TV guide with highlights, movies, kids, sport...

glow · Post by **glow** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 09:33

While I'm watching TV I'd like to see a TV guide with
- highlights of today and the week ahead
- list of movies coming up
- list of kids programs
- sport on TV this week
Ideally it would be nice to be able to record the shows by pressing record on the remote.

It's the sort of content one gets in a printed weekly TV guide or on web sites like http://www.yourtv.com.au

Jammer · Post by **Jammer** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 09:47

I agree that it'd be extremely nice to be able to press a button in the EPG and have a list of movies or sports appear. You can do this using the JustEPG tap on the Topfield and it makes a BIG difference being able to filter just movies or sport, and then just press the Record button for the desired program.

Surely it wouldn't be difficult to code in some user-defined filters for use with the EPG??

DaveR · Post by **DaveR** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 00:15

The Humax Smart EPG allows you to do a search by either keyword, actor or genre so you can search for 'movie' and it'll list all movies, or search for Simpsons and it'll list all episodes of the Simpons (and any shows with O.J. or Jessica in them).

download · Post by **download** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 07:33

glow wrote:Ideally it would be nice to be able to record the shows by pressing record on the remote. It's the sort of content one gets in a printed weekly TV guide or on web sites

And there's the rub. The EPG is supplied by 6 individual networks to varying degrees of completeness or standards. Some can't even get the fields right for what data should go where. There's no point in trying to do this sort of highlighting until a uniform and complete EPG is available.

Freeview should provide such an EPG but the irony is its likely most PVRs will be somehow barred from using it.

Regards

Peter Gillespie

prl · Post by **prl** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 08:33

download wrote:...
Freeview should provide such an EPG but the irony is its likely most PVRs will be somehow barred from using it.

Regards

Peter Gillespie

I can't see the networks putting any more work into the accuracy and usefulness of their guide than they do at the moment and none of the promos for Freeview are talking about any extra functionality in the Freeview EPG.

As for what being "barred" from using the Freeview EPG will mean, I've already expressed the view on DTV that Freeview's wish to deny anything to makers of PVRs that aren't Freeview compliant will simply be FUD: "Oooooh, that PVR doesn't have the nice Freeview sticker on! It must be dodgey! I bet it won't even work when we get it home!" I have a feeling that that may well work well enough for them to not bother with technical barriers. After all, what will they actually do if EPG stops working for a big chunk of their audience who are already used to it, but aren't being offered any firmware upgrade needed to get the new EPG?

It's odd that since the first few press releases and interviews when Freeview was launched, there's been nothing said since about making the EPG inaccessible.

I wouldn't put it past them to do something really stupid like turning off the existing FTA EPG, but I don't think it's likely. If they do, then perhaps they'll deliver a much-needed boost to IceTV's revenue

tonymy01 · Post by **tonymy01** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 08:46

I am about 70% sure that Freeview UK has both MHEG and EIT EPG. I remember because this was one of the biggest differences between the firmware for the UK Topfield 5000s (they decided to call 5800s) vs the rest of the world Topfield 5000s (DVB-T ones, anyway).
The MHEG offers slightly more advanced services than just "listing" an EPG, but many Topfield 5800 owners disable it due to its uselessness (and buggyness.... it tended to crash the 5Ks I think)

Regards

glow · Post by **glow** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 10:35

I don't mind if the info is not coming directly from the EPG.
It could be just text from a web page or other source converted to XML for WizTV like the news or weather currently is.
e.g.
TV highlights
- Australian Open Tennis
- Doctor Who
Then if one presses record there's enough info from WizTV to set a timer on the Wiz.

madmax · Post by **madmax** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 11:02

Hmmm, I dunno. I think WizTV is too slow to use as an EPG.

DaveR · Post by **DaveR** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 16:41

glow wrote:I don't mind if the info is not coming directly from the EPG.
It could be just text from a web page or other source converted to XML for WizTV like the news or weather currently is.
e.g.
TV highlights
- Australian Open Tennis
- Doctor Who
Then if one presses record there's enough info from WizTV to set a timer on the Wiz.

A beta version of wiztv had something like this. It showed a listing of popular programs currently airing each week. Click on one to see a full synopsis of the last episode (or view story lines from episodes you'd missed). Then just click on 'Record Series' to set a timer to record future episodes. The only thing preventing wiztv having something like this is copyright and licensing.

glow · Post by **glow** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 20:40

Dave? wrote:A beta version of wiztv had something like this. It showed a listing of popular programs currently airing each week. Click on one to see a full synopsis of the last episode (or view story lines from episodes you'd missed). Then just click on 'Record Series' to set a timer to record future episodes. The only thing preventing wiztv having something like this is copyright and licensing.

So what are the rules for getting content onto WizTV?
Does Beyonwiz/DPG have to have a commercial arrangement in place?
Are government sites freely available?
If a site made its content freely content available via RSS feed, does this mean we could just use WizTV as an RSS reader?
What if we just considered WizTV to be a simple web browser? Could any site be fair game?
Would anyone object if WizTV carried ads to fund the content?
Could we have user-contributed content on WizTV? e.g. Wiz owners favourite programs.

DaveR · Post by **DaveR** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 18:46

It all depends on the copyright owner of the content. They may agree that wiztv only needs to display a copyright notice. Or they may insist on a monthly licencing fee or royalties or to be allowed to include free advertising.

Even with freely available RSS feeds and web pages etc there are legal hurdles to overcome. The minimum would involve politely asking the content owner if you could use their content (even if you were sure that you can anyway).

Just re-using some web site's images on your own website is a breach of copyright, let alone re-using their content. Viewing it in wiztv may be seen as re-using their content for your own purposes - because it would possibly need to be reformatted and would therefore be coming from the wiztv server instead of directly from the original web site. Arguing that WizTV is just a web browser could land you in court with expensive legal fees (though you'd probably get a cease a desist order before it came to that) - unless of course wiztv was capable of directly displaying and navigating webpages (which it currently is not).