MCE - Foxtel / PAY TV Guide

MCE (MCE 2005 and Vista MC) and PayTV Guide.

EDIT: JULY 2007 - This document is currently being edited bit by bit....

The guide was written when I had Foxtel Digital, so where you see FOXTEL, it will also generally apply to other PayTV solutions, and Optus Digital is almost identical as well. Note that where you see MCE it generally refers to both Media Centre Edition 2005 and Vista Home Premium/Ultimate Media Centre Versions.

While many users are only interested in using Windows Media Centre(er) Edition 2005 (MCE) with the new Digital Free-To-Air (FTA) signals, there are an increasing number that wish to use MCE with their Foxtel/Austar/Optus PayTV setup. Because a lot of the information in this Forum has become spread around in quite a few different threads, this guide aims at bringing as much information as possible to help those wanting to use their new Media Centre PC with Foxtel or other Pay TV Providers.

I’ve started with my views on hardware for MCE in general as well as for Foxtel setups, then moved onto a guide to getting Foxtel and the EPG up and running on your MCE system. If I’m wrong in anything, my apologies, and let me know via this thread.

Before I get into Foxtel, here’s some info for other providers, I’ve used Foxtel Digital Cable, Optus Analogue Cable and now use Optus Digital Cable with MCE, so my knowledge of the other PayTV solutions is obviously limited to what others have said. But here’s the situation as I understand it.

Optus Analogue PayTV – Follow the Foxtel example, the only difference will be your 2 digit channel numbers. So you’ll need to select a TWO digital channel number during the TV Guide setup with MCE. (Try and change to Optus Digital if you can, as the improvement in picture and sound quality is huge.)

Austar and Foxtel Satellite – The main problem is that these providers don’t seem to include all of the FTA channels (7,9,10 missing depending on what state you're in), which makes the whole thing a lot more tricky. Other than the missing channels, this guide should be fine, but for the missing channels, the best solution seems to be either use the registry tweaking thread (see below) to use a Digital TV card to get the missing channels, in conjunction with the Foxtel analogue card, OR to use a separate Digital TV card with it’s own recording software, not running under MCE, but under Windows. Save the recorded files to the Recorded TV folder (or My Videos depending on the recording format, dvr-ms files are suitable for Recorded TV folder, but not other file types, mpg etc). You could also use an analogue FTA card, like the Leadtek TV2000 Expert, which works fine for Analogue FTA via an external aerial. (doesn’t do dvr-ms though). Another way is to use the RF connectors, so aerial RF into the set-top box, RF out into an analogue MCE card. The FTA channels will all appear, and the PayTV channel will appear as only one channel. I find it hard to recommend this method, getting MCE to change the PayTV channel seems very complicated indeed.

The Obvious Questions and Your MCE Hardware.

Foxtel/Optus Dig Hardware

Again, many other threads here relate to hardware choices. With the intent of trying to get a single source of many answers, the following are my thoughts about choosing your MCE hardware.

· No matter how many times it is written in the forum, these questions still keep coming. By default, you cannot use MCE for Foxtel AND Digital TV at the same time. As I mentioned earlier, you can use one tuner in MCE and another in Windows if you want. BUT, a clever person has discovered that with some fancy registry tweaking and general tinkering, you can get it to work. Doing this is beyond the scope of this article (for now), but the link to the thread is HERE.

· If you want to use Foxtel with MCE, you MUST use an analogue TV Tuner card. You CANNOT use the AV inputs of any Digital TV cards, they are all currently useless within MCE, although some hyrbid cards do work, many others do not. The Hauppauge HVR-1300 is my current recommended hybrid card whcih does work un der MCE. The older PVR150MCE or 250MCE were my recommended cards. I personally bought the 500MCE which is just 2 x 150MCE cards together in one card, but this ended up being a total waste of money. If you want to pay the extra $$ for 2 Foxtel STB’s so you can record on one Foxtel channel while watching another, or record two shows at the same time, you should buy two HVR1300/PVR150MCE or 250MCE cards, not one 500MCE card as there is no provision for inputs from two Set-top boxes (It expects an aerial signal, which both tuners use). I find that most Foxtel shows are repeated so often that I have no need to record two at a time. These cards also have an FM tuner, so that’s a bonus, but the hybrid ones don;t usually work under MCE as they use digital radio!, not standard FM. Not that I listen to it much, but it does complete the MCE experience, and adds to the WAF. (Wife Approval Factor). Note that you can’t use FM Radio with Digital TV. I note the Hauppauge cards are getting hard to find, but the new 1300 model looks interesting, it can be run in analogue mode, OR can be used for Digital TV (but NOT both at the same time, and swapping will involve a full reset of all MCE TV settings and config), so it's worth looking into, costs a little bit more than the 150, but if you can't get the 150, it'll be a good one.

· Get the Microsoft Remote Control and make sure the 2 IR ‘senders’ are included (they should be). One of the best parts of the whole MCE concept is watching all your programs from the ‘Recorded TV’ section and fast forwarding the ads!!! The fast forward on the Microsoft remote works very well, and the 30 second default jump fits the ad breaks excellently. It’s truly great missing all the ads!!! (Societal poisoning in my opinion, with a couple of funny exceptions. OK, I’ll try and keep the rants to a minimum!!)

MINIMUM SPECS

Lots of talk about what the minimum specs are to run MCE. I don’t know exactly what they would be, but I wouldn’t run the 2005 version on anything below this, and if you want Digital TV and not Foxtel, you’ll certainly need to go to a faster CPU. P4 1.6GHz or Athlon XP 1600+, 512MB RAM, 7200RPM HDD, DirectX 9 Video card (Ge-Force FX 5200 or Radeon 9550). For Vista MC, I'd go a a step up and say P4 3GHz, 1GB RAM and Geforce 6xxx or Radeon X300 or better as a very minimum.

Obviously there are many equally knowledgeable opinions around here about what hardware is good for an MCE box. These are my opinions, so excuse me if I digress from the Foxtel concept for a little bit.

If you want to skip straight to the Foxtel info, just scroll down to the Foxtel Setup heading below.

MCE HARDWARE

For your hardware, it’s important to realise that many different setups will work, it just depends what you want from your MCE setup. But I will say that the following points should be considered before you choose. I know that other solutions, both cheaper and more expensive can also work perfectly to achieve the same outcome, but these are some items and concepts that I would currently recommend to my mates wanting advice for an MCE system, also keeping in mind they will be ringing me for free support!!! This info is written in December 2007, so some hardware may be a little out of date by the time some of you read this!!!

1. VIDEO CARD - If you're still using AGP cards, I'd go 6600, or 7300GT. For PCI-Ex16, go for GeForce 8400GS, 8500GT or 8600GT video card or Radeon 2xxx series or above. You video card should be fanless ideally, unless you're a gamer, in which case I'd go the 512MB 8800GT or 512MB 8800GTS. The 6200 series is acceptable on a budget, but a 128MB 6600 card is not . If you have a CRT TV, then ensure it has Component Out (also described by the manufacturers as HDTV Out), SVHS Out, as well as a standard VGA and DVI outputs. Check that the component cable is included if you do actually need it. Most brands are fine these days, so go for a good price, but I usually avoid the very cheapest brands. Fans should be avoided, they often go bad and get really noisy! Onboard video can be very good, but I do find a video card offers more choice of driver options to suit your particular setup.

2. MAINBOARD & AMD vs INTEL – Everyone has different needs, budget and preferred brands. I’ve supervised or personally built more than five thousand PC’s since 1998. I’ve dealt with most of the big mainboard brands (Gigabyte, Asus, Intel, MSI, ECS, Soltek, DFI, ABIT). My recommendations are based on what I’ve seen and experienced. Others will swear that their brand is best, at the end of the day, most boards are pretty good these days, just make sure you’ll get decent support from whoever supplies it, just in case you get a bad one.
My current pick would be **** to be altered next..... *** this info out of date ...... an AMD system based on either the Asus or Gigabyte 6150 chipset mainboards. If you wanted something with a dedicated video card, I'd look at the Gigabyte 945P-Pro (DDR2-533) for Intel based-systems, or the Asus A8N-E for AMD based-systems. For Intel systems, the Intel mainboards are very good, and very very reliable. I think as long as you get either an Intel chipset (for P4), or an nVidia nForce4 / 6100 /6150 chipset (AMD Socket 939) it’s pretty hard to go wrong. The Pentium 4’s now all come standard with 2MB cache and 64 Bit support (make sure you get the 6x0 series as they now replace the 5x0 series and should be the same price). They do require more cooling and as such are harder to keep quiet, but it’s very achievable. The Zalman CNPS7700-Cu and 9500Cu are excellent and quiet, but a bit pricey and heavy, also make sure it’ll fir in your case and MB first and remember the AlCu models don't cool quite as well as the Cu version, but do weigh less, and cost a little bit less too!!!
2b. I have always preferred the Intel chipsets to any AMD chipset solution, but I now find the above mentioned chipsets to be the equal of each other, both having their strengths in certain areas. I have always found AMD platforms to be more problematic in the past, but I have recently changed my opinion. Today’s AMD solutions are truly excellent, reliable, run cooler, as fast or faster that P4, and the same price or cheaper as well. It is really up to you. Personally I will always use P4’s as I have always trusted Intel chips with Intel chipsets to be the most reliable time and again, but I fully respect AMD as well, and have no hesitations selling them to anyone, including friends and family!!! IN fact, since writing this article originally, I'm now going to replace my P4 MCE system with an AMD one, based on the 6150 chipset mainboard... (well I will as soon as the boards are available!!) So wish me luck there, I'll let you know how I go. I've used the 6100 chipset, and it's great, but doesn't have as many extras and features as the 6150.

3. MEMORY – 512MB is fine, 1GB is ideal. 2GB sounds cool, but not necessary. CAS Latency (Column Address Strobe for you acronym lovers) is often mentioned along with RAM, for DDR400 go for CL2.5 or CL2 if possible, (although CL2 is not always stable on all boards at CL2 settings). CL3 is fine for most users though, don’t be obsessed with high end RAM. For DDR2, CL timings are more complicated, just get a good brand. If it works it works. Don’t pay too much of a premium for fancy brands, but avoid the cheapest modules. Kingston, Corsair, Infineon, Hynix, Micron, Geil, Samsung, Winbond are all brands or chip makers I know and trust. Personally I would get DDR(400) over DDR2 (400/533) if the board offered me both choices. Remember that DDR2 isn’t generally faster than DDR, in some ways it’s actually slower due to higher latency. Also, the fewer modules you run, the more stable your system will be. 1 x 1GB module will always be better than 1 x 512 plus 2 x 256 modules in the same system. Ideally get the same type of module, especially if running in Dual Channel mode as some mainboards allow.

4. NOISE - Many posts around here about noise. Briefly, you’ll soon find that any fans are too many fans in your MCE system. The bigger the fan, the better as it can be slowed down and still move some air. Fan speed controllers are good. Fanless power supplies aren’t cheap, but are great (get 350W minimum unless your system is quite basic). Too many hard drives also get very noisy, but can be dampened by rubber mounts. (It’s the vibration being transferred into the case metal that tends to make the noise). Some DVD drives are more noisy than others, I find Pioneer are good.

5. STORAGE - Many are finding that you can never have enough storage. A dedicated (and noisy) average spec ‘server’ sitting in a roof, basement, cupboard delivering video and audio via Gigabit LAN from its’ multiple hard drives will no doubt be what many serious media users will end up with after a while. Ensure it won’t cook too much in summer though…. A UPS is a good idea for it as well. You can get a decent UPS now for about $100!! If you’re concerned about power usage, experiment with standby, wake on LAN concepts to your hearts desire. My boxes stay on all the time, keeping it simple. If you’re worried about contribution to the environmental damage, plant a native tree. One large tree will provide enough CO2 to O2 over its’ lifetime to compensate for an average PC being left on at night time for it’s lifetime. (ok, heading back on topic now)
5b. Try and use hard drives of at least 7200RPM with 8MB cache. The 10000RPM drives are awesomely fast, but a bit squealy/noisy, smaller capacity and not really necessary for MCE. Always partition your primary hard drive to make it easier to re-image if things go wrong. I find about 10GB for C drive is plenty. Other partitions can be used for Audio, Recorded TV, archived DVD collections, Pictures, Games and more technical concepts like Windows swap files, ghost images etc. Network Attached Hard drives are also good, and will be more popular as they get bigger and cheaper as well.
5c. I personally see no point in Raid 0 striping arrangements. All the benchmarks I have seen don’t show enough performance improvement to justify the added risk of either drive failing. Maybe for a hard core gaming PC, get a couple of WD Raptors in Raid 0 and go for it, but for MCE, really no benefit. Raid 1 Mirroring is a good idea, but adds to the complexity and cost, and of course Ghost offers similar protection in many ways (as long as your Ghost images are on a separate physical hard drive). Raid 5 is really good if you have 3 or more hard drives, and don’t mind losing one of them space-wise. The more drives the better. It can be done via either a hardware Raid card, or through Windows Server 2000 or 2003, and even in Windows XP with some fancy registry and system file tinkering via a hex editor. (haven’t seen confirmation that it’s possible with MCE, but it should be, if you’re keen). The software version can use both IDE and SATA in the same Raid 5 array no problem, performance is great (better for reads than writes, but writes still good) and can be moved to a new PC easily, as long as the O/S is the same (doesn’t even need the same IDE or SATA controller types), but this applies to the server O/S setups, haven’t tested with XP. If one drive fails, performance slows down a bit, but still useable. Replace the failed drive, put up with slower performance for a while during the rebuild, and off you go. If you’re comfortable with Raid, go 1 or 5, otherwise, and yet again, keep it simple.

6. NETWORKING - Wireless can work well, but I don’t like it personally. Yet another thing that can go wrong. How often did your VCR or TV break down?? That’s right, almost never. Neither should your MCE system….. Keep it simple, stick to what has been tried, tested and proven to be consistently reliable. If you have a choice, use a cable, if not, make sure the wireless hardware has the provision for aerial upgrades in case you need to extend the range for better coverage or performance.

7. SOUND – Obviously there are many options for how you get your MCE sound. Ideally, an external 5.1/6.1 Dolby/DTS hardware decoder will work best for surround sound setups. (Usually built within an amplifier/receiver unit). You will need either a mainboard or a sound card with a Digital Output that is compatible with your external processor (normally just a SPDIF RCA plug or an Optical Connection). Integrated mainboard digital audio out solutions are more ideal, as paying extra for a sound card won’t necessarily improve the sound quality over a mainboard solution when using a Digital Output. (Well not much anyway, we could always get pedantic and talk about clock jitter, square-wave slew rates, AES vs SPDIF voltage advantages and so on, but I’d rather have a life.) If you use traditional analogue outputs to run speakers, a good sound card is much more important. I use the Creative Audigy 2 ZS and while it is a decent card, I find that PowerDVD 6 is a much better DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 decoder for surround audio than the Audigy, but for DD ES 6.1, I have to switch to the Audigy and put up with its’ little sync issues and occasional stutter on start and skip. But there aren’t many ES 6.1 DVD’s out there (Lord of the Rings being the main example), so most of the time I’m using PowerDVD6 in 5.1 mode and it works faultlessly within MCE. Switch to 6 or 8 channel mode in the MCE Cyberlink settings and off you go.

8. PATIENCE - Finally, you (and your partner/wife/family/pets) will have to allow some patience and time to get it stable and working smoothly, and expect at least a couple of re-installs / re-ghosts along the way, but you’ll learn a lot along the way, and eventually, you should get an impressive and stable Media Centre. If we’re really lucky, Microsoft will solve some of the problems we currently have here in Australia, like no proper EPG, no digital and analogue tuner mixing, HDTV audio issues and so on. Either way, MCE concepts are the way of the future, and it’s nice being a bit ahead of the masses!!


FOXTEL SETUP.

You will need…..

Your wonderfully spec’ed MCE box (see above).
Your MCE compatible Analogue TV Tuner which will have either an SVHS or Composite Input. Again, I can recommend the Hauppauge PVR 150MCE or 250MCE. (or the new 1300 model installed in analogue mode)
Your Foxtel/PayTV Set Top Box (and the Foxtel remote for now)
The Microsoft MCE Remote and 1 of the IR blasters that should have come with it.
TV, Sound System, Keyboard and Mouse of your choice
Internet access (preferably broadband)

CABLES

Now this can get complicated, and will depend on your exact TV setup, and how much flexibility you want the system to have. The following is based on my setup, and is probably similar to what most will use.

You will need a SCART to SVHS adaptor (and cables) to feed both an SVHS cable and the red & white RCA audio cables into the Hauppauge card. Pay a bit more and get good quality cables, avoid the typical ‘wet pieces of string’ often bundled with most components. Don’t pay hundreds, but a few tens are worth the investment. But that can wait, anything will do for now. The improvement is only subtle to most eyes and ears, but it’s there, and if the quality is lost at this source stage, you can’t get it back. (Can’t polish a turd)

You will probably want to use the other SCART plug on the Foxtel box and go directly into your TV set. Depending on your TV and Audio Setup, you may also want to run the digital audio out from the Foxtel box (or the analogue outs) into your TV or stereo. This will enable you to watch Foxtel without going via the MCE box in times of trouble, or when you want to use the ‘Red Button’ interactive features (more on the red button issue later). I haven’t used the direct connection to my TV for ages, but it’s a good option to have, and only needs another cable.

The Foxtel box has a setup menu which allows you to access the preferred output video type. (Setup-System Setup-System Settings-Picture Settings-Video Output). It’s important to note that this option will affect BOTH SCART plugs. So if your MCE box is getting a SVHS signal from Scart 1, your TV will have to also have an SVHS input via Scart 2. There is also a composite video output on the Foxtel box, so you’ve got a choice of what to use, depending on your setup. Just remember that signal quality improves in this order… RF (aerial plug type), Composite (PAL in Foxtel talk), SVHS, RGB / Component. I haven’t seen any MCE tuners that accept an RGB or Component input, so SVHS is your best option.

How you connect your MCE box to your TV is dependent on your setup, ideally via DVI, HDMI, Component or SVHS connections. Again, spend a little more and get a decent cable if you can. I’ve only got a 32” CRT TV, so can’t comment on how it looks on a big screen, but I’ve heard it can look pretty good indeed. Even though Foxtel is a Digital standard definition signal, it’s not often full standard definition quality as they have to reduce the bandwidth to fit in so many channels!! So some channels tend to look much better than others. Nothing close to high-definition, but it’s a good clean signal. Remember too that the bigger the screen, the further away you have to sit to make it not look too pixellated. There are many other threads around the forum relating to getting the best from your particular type of screen.

THE IR BLASTER.

Plug one of the IR blasters into either one of the plugs on the back of the Microsoft Remote sensor. Position the ‘bud’ of the blaster in front of the Foxtel IR sensor. See the pic below of how mine is, experiment to get yours changing more accurately once you’re set up. The signal comes out of the end of the bud. The bright red light gives you an indication that it’s working, but it’s the second IR light in there that actually does the sending.



INSTALLING MCE

Ok, so you’ve plugged it all in, setup your PC's BIOS to boot from the MCE CD and installed MCE via the disk swapping thing. Next load all the latest Media Centre 2005 compatible drivers for your chipset, video card, sound card, TV tuner, network card and so on. Then run Windows Update a few times for all the Dot Net updates and service packs etc. Note you MUST get the Dot Net Framework 1.1 and all the service packs and updates for it, this takes two or three Windows updates and restarts etc. Now is not a bad time for your first Ghost image if you’re so inclined. Next install your DVD decoder (nVidia or PowerDVD6 are my personal choices). Restart the PC to be safe. The first time you run Media Centre via the Green Button, you’ll get the wizard, pretty simple, just go through it. You may wish to ‘Optimise how Media Centre looks on your display’, and ‘set the speaker configuration’. I would suggest you do NOT ‘Configure tuners, TV signal and Guide’ just now. Forget live TV and the guide for now, put a DVD in the drive, and go fiddling with the display settings, audio settings, surround sound setups until you’re happy with your DVD and audio system. Have a look around the options (not TV), get used to Media Centre (assuming of course you’re a new user). Once you’re happy with DVD playback, maybe you’ll want a look at My Music, Radio (if you have an FM tuner in your system), or Add a folder or two for the My Videos part. Assuming all is OK, it’s time for another Ghost image. (You do have Ghost don’t you?? You could create a System Restore point instead, or as well, but I find it only has limited success when things go wrong with the guide, but no harm in doing it anyway).

Time for …..

TV AND THE GUIDE.

Note that IceTV does not support PayTV, only Digital or Analogue FTA. So we've got to look at Bladerunner Pro (with a manually scraped xml listing file) or our old friend, EPGRunner. I'd say that EPGRunner is the most established solution for the PayTV guide, so it's a good place to start. I found it a little bit flakey sometimes, so if users feel they want to, have a look at Bladerunner Pro, and find a way of scraping the appropriate station data from one of the various websites... but this is beyond the scope of this article, so we'll stick to EPGRunner.

Before you install EPGRunner, configure your TV setup first.

Go to the main menu, Settings, TV. You should see “Set up your TV Signal”, go Next (use the remote is easiest).
Next select your region.
Next select Cable or Digital Cable. I do not know if Foxtel Satellite users should select Satellite, someone will have to advise me of that. My guess is that it’s Cable or Digital Cable either way, but someone will have to let us know for sure.
Yes, you have a set-top box.
You just want to configure one tuner for now. (Keen users with two Foxtel set-top boxes may want to select two, assuming of course you have two preferably identical tuners).
Read and follow the ‘Prepare for Set-top Box Setup” page. Should be all done by now. Hit Next.
Now MCE should have detected your signal on either S-Video or Composite Video. If so, select Next. (If not, well the diagnosis begins…. You’ll have to start from the Foxtel box, check it’s putting out a signal to the MCE box, cables connected correctly etc etc. )
Yes, you do have a remote for your set-top box, click yes, and Next. (hit OK twice)
Get your foxtel remote out, you’ll need it here…
Identify Set-top box remote, Click Next.
When prompted, hold the Foxtel remote close to the MS remote sensor (about 5-10cm) and press, hold and release the ‘zero’ button exactly as prompted. If you’re lucky, it will say that it has successfully recognised the remote and you can continue. If not, maybe select the try again option, try even closer, or further away. If still no luck you may have to ‘Have Media Centre learn my remote from scratch’ where you select each number button twice and go that way. It’s boring that way, but it works. Also, best not to have old batteries in the Foxtel remote.
‘Select Number of Digits’. Foxtel Digital users select Three (for channels 100-999), Optus would be Two, others use whatever is right for your PayTv Provider.
How Do You Change Channels? . For Foxtel, it’s ‘No, I just enter the channel number’. Again, other providers may be different.

The big test… ‘Test Channel Changing’ You’ll have to move up to the ‘Try next IR control cable’ bit and hit OK on that TWO times, you should see the display windows flicker each time. Then use the number buttons on the MS remote to select a known PayTv channel, e.g Tv1 = 101. If you don’t see the IR light flash after hitting these number buttons (which you may not first few times), then hit OK once on the ‘Try next IR control cable’ bit again, type the three numbers for a different channel, e.g 100 (or two numbers of course for Optus etc), and see if it works. If not, repeat the procedure. I find you have to change at least two times until all of a sudden you see the IR flasher flashing and you’re in business. When it changes for you, move to ‘The Set top box changed the channel correctly’, hit OK, and select Next.
Set IR signal Speed. I find Medium or Slow are the safest options. Select the ‘The Channel Did Not Change’ option and move from Fast to Medium or Slow. Then test using the Channel Up and Down buttons, don’t hit it too fast or too many times, and it should be changing channels via the IR sensor.
Now, onto Set up your TV Program Guide…. Hit Next.
Do you want to use the Guide?? Select NO, and hit next. That should be it. Finish.
Quit out of the Media Centre Window (did you note the exit option top left of the MCE main menu??).

Download and Install EPGRunner, as of this article, the current version I use is 3.4.0. EPGRunner.Net is the site to get it. The installation is simple, Next, I agree, (As I’m not yet a fan of EZRunner, take the next EZRunner tick off, but feel free to experiment with it later). Then Next, Install it for Everyone into the default eHome folder, Next, Next, Close.

Go to the Start Menu, and run the Runner Config Program. I leave all the defaults exactly as they are, but do go to Guide Options and select your data providers. For Foxtel Digital Cable, the Data Provider 1 is Australia and Foxtel Digital Pay TV, Data Provider 2 is Australia and ‘Your City’ Free to Air. For other TV Providers, you’ll maybe want to experiment with this. Given that a lot of the channels are shared anyway, you may want to stick with the comprehensive Foxtel Digital Pay Tv setting, and just remove and/or add the channels you do/don’t get (next step). If you don’t live on the East Cost of Australia, you will want to override the default time offset to match your region. The default is listed as 0.0, so Perth may be -3.0, but as the east coast is also known as +10GMT, you may find that +7.0 is actually correct, sorry don’t know here. Leave it as 0.0 and see how far out the guide is?? Anyway, then go up to File, Save and Exit.

Now, find the C:\Windows\eHome directory and double click on the InstallAddin.bat file. This enables the Guide in MCE, and is important.

Back in the Start menu, double click on EPGRunner. (Not EZRunner). Make sure are connected to the internet. You should see the EPGRunner window open, it will take a minute or more depending on your internet connection speed. Be patient. Then you should see a big list of channels and programs being added.. Then a pause, and it quits. So far so good. Wait two minutes, then restart your PC.

Now the boring part. Go into Media Centre, select settings, TV, Guide, Edit Channels. If all has gone according to plan, you’ll now have a long list of channels (A1, Adults Only, Animal Planet etc…) with numbers (1,2,3,4…) and ticks next to them. This is good. Go down and select ‘Edit Numbers’. You now have the task of re-assigning each channel to its’ correct Foxtel channel number. You’ll definitely need a list of what channel is what number for your PayTV. You may want to move the IR Sender AWAY from the Foxtel box here as it flashes every time you select a new channel number, gets it wrong etc and drives you nuts. Then I actually change to the direct TV - Foxtel connection (remember earlier?), select the Foxtel TV Guide and get my channel list that way. Getting back to it, for example, the first channel ‘A1’ will change from ‘1’ to ‘636’. Move down. If you don’t/can't get a particular channel or don’t want a channel listed on your Guide, take the tick off it, you don’t then have to change the channel number if you take the tick off, just move down to the next channel. And so on and so on and so on. At the end of the list, you should get the free to air channels… same deal, e.g Channel Seven changes from ‘76’ to ‘107’ (for my list anyway, yours may be a little different).
When you’re done editing the numbers, and changing the ticked channels to match what you need and don’t need/want, make a note of any channels that are missing, there are always a couple. Nothing is perfect. I find the AFL ‘footy’ channel is missing, and one or two others… Of course for Foxtel Digital, all the ‘Music Radio’ stations are missing (e.g 844 Café Channel etc…).

Select ‘Save’, and then move down to ‘Add Missing Channels’ and select that, then move to ‘Add Channel.’. All of the missing channels can now be added manually. Note that you will not get any Guide data for these channels, but they are still listed in the guide as ‘No Data’ to make changing to that channel easy.
Adding the channels is obvious, type in what name you want for the channel, (e.g CAFÉ), then Next, type the channel number, (844) and hit Add, then repeat the process. Hit Done when you’ve finished.

Now, the big nervous moment…. Return to the main Menu. Hit the GUIDE button on the remote. Success?? If so, pat yourself on the back, exit MCE, Shut Down the PC and make a Ghost Image. You will NOT regret making this Ghost image. Every now and then all of your Guide data WILL corrupt or totally disappear, and do you really want to have to renumber all those channels again, and add in all the missing ones again?? Sometimes I find that some channels disappear, and running EPGRunner, then restarting the PC fixes the problem, other times it’s no good, and I just restore my Ghost image, update the Guide again and back in business. Last week I found that every time I ran EPGrunner my guide died….re-ghost…working but out of date….update…dead again..etc. I had to do without a guide for about 3 days and all of a sudden it worked perfectly again. But it generally works for many weeks without a problem. And we can’t complain because it’s free, and in theory we shouldn't have a guide available in Australia at all.

One more thing. Go to the MCE Main Menu, Settings, General, and Automatic Downloads Options. Change to Manual Download, Save and Exit.

So assuming your Guide is now working, have fun. You should now agree that having the guide rocks.

Items in dark blue are playing now, light blue are ahead in time. Just hit OK to change to that channel, and hit record to record that show. Hit record again and the whole series will record. If you get a conflict, decide what one you really want, and look for another time when that other show is on, maybe on the +2 hour offset channel if that station has one. I haven’t seen the problem that other users get with MCE losing one-off recordings after a guide update. It seems fine in that respect.

One thing to be aware of is that when you are watching Live TV on your MCE box, you’re actually about 2 seconds or so behind the foxtel box. If you use the foxtel remote for anything, like the Red Button, or even changing channels etc, there is a delay between hitting the Foxtel remote, and seeing the change on the MCE Live TV screen. If you’re watching LiveTV, hit pause for a phone call, then continue, you may then be 5 minutes behind the foxtel remote. Hit the red button now, and it’ll be 5 minutes until you see the result!!! Be aware of this one. You may want to switch to the direct feed from the Foxtel STB to your TV and stereo if you use the Red Button for sports etc. I don’t use the red button myself, and haven’t needed the Foxtel remote for a long time.

Also, make sure you put your Recorded TV files on a different hard drive or partition to your MCE install, that way after a ghost restore, everything should be just the way it was. But remember, any changes to your music database, My Movies database, My Video locations etc will be lost unless you do regular Ghost images. And I have had problems with corrupt image files as well, so be safe and do a couple of images, they should only take 5 minutes or so each, and an average MCE install might be under 5GB, so no major space lost. You can change your recorded TV location via the Settings-TV-Recorder-Recorder Storage, and have a look in Recording Defaults while you there and change it to suit yourself.

Lastly, guide updates. I wish I had the definitive answer to reliable guide updates, but I haven’t. Just when I think it’s all working reliably, something goes wrong, and it’s back to the Ghost image. I haven’t had a lot of luck with the EZRunner part of the EPGRunner app, so these days I have adopted the paranoia approach which entails a batch program to shut down the MCE services, run the EPGRunner updates, and then restart the computer. I have it set to run at 6.10AM on Monday, Thursday and Saturday. I have scheduled a daily manual recording for 1 minute from 6.05AM until 6.06AM. This means that if a series recording or a one off program is going to be recording when the guide is due to update, I get a conflict notice and am reminded to avoid recordings happening when the guide is updating. This avoids a problem I had a couple of times whereby the Guide would lose half the channels, and it seemed to occur when a guide update occurred during a program being recorded. So this method has worked well for me for months, but in the past couple of weeks I have noticed some different problems with the guide losing all the channels completely. It seems to sort itself out after a day or two, and you can always use the Foxtel remote TV Guide and put up with the small delay in button-press response. Having the Ghost image is a blessing because you just re-image, update the guide, and you should be back in business. Of course you should make regular Ghost images so you’re up to date with your MCE setup, playlists, My Movies etc. Speaking of My Movies, it’s good way to organise your DVD Collection. Bit of work setting up, but looks really cool when all done. You can also watch Movies via the My Videos folders, or of course via putting a disk in the DVD-ROM!!

Well if this guide has made your foxtel setup a bit easier, then my work here is done. With a document this long and waffly, there is bound to be some errors, so a few edits may be in order. Take it easy and I’ll see you around the forum….

Cheers
TiggerK