Hello Microsoft Team,

I am an Australian user of Vista Media Centre, and you may know that due to our broadcasters we don't have an official Microsoft Guide source. To get our guide data we rely on various external sources (IceTV and FreeEPG being the main players).

Now, with the changes to the way the guide data is included in TV Pack these sources have been locked out, meaning our only guide data is gathered from substandard EIT data (in essence it's completely useless for series recordings or anything really).

A post was made some time ago by Mike Hayton over at xpmediacentre.com.au in relation to the creation of some KB articles by Microsoft to allow third paty providers to include their data in VMC/TV Pack.

Is this still the case? And if so when can it reasonably be expected to be produced. And you've now decided not to do this, is there an explanation?

Cheers

Loading in you own guide data is not a supported scenario.

The intent of what was said in the linked post still stands. However, Its looking likely that instead of a KB article, I'll just post the details. Note, this plan is still subject to change. If the plan does change, I will let you know.

Im still working on typing up the information. However, it is low priority to me and as other things come up, it gets bumped down the todo list.

Im hesitant to put a timeframe on it. It should be done in the next couple of months. The optimistic side of me is thinking weeks.

 

 

There are many people in Aus that look forward to having a Guide that works as it should in Aus.

I'm an IceTV subscriber, and their service is fantastic.  We all look forward to being able to use such services in conjunction with the TV Pack 2008.

Cheers

 

 

mikehayton:

Loading in you own guide data is not a supported scenario.

The intent of what was said in the linked post still stands. However, Its looking likely that instead of a KB article, I'll just post the details. Note, this plan is still subject to change. If the plan does change, I will let you know.

Im still working on typing up the information. However, it is low priority to me and as other things come up, it gets bumped down the todo list.

Im hesitant to put a timeframe on it. It should be done in the next couple of months. The optimistic side of me is thinking weeks.

Mike,

Many thanks for the response. I realise the priority is a little lower on the pecking order, just trying to keep it on the radar.

Given our networks are loathe to provide this information, and the EIT data they do provide is rubbish, this is a very important part of the Media Center experience in Australia.

I'm sure there are many OEMs who would like to provide the TV Pack but until such time as there's proper guide data available for it the won't be doing so.

Thanks again

mikehayton:

Loading in you own guide data is not a supported scenario.

The intent of what was said in the linked post still stands. However, Its looking likely that instead of a KB article, I'll just post the details. Note, this plan is still subject to change. If the plan does change, I will let you know.

Im still working on typing up the information. However, it is low priority to me and as other things come up, it gets bumped down the todo list.

Im hesitant to put a timeframe on it. It should be done in the next couple of months. The optimistic side of me is thinking weeks.

 

Hi Mike,

Despite trying to contact Microsoft from many angles (both here in Australian and in the U.S.), we have received very little information regarding the TV Pack update and in particular the changes made to the Electronic Program Guide system.

As the major commercial EPG option here and a provider of many Interactive features (such as remote recording), we are obviously very concerned with the current situation and not having a suitable solution for the TV Pack update and therefore Microsoft customers here locally.

Not only do we have many thousands of MCE customers we also have many agreements in place with the OEMs (including Sony, Asus, NEC, Toshiba etc) here, whereby we support the sale of thier MCE products with a free gift subscription to our service so that they get the true MCE experience.

We have tried to obtain the necessary information through our OEM contacts but many seem to also be in the dark and obviously do not want to support the update until there is an EPG solution for their customers from our end.

We are concerned that not only will we not be able to offer an EPG solution, we may also not be able to provide many of our IceTV Interactive featurs to MCE customers who have the TV Pack update. We believe features such as remote recording via our website, customer mobile phone mini-site, IceTV Widget and the newly released IceTV iPhone application, have played a significant role and greatly attributed to the success both XP and Vista Media Center devices have had here locally.

Any help you can provide IceTV regarding the above would be greatly appreciated, so that we can put all our efforts into developing a suitable solution for customers here and for our OEM partners as soon as possible (even if that information is only limited and not yet finished).

Please contact either myself directly or a member of our Development team if you can help us with this sitaution.

Regards,

Thanks Mike for your response. I would like to add my voice to those asking for this information as soon as possible.

I provide the TVxb guide software. I have around 25,000 users who are potentially interested in moving to TV Pack 2008 and loading independant guide data into MCE.

There are many reasons why in-stream EIT data is not going to cut it in many countries.

 

Hi mike,

Has there been any progress on this?

Cheers

bumpity bump... bump...  bump...

 

So its been the hypothetical 'few weeks' - how is the progress going in documenting something simple that will actually make a product useable not only in Australia, Hong Kong and apparantly a few other countries....

 

We are patient people in this world, not having an English or American accent, but equally we do not like being forgotten about....

 

So, how about an update on its progress, it may just save this thread from being bombarded daily with the requests of how is it going.... Of course - even a high level quick snippet of information posted taking no more than 30 mins might give us bright sparks out there enough to fiddle and solve it ourselves, which could just be commented upon with things like yes, but.... no, you need....

ANYTHING will be better than the promissed silence, and now vendors are selling devices with TV Pack in these regions - disgruntled customers will only reflect on a poor product because of the lack of guide data and poor implementation of EIT.

Mike@MS and MS in general,

It's bad enough we don't have a local MS EPG dispite Tivo now being in OZ having an EPG, now that we can fianlly have DVB-T and our PayTV together on MCE with the TV Pack update, in fact isn't the point of the TV Pack for non US customers such as DVB-t users.

We rely on community free EPG solutions or a paide PEG solution due to a lack of commitment from Microsoft, such is the commitment to Media Center in Australia people are willing to pay almost the cost of Vista per year just to get the EPG data, large OEMs even provide this EPG solution to try and keep MCE momentum going dispite no MCE advertising or local commitment.

We only ask one thing, now that you have released the TV Pack (not that we can officially obtain it) and finally support our TV options a bit better seeing as you will not provide a local EPG could you please at least provide a solution for our local community and for ICE TV to provide a guide to us.

If this is not important that is just unbelievable!!!!!

Please get onto it now please

Anthony M

Digital TV recorders are only as good as the guide data allows them to be.

In Oz Vista TV pack is mostly useless until this is fixed.

Honestly releasing a complete update including specs to allow your 3rd party companies to fill in the gaps Microsoft can't / won't fill shouldn't be this hard.

Anthony

Agreed,

It should be easy

AM

Mike & MS,

I just can't understand why we seem to be being ignored, or why this issue is so un-important.

OEMs will no doubt be releasing OSs with the TV pack installed soon (if thery're not already now). But it's absolutely pointless if users in certain countries are unable to use the EPG in it. If no information is provided to anyone, how can anyone solve the problem?

As Impact said earlier, if you don't have time to write up a whole Kb article detailing everything, then atleast give us a snippet of how it works and maybe the clever brains out there can work out the rest.

Please don't leave everyone in the dark like this.

Thanks.

You're not being ignored. Its that Im busy with other things.

I hit a techincal problem in that the database protection is preventing the loading of the guide data. Its likely that when I release the information, someone will still have to figure out how to break the database protection in order to load the data. I'll work to make sure that Win7 doesnt have this problem.

 

So that's the update.

 

ANYTHING will be better than the promissed silence, and now vendors are selling devices with TV Pack in these regions - disgruntled customers will only reflect on a poor product because of the lack of guide data and poor implementation of EIT

Can you give specifics? What regions? what OEMs?

 

Thanks Mike,

A few words is better than no words.

"You're not being ignored. Its that Im busy with other things.

I hit a techincal problem in that the database protection is preventing the loading of the guide data. Its likely that when I release the information, someone will still have to figure out how to break the database protection in order to load the data. I'll work to make sure that Win7 doesnt have this problem.

So that's the update."


Then why was the TV Pack released to OEM's in countries other than the US?

Surely this can be fixed, or is it just that MS doesn't care about users in any other country other than the US?

Very dissapointing, it makes me wonder why I use/beta test officially released MS products.