Niall has done something that will make a lot of Australian users very happy! He has figured out the EPG format of Windows Media Center (Windows 7 and TV Pack) and created a XML TV to Media Center converter (XMLTV to MXF). I am not sure some at Microsoft will be that happy but for users its great news

Niall has the details on his blog:

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..

Continue reading on his blog (and checkout the pics)

 

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