Introduction

Since Windows XP Media Center (MCE) was first released in Australia in late 2004, it has lacked an important function which is essential to the Media Center experience - an officially supported Electronic Program Guide.

In the beginning two separate programs came to the rescue. Namely TVHarvest, which obtains the guide data, and Quickguide which enables MCE to read the data and display it in a traditional form. Whilst these programs worked quite well together, they were difficult to configure and the majority of users struggled to set up an EPG.

The original Bladerunner was created to simplify the TVHarvest/Quickguide set up and whilst still employing these programs, it enabled an easy installation which opened up the EPG for many more users.

Now we welcome the next chapter in Bladerunner's development - Bladerunner Pro!

So what's different?

Not much in terms of how Bladerunner Pro obtains the guide data, but from then on we see significant changes. After installation, Bladerunner Pro's job is to first grab guide data using TVHarvest, then when MCE wants more guide data because the available days are getting low, Bladerunner Pro now directs MCE to access the data from a folder on the local hard drive!! As far as MCE is concerned it thinks it's doing a normal download of guide data from the internet, so as long as Bladerunner Pro continues to provide the data by either manual or automatic downloads (scheduled task), MCE will quite happily access and process the data locally, all the time believing that the data is being downloaded from an EPG server in real time!

So in essence, Bladerunner Pro provides (as far as MCE is concerned) a native EPG!

Added Bonus: If you have access to alternate XML data sources such as PayTV, you can now effortlessly integrate them into the MCE Electronic Program Guide as long as that data is where MCE expects it to be.

Bladerunner Pro is provided FREE as a service to the members of the Australian XP Media Center Community with the compliments of all involved - Enjoy!
Download Bladerunner Pro here
Installation Instructions

BladeRunner Pro consists of a two part installation set up. The BladeRunner Pro component of the installation, and the MCE configuration set up. Please follow the steps in order starting with "part - a" below.

Thank you.
 
part - a | part - b | forum