dev environment) showstopper however – Silverlight v3 has again really upped the ante for RIA + LOB development – and gives me great confidence to continue to invest in Silverlight skills as a developer (and to continue to recommend it’s use to clients) – as I’m comfortable that Microsoft are there for the long haul with this technology.

With all the wet weather over the past week - it’s easy to forget that just a few weeks ago a large amount of fellow country Victorian’s were battling with the worst bushfires we’ve ever seen. A staggering amount of lives, homes and businesses were lost – and there’s a number of worthy charities trying to help those communities get back on their feet with various appeals. One of the organizations who does great work in Australia (and across the globe) – the ‘Red Cross’ has been running the ‘Victorian Bushfire Appeal’. 

To help out with this effort - the various .NET User’s groups around Australia are holding a one day ‘WPF Workshop’ (with hands on labs) – where all money raised will be donated to this worthy cause. If all workshops are filled - then this effort will raise up to $23,000 for the appeal.

There’s still a bunch of spots left – and urge any fellow Australian’s who’d like to get some fresh or updated WPF training/skills and feel ‘really good about it’ – then please see the details below. 

The Melbourne workshop will be held on Saturday March 28th for the cost of only $100 per person – and attendees will also have a chance to win their very own copy of Visual Studio 2008.

I’ve been asked to help out as well – and will either be there to deliver a session or two - or will be wandering about the room helping people with their labs.

Here’s the details –(from Mahesh Krishnan’s blog) :

After a couple of weeks of running the Big Screen EPG private beta (which now has around 150 participants) – the users statistics collection is starting to produce some more meaningful results – and a ‘PVR’ ratings system is starting to emerge.

I thought I’d post some of these initial results – for those that are curious (no I’m not going to post these each week) :

The Most Popular TV Series

This list is of the most popular TV Series (that’s been scheduled as a ‘Series Request’) – along with the rounded % of participants who are recording it (out of around 250 different Series that were registered).

27% of participants are recording (a big winner) :

- Two and a Half Men

8-12% of participants are recording :

- The Ellen Show
- Brothers & Sisters
- Desperate Housewives
- Scrubs
- Americas Next Top Model
- Rove (Australia)
- Nip & Tuck
- My Name is Earl

6% of participants are recording :

- Futurama
- Seven News (Australia)
- American Idol
- Target
- ABC News (Australia)
- CSI
- House
- Cold Case
- Gary Unmarried
- Life on Mars (US Version)
- NOS Studio (Dutch?)
- The 7:30 Report (Australia)
- The Mentalist
- Underbelly 2 (Australia)
- Women's Murder Club
- Criminal Minds

Most Watched TV Network

As I’ve already got a MCPL Web App to show me the ratings for ‘Most Watched’ Channels/Broadcasters – here’s a couple of screen dumps with the latest live ratings. I have only included Australia and New Zealand as the other countries don’t have enough representation in the beta to make them meaningful.  These charts represent snapshot from sample covering approx last 7 days.

For Australia – the entries represent the 5 major broadcasters (and include regional affiliate channels). The ‘Other Channels’ block represents either Pay TV viewing or other unaffiliated regional channels.

 

For New Zealand – the rankings are broken down into channels rather than the broadcasters (as per the NZ Freeview line-up). Channels listed with 1% are currently actually 0-1% share. Because there’s too many entries the ‘other channels’ block at 22% can’t be seen – but like Australia mainly represents Pay TV usage.

I expect these figures to change quite a bit as the beta goes public - and there’s still quite a few users who are just setting up and probably haven’t scheduled everything that they watch yet. (or had a chance to sit back and use their win7 machines).

Beta testers for Big Screen EPG (aka. ‘BSE’ - a custom EPG tool for Windows 7 Media Center) – were just sent the download details for the brand new version v0.3 alpha – which adds a large number of major enhancements.

Here’s a summary from the email that was sent out -

• Brand new User Interface – much easier on the eye /and faster to user (with a new Control Panel style UI).
• New ‘Add New Provider’ wizard makes it much quicker to add new sources – and find the correct settings for them (with inbuilt feed analysis logic).
• Enhanced Support for IceTV Users (makes use of the IceTV series/program Id’s now being supplied with their feeds) – plus easy IceTV setup wizard (where you now just enter your username/password – and it works out most of the rest).
• Customizable Series + Program Identification Logic – which allows you to accurately track unique Series/Programs (repeated on other channels/timeslots) so the advanced Media Center recording features work 100% (such as ‘Any Channel’ recordings).
• Auto Series Metadata Injection – from a large db of thousands of well known TV Series – Program Images (displayed in 7MC), Star Ratings, Genres and more are automatically injected into your guide (when matching series are detected in your xmltv source).
• Support for mapping Classifications/Ratings to ‘TV Ratings’ – rather than just ‘MPAA Ratings’ (which then enables usage with Media Center inbuilt Parental Controls – nb: Parental Controls are not fully implemented in Windows 7 Beta 7000)
• Logo Presets directory (just drop your channel logo’s in the ..\ProgramData\Big Screen\EPG\Logos path – and they will come up as quick presets when editing channels.
• + quite a few bug fixes and enhancements to the existing code.

For those who of you who aren’t running this – or want to see what the new version looks like (before installation) – here’s a rundown of some of the highlights (with some screenshots).

THE NEW USER INTERFACE

The main Configuration UI got a big upgrade with v0.3 – and now has a Control Panel link Home Page – with quick links to all the different functionality (and management) screens within the UI.

Similarly the Channel Editor has been made a lot easier to work with. There’s now a grid style editing UI (with inline editing) – plus advanced properties support underneath. The example below shows off the new Channel Logo assignment features – which allow you to quickly select Preset Logos (saved in the new Preset Logos directory) – and apply them to channels.

The new Add Provider Wizard will make it easier to add new XMLTV data sources – and now has specific support for Australian IceTV  subscribers (where you just enter your username/password – and it constructs the appropriate download link for you).

SERIES AND PROGRAM MATCHING

To assist with setting up the new Unique Series and Program matching capabilities introduced in v0.3 (which helps 7MC understand what programs belong to a series – and which programs are being shown more than once on different channels/timeslots) – the Add Provider wizard will automatically scan your XMLTV feed and suggest the most appropriate settings for you (see screenshot left). If you wish – you can elect to customize these options (see screenshot right).   In the example below – an XMLTV feed from OzTivo was parsed and it nominated to use  a) Program Title to identify a series, the XMLTV Season/Episode tag to identify a Program. The Secondary and Fallback techniques (use Title+EpisodeTitle and lastly TimeSlot + Channel) then enable BSE to handle the situations where no Season/Episode or not Title/EpisodeTile combination has been provided in the feed for some entries. (which would be the case if either the episidetitle/numbers weren’t being tracked or it’s a Movie).

SERIES AUTOMATCHING AND METADATA INJECTION

The Series Auto Matching also adds some much needed eye-candy and rich metadata to the Media Center EPG. The way series matching works is that when your feeds are processed – anything identified as a Series will be auto-matched with a Series from an internal DB (containing thousands of different shows) – and where available/matched – rich metadata such as Series Artwork, Star-Ratings, Genres, Production Years and Descriptions will be automatically injected into your EPG.

So for example – if you have the series ‘Criminal Minds’ in your XMLTV source data – BSE will automatically match it with it’s internal data – and apply a Star Rating, Artwork – and anything else available to the Program Entry – and also create the matching Unique Series Record in Media Center. See example below for it being displayed in the 7MC EPG -

You can also (partially) customize this information by using the new inbuild Series Management Editor (which contains a list of all series that have been uniquely detected in your xmltv source feeds once processed ). In example below – if we insert a custom description for the Series - ‘The Biggest Loser’ (see screenshot left) – then we will then get that Series Information in the EPG as well (See Screenshot Right). NB: When a series description is provided to 7MC – then when viewing program details - we get a section for the Episode Summary – and then another section underneath for the Series Description.

Similarly – when looking at Series Info (not Program Info) – some of the other metadata can be brought through such as Years of Production (shown under Series Title in example below).

NEW ‘TOP RATED’ SERIES SUBGENRE

As many of your series will now be matched with Star Ratings – I added a new Sub Category to the Media Center presets (supplied via the BSE import) – which will allow you to view the ‘Top Rated’ shows. (Series which have ratings of 3.5 or 4 stars). Each episode of those series are then additionally tagged as being part of this ‘Top Rated’ subcategory – and allows them to be quickly located when searching by Category.

REALTIME ONLINE TV RATINGS

As part of using Big Screen EPG – users have agreed to allow it to automatically (and anonymously) submit realtime stats on the viewing/recording activity on their system.

After about 1 week of the beta – I’m starting to get some meaningful aggregated statistics from my online database – and have started making an MCPL Web Application (ie. runs as an addin in Media Center – but is served up by my online web server).

The screenshot below is taken from this MCPL Web Application (not made public) – and is served live off my site (and hence contains up to the second results). This page shows the 5 major broadcasters in Australia (ie. TEN Network has channels TEN Digital, One Digital and ONE HD) – and the estimated percentage they were watched over the last week (based on a number of different pieces of data). Note that the - the ‘other’ category refers to Pay TV channels (or other unaffiliated regional stations).

There’s of course a lot of different ratings/breakdowns I can show from the submitted data (some of which is being developed at the moment) . I’m also for example tracking Series Recordings – so a global ‘Favorite’ series chart could be displayed – and hopefully in future versions – I will allow users to interact with this data (and submit recommendations, ratings etc for series – either via the BSE Interface or via this Media Center addin).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Anyhow – I’m pretty excited about this new version of Big Screen EPG – and hope end users will enjoy the funky new features offered – some of which I think have not been done before with EPG tools (such as the Series Metadata injection etc).

I’m currently aiming to have v0.4 as the public beta (along with updated docs and a proper MSI installer) – however until then please visit this forum page (on xpmediacenter.com.au) for information on how to join the v0.3 private beta :

http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/community/big-screen-software/35139-big-screen-epg-0-1-beta-discussion-support-thread.html

On Friday – the information for producing 3rd party EPG’s for Windows 7 was ‘unnoficially’ officially released by Microsoft.  - ie. use at own risk and MS won’t help out if something goes pearshaped as it’s an ‘unsupported scenario... Big thanks to Mike Hayton in the Media Center team - who took the time+effort to both write the MXF spec, and to deal with the red tape required to get them approved for release. 

Since this ‘info’ on MXF is now (finally) out in the wild – it’s was OK for me to release an application I’ve been working on here and there over the past few weeks. (and using on my own system)

The current working title for this product is very predictably named - ‘Big Screen EPG’ – or just ‘BSE’ for short – and over the weekend I launched a private beta to a number of select users from xpmediacenter.com.au. (and will release a more public beta soon).

The core feature set for this (v0.1 beta) include :

• Imports EPG data from one or more XMLTV data files/http sources. (and can merge EPG Data from various providers – useful if you have multiple sources and want the ‘best of’ whats on offer – or if you need to get your paytv  or fta epg from a different place to your other guide data).
  
• Converts the EPG Data into Windows 7 MXF format – and automates the import process to Media Center
  
• Allows full custom channel Logos to be imported (and displayed) along with your new EPG listings.
  
• Can generate ‘Dummy’ program entries / channels (based on your parameters) – for all those oft neglected Digital Audio Services, EPG Channels etc – where you normally have to put up with ‘No Program Data is available’ messages. (well if you’re Australian that is).
  
• Features a rich Configuration Editor allowing lots of control over how XMLTV EPG data is interpreted (and converted)– including comprehensive control of how the genres and classifications are mapped to the internal Media Center EPG db. (so parental controls, color coded EPG and other features work)
  
• Feeds in the correct metadata for Movies (along with a registry change) – so you can fully enjoy the Movies on TV feature in Media Center – as well as viewing rich Movie information (such as Coverart, Actors, Similar Titles, Reviews and more) . See this post Rich TV Movie metadata on Windows 7 Media Center (for non US Citizens)… for examples on what you can see.
  
• Console/Command Line driven arguments allow it to be scheduled to run automatically (via Task Scheduler) – so you don’t have to worry about it once it’s all set up.
  
• The application is also designed to collect viewing/scheduling data and submit it (anonymously) to the bigscreenglobal.com website – which will eventually feed into a community tv + series ratings/recommendations system (in development) – and then back into your local EPG. 
  

(See screenshots below of the Configuration Editor)

I concentrated on getting the rudimentary features going for this first beta – namely getting your guide into Media Center (with a few bells and whistles) – but there’s a bunch more interesting functions that will be added over coming weeks/months.

A user on www.xpmediacenter.com.au  - ‘dgaust’ has also come to the rescue - and uploaded a spiffy set of Channel Logos for Australian TV (covers most of the major broadcasters – including for the upcoming freeview channels – plus some regional logos). He’s also released a small util along the lines of KeepKey – called KeepGEO (which monitors the registry and detects if the Media Center update task has changed your countrycode without asking – and changes it back to ‘US’ – so you don’t loose any features).

Please see this thread on xpmediacenter.com.au for more information + download links for keepgeo + the logos.

Down here in Melbourne (Australia) – we’re experiencing an extreme summer heatwave – and it’s predicted that this week will be the hottest one for over 100 years (1908).

Monday started out reasonably warm (mid 30’s) – yesterday reached 42 C (~108 F)– and today the top temperature across the city reached 43.7 C (that’s around 110.5 F). The forecasts for the next 3 days are max temperatures ranging from 41C to 43C (tommorow) – so we won’t get any relief until at least Sunday.

I’m normally a big fan of hot weather (and love the warm evenings) – but once it gets ridiculously hot (37C or more) -  it can be pretty hard to get any work done (or a good nights sleep). 

Funnily enough - we also received a notice in the mail last week – that our (normally quiet) suburban street/block is going to be used all day tomorrow for one of those stupid new medical/reality shows (‘dial 000 emergency?’ or something along those lines). We were informed not to be ‘alarmed’ if we saw any ambulances or people walking around the street covered in blood. I wonder if it will still go ahead as planned – and hope they aren’t re-enacting a ‘winter’ scene (where the actors won’t be able to dress down). 

An update of the Windows Media Center SDK  for Windows 7 (Beta 1/7000) has just been made available on Connect - and will be launched via MSDN very soon.

In terms of what’s new - the actual API available to Windows 7 Media Center Developers appears to be the same as what was released previously (see my earlier post -  Media Center SDK v6.0 (Windows 7 M3) First Impressions  for more information) – so no new surprises to report on this front.

What has changed in the SDK however – is that the documentation for the new API features is now much more complete and improved (and there are only a few ‘undocumented’ sections remaining to fill in) – and there’s a new sample application – titled ‘M’ – which shows off the basics of developing addins with the new iTV (Interactive TV) Framework.

Thanks to the now almost complete iTV Framework documentation (and sample) – it’s now a lot clearer how it’s supposed to fit in to Media Center – and how it can be used.  (NB: currently - TVPack2008 and Windows 7 Media Center users are actually using an internal application based on the iTV framework when they use Teletext and switch between the available Audio Streams).

In a nutshell – iTV applications are addins (or Interactive Applications) which are targeted to be used either with a nominated program - or a channel (or group of channels from a broadcaster).  These applications are designed to tightly interact with the actual broadcast content on offer – and allow for scenarios such as (reworded loosely from the SDK) -

• Enhancing existing Programs - multiple camera views, chat with other viewers, highlights, polls, commentry etc.
• Video On Demand - which can be linked to live broadcast content (replays/highlights/voting etc) – or trigger pay per view and on demand services.
• Overlays – non interactive content that is added to existing broadcast.
• Interaction with TV Program – such as getting additional information on what you are watching (ie. cast/crew/reviews/community ratings etc).
• Interaction with TV Content – Viewing Trailers, triggering Series Recording, IM and VOIP and more..

This of course allows for very similar ideas found in MHEG/MHEG5 iTV applications - to be created by Windows developers (using a combination of .NET and C++/COM code – rather than Java) – and due to it being deployed to a local machine – would allow for substantially more interaction with the local machine (ie. users may be able to upload photos from a local HD to a TV Show server via an iTV application – wheras MHEG would be sandboxed and not able to access any drives).  The actual UI for these iTv addins can be developed using both MCPL rendering/technology (for the Overlay content) - and low(er) level .NET System.Drawing namespace (for rendering on the VideoSurface).

Unlike MHEG (which are deployed over the air) – it appears the iTV applications need to first be installed on the local machine before they can be used/triggered (either via .MSI file or automatically downloaded by mcupdate if being distributed by Microsoft).

Unfortunately – the iTV development platform won’t be usable by your average 3rd party developer – as it needs to be triggered via either data being transmitted on the Tuner Source (ie. ‘tags’ which are broadcast by the provider at predefined moments) – or via the Headend (which I assume is referring to the source of your EPG data). Both of these are generally not available to VMC addin developers – who normally make products for a global audience – rather than targetting a particular channel or show – and generally wouldn’t have any association with the tuner or headend being used.

To assist with development/testing of these iTV Applications – a new developer tool called the ‘PBDA Device Simulator’ is available (via Connect) – which allows developers to simulate PBDA tuner devices, create additional channels/transport streams and insert tag packets into the stream (which can then trigger the iTV applications).

Whether we’ll get to see many offerings using the iTv framework remains to be seen (I’m sure the US users will get something at least) – as it’s unlikely broadcasters will create applications specifically for a program (or channel) being watched on Media Center – however it may make sense if they are already providing MHEG or other interactive content (and can reuse some of the data/infrastructure). I’m curious to know how similar the iTV Framework is to the dev platform offered for MS MediaRoom platform (which also uses MCPL) – as it would probably be a quicker path for providers already making MediaRoom content to extend their offerings to Media Center users in other locations.

CHANNEL LOGOS ON THE EPG GRID

Further to the previous couple of posts (where I showed off channel logos in the details area of the EPG) – I figured out how to enable the EPG Channel logos on the actual grid. This is more desirable - as you can see all the channel logos – rather than just getting it when you highlight a show.  Instead the logo + channel number are displayed - instead of  the channel name + number.

Rather than 7MC thinking it’s a broadband/internet tv channel (where logo is on the left – and you can’t see the epg data) – in this example – these remain as tunable channels (so you can still watch them …).

Here’s what it looks like (nb: the EIT data went offline for Channel 9 + HD – not as a result of what i have done…). Also note that I didn’t reinstate the channel logos down the bottom (as this is set against a different db value) :

Similarly – the logos appear in the live tv miniguide :

USING MEDIA CENTER TO BROWSE UPCOMING/LATEST MOVIES ON DVD AND AT THE MOVIES

I also had a thought – that the ‘Movies on TV’ Browser - could ALSO be used to browse upcoming/latest Movie releases (both on DVD and at the Movies).   Because of the ease of linking to Movie Metadata (see last post) – where you only need to supply a title and a couple of other fields to get detailed information – I figured it would be a good way to get other movie data. (in case of other content like DVD’s on the harddrive – you need to determine DVDID’s etc before this will work – quite a bit of manual work). 

I also figured that I could add some additional channels (and categories) – which would be hidden in the guide (via use of custom lineup) – but would appear in the Movies on TV Browser.  The additional channels are then named after the content – ie . ‘COMING SOON (DVD)’.

So I gave it a shot and hears what it looks like for a movie called  ‘Meet Bill’ – which is coming out on DVD in Australia next week (note that I’d unmapped other EPG data at this point – hence the lack of other movies / covers coming up) :

You’ll notice it says COMING SOON… on the details section at the bottom (this might instead say NOW PLAYING AT MOVIES etc)…

When you drill down on the title – then you can get the full metadata (without me supplying any). The channel name of ‘COMING SOON..’ is also displayed up the top. I can then use either the EPG Scheduled Starttime/EndTime or the Original Air Date field (see below)(to represent the date that this movie is coming out at the rental store (or cinema) :

Unfortunately for this though – it appears that AMG only really have dvd covers for movies already released on DVD/TV in the US – so for some of the newer titles both at movies and on dvd (I tried Valkyrie for example – starting soon at the movies) – I could get the rich metadata but no cover. I think however - its possible to actually override a dvd cover link via the metadata and solve that problem.

Also – for actually getting the list of titles coming soon (or recently released) – there’s a lot of rss feeds out there that could be scraped/converted (if someone in the community gets the urge) – representing movies, dvd releases and downloadable content (netflicks etc)..

Additionally – you’ll see that the ‘record’ button still appears – so I’ll either have to remember not to press that (doh!) or find some way of making particular channels non recordable.

the fun continues….

In my previous post i mentioned I’d unlocked the ability to load Custom EPG Data (and Channel Logos) in Windows 7 ..

Now (thanks to a tip on the forum from a spanish user) – I’ve also now enabled the automatic Metadata lookup going for movies using custom EPG data (where rich metadata is automatically matched from the AMG webservice) – a luxury normally only available to US (and Canadian?) users. 

In this example below – the movie Sahara is showing on FTA tv tonight in Australia.  I only needed to have the title (and a couple of other fields) enabled – and presto – lots of goodness was downloaded/displayed on my system. (well at least for movies made after early 1990’s)…

Below is the synopsis Tab – the short summary is from the EIT guide – the long synopsis is from AMG (as is the Movie Cover) :

You also now get a similar movies tab – which is populated completely with metadata from AMG (none of these similar movies are showing on tv). You can of course drill down to any matched movie and get more info on that.

Also – no need to provide the actors/directors etc in the EPG anymore for Movies – the AMG metadata also provides all this :

You can then click on an actor and it brings up a Movies by Actor page. (and gets everything from AMG – none of these titles are on my system).

The ‘Movies on TV’ feature is also now enabled on the start menu too.  Via the 4 pivots – Now, Next, Top Rated and Genres – you can view upcoming tv movies with cover images etc like the dvd library (and then easily do single click recording/drilldown) – but you need to ensure it will be matched with something (so if its not showing now/next then it needs to have a user rating or genre).

I wonder if similar functionality exists for automatically grabbing TV Series information (not sure if the amg service provides this sort of data)?

I mentioned in my last post that I’d been trying to figure out how to load in custom EPG data into 7MC (Windows 7 Media Center). In Australia (since TVPack2008) – we’ve been unable to use anything except EIT EPG data (inband transmitted epg) – which even on a good day is pretty poor quality. Also - many Australians (and people in other parts of the globe) are missing epg data for various channels (in Australia theres no EIT epg data at all for pay tv) and want a way to load in the data.

Anyhow – I’ve now been able to successfully load in my own MXF epg data (via loadmxf.exe) – which was generated by an XMLTV to MXF converter I whipped up. The amount of metadata you can supply for the new format is really rich – and there’s all sorts of new fields to investigate and see if they are being brought through to the 7MC UI (some of the features such as providing an image for a show doesnt seem to be enabled on the 7mc beta).

I thought I’d post some screenshots to show what I’ve managed to achieve. Note that in the screens below – I’ve been loading in data against an unused DVB-T station (well – at least not by me) - ‘SBS Radio 2’ – and have supplied data for another channel ‘ABC1’. Most of the other epg data you see (on other channels) is from the EIT epg data (as your able to mix/match different sources). I did my testing this way as I was actually recording stuff on another channel at the time. (Heroes – on 7HD) – and didn’t want to screw anything up..

1. Example of a Program with supplied custom Title/Year/Star Rating/Description (and Channel Logo) :

2. Similar example – but this time showing a Title/SubTitle/Description. (this is important for Australians as no Subtitle field is provided for EIT data – a real pain when recording a series).

3. Example of popup details screen (with star rating, year etc). The program is flagged as being a movie (something that doesnt work so well on EIT) – so the thumbnail displayed is different to normal shows (which normally has a tv screen). I tried to supply custom logo for the actual show (via similar technique to how the channel logo was displayed) – but this doesn’t seem to be used (yet?) by 7MC. Alternatively – an ID can be provided for the movie which i suspect can be used to retrieve the AMG metaservices (similar to how the DVD library works).

4. Example of MiniGuide browse – again showing the Title/Subtitle/Channel Logo.

5. Example of sample Recorded TV Show (no thumbnail yet) – but the important bit is the Title + Episode Title are available now (unlike my other EIT based recordings).

Being a ‘prototype’ solution - there’s still quite a bit of work to do to clean this import process up (and I want to see what other metadata goodies can be imported and brought through to the UI).

I’m not sure if or when I’ll release something to the public on how to get this going (whether it be the info on the MXF format – or some set of tools for getting the job done) – but thought I’d post this entry to show that at least it ‘can’ be done…

It also appears the MXF import tool also allows for lots of other things to be imported/manipulated on the system – such as configuration (potentially provides a way to add more than 4 tuners?), sports data, custom internet tv channels, tv series/season info and more… (lots and lots of things to investigate).. It appears that pretty much all the dynamic data in Media Center is stored in the same db and customizable via MXF files. (including a lot of the stuff that used to be in the VMC registry).

Stay tuned…

Windows 7 beta 1 (Build 7000) was officially launched to the public today – and can be downloaded from here right now (note that due to the huge demand there may be some problems getting through). There’s a limit of 2.5 million serial numbers available (which will allow usage through to the hard expiry date of August 2009)– so it’s first in best dressed – and if you miss out – you’ll instead be limited to the 30 day activation grace period.

With this build also comes with an important fix that prevents MP3 files corruption – so it’s important to apply this patch right after installation. The number of people who already obtained this build via channel BT just after Xmas were hit by this issue (and dvr-ms playback issues) – and is probably a good lesson as to why you should be waiting for official releases..

The version made available to the public is similar to the ‘Ultimate’ release (minus the Ultimate Extra’s and some of those other bits) – but for Media Center users this means you’ll be able to use up to 4 tuners. (rather than 2 as per Home Premium).

I’ve been playing with this for a couple of days now (as it was made available to connect, msdn + technet subscribers on Thursday) – and it’s been running really well for me so far.  The entire o/s installed and was fully configured in under 60 minutes (and required almost no intervention from me) – so I was again very impressed.

I’m running with 4 DVB-T tuners (1 Aver PCIE Dual Tuner + 2 x different Aver DVBT PCI single tuners) – and also noticed that for the first time (for me) I can also use the FM Tuner for radio.  While build 6801 contained the critical PVR related bugs (also present in the initial TVPack2008 release) - the recent fixes for TVPack2008 have also been carried forward into this Windows 7 build – and has allowed me to run this as my primary Media Center machine.

The Media Center UI has been improved quite a bit on the previous release (particularly in the area of the popup information panels) – and the new miniguide is now available as well (which shows 2 full rows of the EPG while you are watching TV). Also enabled for this release are the US Only ‘Internet TV’ content – which now comes up inside the EPG itself (and are available as ‘channels’ inside the EPG).  The other overlay tabs/pivots available during the Live TV/DVD/Video playback still seem to be largely unfinished – for example you can’t actually see the synopsis without clicking through to the popup details panel.

This release was wonderfully timed to coincide with my repaired coffee machine arriving back from Sunbeam – so I was able to put in a few hours last night into looking at importing 3rd party EPG Data (the scenario most desired by Australian users since TVPack2008 came out and clobbered the existing web service based EPG providers).

I (think) I made some progress – and have successfully gotten loadmxf.exe to import some test EPG Data from an MXF file – but I still can’t see it inside the MCE UI itself. However – when checking the log files generated by mcstore – it tells me I’ve successfully imported xx objects into the default ObjectStore (so something is happening at least). One unresolved issue (which is probably preventing the data from being visible) is I haven’t been able to successfully link the Schedule Entries to a service – only to a Program (and am getting ‘unresolved forward reference’ messages if I supply the service guid with the entry).

From what I’ve seen of the metadata that (can?) be loaded in – it certainly looks like there’s a bunch of possibilities there for 3rd parties to inject lots rich metadata into the system. This is not just in the form of Series/Episode/Actor data – but also potentially imagery (channel and series logos) and a much larger set of ‘known’ attributes about programs. I also have a hunch that 3rd party developers may also be able to insert custom EPG channels - similar to the Internet TV ones (loading them in via loadmxf.exe) – which offer new services and point to different custom MCML Web Applications. (which would be very nice indeed and finally give developers 1st class access into the Live TV experience).  Of course none of this will be official supported by Microsoft…

Stay tuned..

Also - If you want to get some help/ask some questions about Windows 7 – come and visit the Windows 7 Beta TechNet forums . (I’m now an official MVP Moderator in these forums – so thought I’d better give it a plug).

I’ve just updated all of the Big Screen Product Installers on bigscreenglobal.com so they now support Windows 7 (just tested on the Windows 7 Beta1 Build 7000 – officially released today).

These installers have now been tested/confirmed to work (without any special hacks) on all of the following configurations :

- Windows Vista Home Premium/Ultimate (32 bit and 64 bit)
- Windows Vista Home Premium/Ultimate with TVPack 2008 (32 bit and 64 bit)
- Windows 7 Home Premium/Ultimate (32 bit and 64 bit)

As before – all current Windows Vista + Windows 7 supported Media Center Extenders (XBox360, LinksSys DMA2x00, DLink etc) are also supported (and auto detected) by these products.

As per before – all registered (and trial) users can download these updated installers free of charge – and existing licenses/serial numbers will continue to work. (ie. no additional charge for Windows 7 support)

NB: You can double check you have the correct installer by look for the ‘D’ postfix on the file name (eg. BSWV2_R14D.zip). If you need to get the new file – just go back to the product download page on your bigscreenglobal account.

Big Screen Contacts v2 Back Online for Trial/Purchase

I’ve also re-enabled the Big Screen Contacts v2 product signup/download (this was made unavailable for a while) – so if you were wanting to check out this product (or purchase it) it’s there now.

Hurry – the Big Screen XMAS/NY Promotion ends in 7 days!!

The  Big Screen XMAS/NY Special will be finished on January 15. If you want to get any of the Big Screen titles for USD$14.95 each you’ve got just 7 days left to do so – otherwise you’ll miss out on saving up to 40% off RRP.

Up until Jan 15 (2009) I’m offering a BIG discount on the Big Screen apps for Vista Media Center – and you can get them for a for only USD$14.95 each. (which is up to 40% of the SRP).

To get this special price – you will need to supply a discount code. See original email below for how to get this offer (and some further instructions on how to enter the discount codes below that) -

Note: This offer was also emailed out earlier this week to registered bigscreenglobal.com users (that had the ‘contact me about offers.. etc’ option enabled on their account profile). Although I’ve made an exception this time (and decided to announce this on my blog) – please ensure you do sign up for an account (and check the appropriate notification options) to find out about specials like this (and other product announcements).

Since I’ve had a few emails in the past on how to purchase/apply discount codes - – please see this quick guide below :

1. If you’ve already signed up for a trial version of the product you want to purchase (and you will have a bigscreenglobal.com account) – the ‘Buy Now’ button will be made available via your account management page as per the picture below.

Note : You can also get to this ‘Buy Now’ button via the ‘purchase’ page for each product (and you will be asked to create a bigscreenglobal.com account if you don’t have one or sign in to your existing account if not already signed in).

2.  When you get to this page the full RRP will be shown. You can then enter the ‘discount code’ in the supplied text box. (example below for the above offer) :

3. Once you have entered the code and clicked the ‘Submit’ button – the page will be refreshed with the new discounted price. At this point you can click on the BUY NOW button to continue with your purchase.

4. After you complete the purchase (via Paypal) – you will then be the proud owner of a big screen product license. If you already installed a trial version of the purchased product – and nominated to ‘upsize’ your existing Serial Number (during purchase) – then all you need to do is run the product inside Media Center where you can ‘reverify’ the product (which will automatically remove the trial limitations/expiry dates). If you were issued a new Serial Number – then you can run the Product Registration tool and enter your new serial number without requiring a reinstall of the product (located in the Windows Start Menu – via the Appropriate Big Screen subfolder). 

Please see the bigscreenglobal.com faq+support section for more details on purchasing/activation and ..

Happy purchasing – and remember this special discount will expire on Jan 15…

I’ve noticed that getting hold of latest rental movie’s on Blu-Ray seems to be increasingly more difficult of late – and it’s been at least 3 weeks since I’ve managed to hire a new release in that format.  On further investigation – it turns out 2 out of the 3 local movie rental stores I go to have decided to stop getting new Blu-Ray titles altogether – claiming that people simply weren’t renting them.  The other store who does still have Blu-Ray has only ever been half committed – and rarely gets more than 2-3 new titles a month. (and seems to be getting less and less of them).

I don’t ever remember anything like this happening when DVD’s were the ‘new’ format – and once rental stores starting stocking them (after a slow start) – they upped the number of titles quickly until their VHS tapes became relegated to a shelf at the back of the store.

Unfortunately – in Australia the Blu-Ray players are still too expensive – with the cheapest models available for around AUD$400. Similarly buying new BluRay’s movies will set you back around AUD$50 – whereas the same title on DVD will cost between AUD$20-30 depending on where you shop. For rental stores (who have all charged same o/night price no matter what the format) – it means they need to rent each title several more times just to break even.

Movies on demand as a viable alternative is still a LONG way off in Australia due to a plethora of reasons. Apart from the usual suspects - bandwidth costs, slow speeds and DRM related issues - so far the Australian offerings provide consumers with much less choice, older titles and worse quality – all for a substantially higher price.

Hopefully this isn’t a prelude to the death of the Blu-Ray format – as there’s really no ‘equal’ format that offers the full 1080P high def quality delivered. However, unless the companies involved can get the cost of both players + titles down – the future for Blu-Ray is looking very uncertain. 

The introduction in 2009 of the Australian ‘freeview’ system could either be a blessing - or a really bad thing - for existing Australians television users (of which over 50% are now using DVB-T hardware to access digital TV).

The TV Broadcasters / and Freeview organization have so far been tight lipped about exactly how it will be implemented – but what we do know is that each of the 5 major broadcasters will be allowed an additional channel (which is not restricted to only showing duplicated content). 

The picture below (from freeview site) shows the 15 unique channels that will be offered both with/without freeview. Note that for Channel TEN – this picture is wrong – and the three channels are actually going to be Ten SD, One HD, and ONE SD (with ONE being the brand name for a new sports only channel) – and the existing TEN HD channel being ditched (so standard shows on TEN will no longer be broadcast in HD much to the dismay of many viewers).

Unlike the freeview systems in the UK and NZ where ‘freeview’ introduced a new MPEG4.h264/DVB-S2 based system - all these channels will be delivered over the existing DVB-T system (which is locked down to MPEG2 content only). As with UK/NZ freeview – manufacturers will need to pay a per unit fee in order to have the official ‘freeview’ logo on their packaging, rumoured to be around $10 at manufacturing point (and potentially a lot more by the time it hits retail).   Keeping in mind that you can pick up DVB-T Set Top Boxes (STB’s) from the supermarket down here for as little as $30 a pop – this might raise the prices significantly. Additionally – in order to get the freeview badge on PVR equipment – features like ad-skipping will be banned as will ability to seek through recordings (with maximum of 10x speed allowed).

While Australian’s will welcome the new channels – the major point of concern is what will happen to the current 7 Day Electronic Program Guide (EPG) - which is transmitted unencrypted and for viewable for free (without upgrading to any ‘freeview’ approved devices). The existing 7 day EPG metadata is viewable on the large majority of STB’s and HDTV’s on the market now - as it conforms to open standards (where the actual guide metadata can be parsed and understood).  This conformance also means both hardware and software based PVR systems like Vista Media Center (as of TVPack2008) can read in this EPG – allowing users to search the EPG, schedule recordings in advance and do automated series recording.

Again – while no concrete evidence is yet available – it’s starting to very much appear like the freeview ‘EPG’ might be delivered using MHEG5 (Interactive TV Technology) – which means a small iTV application will be transmitted over the air and run on the local STB/HDTV/PVR system. (much like a java application is downloaded and run in your browser). While this will give end users a consistent looking User Interfaces for viewing the EPG (some of the existing devices out there have woefully bad inbuilt EPG viewers) – it puts up a brick wall between the device and the MHEG application – meaning that the device will no longer actually be able to access the raw EPG metadata. (and hence tight integration with PVR systems like Media Center etc will no longer work).  

It may also mean that the hundreds of thousands of DVB-T capable devices out there will be rendered obsolete (if the viewer actually wants to get the EPG) – as none of the existing devices support MHEG5. There was a single MHEG capable STB released for the Australian market back in 2002/2003 by TEAC (priced at over AUD$450) – and due to poor sales – and there only being the odd token Interactive program being broadcast (that utilized MHEG) – it was discontinued shortly after. (and no MHEG content has been shown in Australia DVB-T since).

*If* this MHEG guide is implemented for freeview - the big question will then be  :

1) Will EIT and MHEG guides be transmitted in future in tandem..

2) Will the EIT guide be switched off altogether (or only now/next info be transmitted) – and users forced to buy freeview approved devices to see an EPG.

If it’s 2 – then it’s a really bad thing – and the entire freeview system is really just a nasty way of tricking the public into paying extra for a DRM protected EPG system offering absolutely no additional benefit (and more than likely taking away features they used to have).

There’s also been no mention whatsoever of any ‘additional’ interactive services being made available - which could have actually been a real compelling reason to upgrade to a MHEG compliant device.

It also will be hugely expensive for consumers to upgrade their equipment - many having just spent $1000+ on new HDTV’s with inbuilt tuners (which no doubt will either not be upgradable to support MHEG5 or require the associated costs of getting a firmware upgrade). Right at the moment of course - ‘freeview’ badged equipment is not available for sale anywhere (sometime in 2009) – so many users buying new equipment for Xmas are likely to end up with outdated goods very quickly (with no manufacturers committing to free upgrades/etc).

We won’t know of course the full extent of what freeview brings us (or takes from us) until more announcements are made over the coming months.

Stay tuned…