MCE discussion cont

[GregMoore]

Checkout this info on how to Get a EPG into MCE and it works I've tried it with a few mods for NZ being a non supported country (XMLTV)

There are various sources of NZ XMLTV listings that can be imported into MCE per instructions below - easy to use yes

This is from Thegreenbutton.com tells you how to setup MCE 2005 with XMLTV - depends of course how you get your XMLTV listings .

http://www.thegreenbutton.com/commun...48&TopicPage=7

Hello everybody

I updated my MCE 2004 installation guide to 2005. Please excuse me for spelling erros and the like.

Updated: 28-12-2004

FYI: It is very important that you follow the guid step-by-step.

Also if you are on a clean machine then please start MCE, and make sure you get a TV signal. This will initialize the MCE. All settings however will be deleted, when you follow the installation instructions, so don't spend to much time customizing the setup.

1. Install required prerequisites:

· Install IIS

1. Start “Control Panel” -> “Add Remove Programs” –> “Add Remove Windows Componetns”.

2. Select “Internet Informations Services (IIS)”, and click “Details”.

3. Select “Common Files”, “Internet Informations Services Snap-In” and “World Wide Web Services”.

· Install .NET Framework 1.1 (I guess this is installed by default in MCE 2005 OS). Otherwise use Windows Update for this.

2. Install and configure WebGuide

· Download WebGuide2 from http://www.showtell.com/mce_webguide/2/.

· Install WebGuide using default settings.

· Optional: Update xmltv. You can get xmltv separately from SourceForge (see www.xmltv.org). Replace the filse in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\WebGuide2\XML_TV with the downloaded files.

· Configure the WebGuide using the “MCE WebGuide 2 Configuration” program.

1. Selected your country and click configure to select which channels you want guide data for.

2. Click “Download Data”.

3. Click “Create Schedule”.

4. Go to the Channels tab, and arrange the order of you channels. Click “Save Channels”. Notice: If you run step 1 or 2 again these changes will be lost.

· Replace the WebGuide2.dll, with the one Reinhard has posted here:
http://www.thegreenbutton.com/commun...=72332#bm72654
Delete or remove the old one (don’t rename it).

· Change security so recoding works

1. Control Panel -> Administration Tools -> Component Service.

2. Expand Component Services -> Computes.

3. Right click My Computers and select Properties.

4. Under Com Security, under "Lanuns and Activations Permissions" click "Edit defaults".

5. Click Add.

6. In the Select Users or Groups write "ASPNET" (not "ASP.NET") and click "Check Names" and click "OK".

7. Give the new "ASP.NET Machine Account (mycomputer\ASPNET)" the following to permissions: "Local Launch" and "Local Activation" and click "OK" until you are back.

· Confirm that you have data in webguide. Surf to http://localhost/webguide2/

3. Install and configure SmartGuide:

1. Download SmartGuide. Look for the latest version in this thread (this is very important).

2. Copy the contents from the binaries dir into the Windows\eHome directory + create shortcut to smartguide.exe.
(Alternatively, you can copy all *.dll files from the eHome directory to the SmartGuide directory).

3. Double click the C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ MCE2005_EPG_Enable.reg.

4. Run CasPol.exe -s off . It shold be in C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322.

5. Kill all eh* processes using Task Manager.

6. Delete everything under C:\documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\eHome\ (incl. prefs subfolders). Warning: This will delete anything configured in MCE including Secheduled Recordings, Channels Setup etc.

7. Edit the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Tuning Spaces\#\MinChannel to 1 using regedit.exe (where # is number of the tv setup you use (1 is for "Local Analog Cable", 2 is for "Local Analog Antenna"... I changed all of them to be sure). This will make channel 1 available as preset channel.

8. Delete every key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune using regedit.exe. This will clear all existing channels, and only use the one which will be configured using SmartGuide (we will not use MCE 2005's new scan feature).

9. Edit c:\windows\ehome\smartguide.exe.config file using notepad:

· WebGuide2DSN. Make sure this points to you WebGuide2 Access database. Default should be OK.

· TuningSpaceCountryCode. Set this to you own country code (the same as international phone number prefix. E.g. 49 for germany, 45 for Denmark etc). In MCE 2005 it is not necessary to change the Regional Setting to German :-)


· TuningSpaceSignal change this if you need to.

· It should not be necessary to change anything else.

10. Start “c:\windows\ehome\smartguide.exe /i”.

· First click Channel Editor and click "Load" to load all the channels configuration from WebGuide. Fill in all the frequencies for each of your channels (my cable company has a list of frequencies on Text TV on the Info/Mosaic channel). The format for e.g. 725,25 is 725250000.
I use the exact same number for "number", "virtual channel" and "preset". That is... I use the defaults that I configured when setting up WebGuide.
Make sure that you that you fill out all columns.
Click Save (this will create a c:\windows\ehome\output\frequencies.reg file and also add an extra table "channel_extra" to the WebGuide's Guide.mdb. This table contains your frequencies, so you might want to back this file up when reinstalling WebGuide). Close the channel Editor.

· Click "1. WebGuide2MCE!"

· Click "2. LoadGuide from XML"... this should produce a "Congratulations. It worked...". This will create a brand new MCE EPG Storage file that only contains your custom channels and no extra channels which you don't use.

· Close SmartGuide.

11. Double click the c:\windows\ehome\output\frequencies.reg to import you own customized frequencies settings. I have to do this every time I used SmartGuide (se later for how to configure this in a Bach job)

12. Start MCE and confirm that you can watch TV and have Guide data and all the right channels in the right order (same order as in the WebGuide). If it dosn't work you might need to reboot, and then run step 14.

13. (New as of 27-12-2004). Disable automatic download of EPG data. In MCE, go to Settings\General\Automatic Download Options.

14. From now on it is only necessary to start SmartGuide and click "1. WebGuide2MCE!"and then "2. LoadGuide from XML", or you could setup the batch job in the next step.

4. Setup batch job for importing

· Add the following two lines to the (the /f imports frequencies.reg everytime) “C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\WebGuide2\MCE_Wizard\ download_guide.bat”:
cd C:\WINDOWS\ehome\
C:\WINDOWS\ehome\smartguide.exe /f

del C:\WINDOWS\ehome\output\*.xml (new as of 27-12-2004)

That is it. If you have problems please read this thread first.

If anyone finds errors in this installation guide, please let me know, and I will edit the steps.

[ipguy]

has anyone successfully set this up ?
Does it work ?

[timmy]

i think most folks here will probably say 'why bother.. tivo is much better'

or something like that anyway

FWIW i've got MCE 2005 installed on my primary desktop machine actually. Didn't think much of the media centre app tho, pretty average. Just needed an XP copy with SP2 integrated. Use nlite to customize it and get it down to one cd. quite useful

I thought of buying the remote for it actually till I realised I could probably only control the media centre app (actually i'm sure there is support for other apps etc). I decided to get an ATI remote wonder II instead as it's RF which is nice for my newly made cheapass (but quiet) wooden server box. lol

Anyway, I know a couple of people running it in NZ with XMLTV data so I know it works and for some it's a preferred solution over Tivo.


cheers,

TiM

[STu]

has anyone successfully set this up ?
Does it work ?

Yes it works however suggest you try a derivation called QuickGuide that has a much simpler setup as it doesn't use an intermediate access database.

You can find it here

One thing with MCE vs TiVo is that navigation around MCE is less intuitive than TiVo at this point in time.
E.g. To add an actor recording you select:
- Recorded Tv
- Add Recording
- Keyword
- Actor

Maybe it's me but I just didn't think of actors as a keyword.

That said, ability to have multiple tuners, extenders in other rooms and other non PVR functionality makes MCE a good next option for me. I'll always keep and love my TiVo but the single tuner limtiation of a series 1 TiVo is a pain. Would love to be able to use a series 2 TiVo but reality is, that probably won't be happening.