BladeRunner Pro - Released

[Matt]

Well done Blade!!!

Great work mate.

Cheers

Matt.

[Mike]

Onya Bladey - outstanding contribution mate !!!

I even reinstalled it from scratch just now (as if I were a new user) and it worked like a charm!

Mike

[googlecom]

Thank you very much for what you have done.

I was going to purchase IceTV's EPG but was wondering if there is any advantage in doing so now?

Does this fix "one off recordings" being deleted or forgotten? (Pvogel from IceTV said they had)

Again, thankyou very much.

[impact]

From my testing in the last month...

No - one off recordings are not fixed... But I have discussed how it might be fixed in a future release with Mr. BladeRunner.... (Notice the respect this guy gets - Mister !!!)

I have also discussed the possibility with Mr Bladerunner to provide multiple MCE devices in the one home, accessing the guide data centrally - so each machine does not need to do the extract...

Here is hoping that he gets time to look at these enhancements, maybe once the initial rush settles down....


- It certainly is a big improvement over the other free methods....

[Mike]

Does this fix "one off recordings" being deleted or forgotten? (Pvogel from IceTV said they had).

I don't believe so - but for me that's not an issue because even if it's a movie, all I do is tell MCE to record the series and it seems to work fine.

[jammin]

Does this fix "one off recordings" being deleted or forgotten? (Pvogel from IceTV said they had)

Although my problems with MCE are many and varied, I haven't heard of this one. Please explain?

Thanks
Jammin

[Mike]

When using one of the free EPG solutions, if you select a single show to record and then perform a guide update, you lose the "red dot" and the show won't record.

As I said above, my own work-around is to select the show and then, even though it may not be a series, tell MCE to record the series anyhow and it retains the setting after updates.

[Gremlin]

After a little bit of playing around, it does seem to work fine for NZ Thanks for the great update.

[impact]

Although my problems with MCE are many and varied, I haven't heard of this one. Please explain?

Thanks
Jammin

Sure... metnioned in a few other threads - but here comes a good explanation for you...

There are at least three ways to do a recording when using an EPG within MCE

• A Series recording - this is where you tell MCE to record all episodes of a given show, ie. Record Frasier - whenever Frasier is shown, MCE will attempt to record it. You can setup parameters like only record on this channel, or all channels, only at this time of the day, or anytime throughout the day etc etc... MCE finds these recordings based upon a match to the program name....
  
• A Manual Recording - just like an old VCR - you tell MCE to record channel x at a start time and end time, and just like the old VCR you can say do it once, everyday, or every week etc...
  
• A One-Off Recording - is when you are looking through the EPG and find something of interest and you press the button to say just record this one show. You do not set it up as a series, you just need that one show.
  

The problem occurs after you have set up a One-Off recording and your EPG system obtains the new guide data, when it is loaded into MCE, it forgets (or can not find) that one off recording - so you will miss it.

A similar problem occurs with a Series recording - if you attempt to Not Record one show of the series, after a refresh of the guide data, MCE will not find that program to set it for Not Recording - and voilla, MCE will record it for you !!

The temporary workaround for these One Off recordings is to record them as a Series, and then remove the Series after the recording has been completed.


This problem exists in ALL free EPG solutions, the only solution that has reported these problems fixed is that from ICETV. I can not confirm this, but others have, I have never looked at this solution, but probably helped them in someway fix it, due to my previous posts about the problem!


It is hoped that BRP will solve this problem, and in the discussions on this topic I have had with Mr. Bladerunner in the last 24 hours has led to a possible simple solution. From a semi-technical point of view, the problem basically occurs because MCE uses the name for matching recordings in a series - which is easy to do... but it uses the unique internal program id for identifying one off recordings. All the free EPG solutions to date do not cater for maintaining and preserving this internal id, as it was thought it would need a database lookup. Someone like Microsoft and ICETV in the service of providing EPG data can easily create / maintain these program id's as they have databases set up for their use. Other solutions, the free ones are not as complex, as they just scrape data, reformat it, and chuck it into MCE. A solution possibly exists in maintaining and preserving the appropriate identifiers that requires no database, just a small programming change in BRP...

OKay - gone too far... I'm just passionate about my EPG - and look forward to any possible EPG enhancements Mr Bladerunner may bring us.... !

[schleppel]

Kudos Blade... Love your work... Keep it up!

It has however opened my eye4s to problem I never had before, but not sure if it's related to BRP. I installed it and went through the install, and it asked me to scan for channels again, so I did. Figured it couldn't hurt. It did.
I now try to scan for channels (using an a16a, after doing everything to get it working prior to now) and it gets to 77% of scan and then jumps to 100%, this wouldn't bother me except I don't get channel 9. My reg entry for bandwidth is 7 (auatomatically went to that after installing the drivers with an edited .inf) and I have a hacked psis...dll. I can't seem to get channel 9. Have to head out now so will persist later, but if anyone has any suggestions for me to rty by the time I get back, I would love to hear them.

P.S. Also tried increasing the reg entry to 9 to see if that might do something fun, but still no joy.

Schlep.

[break]

it does support FTA (inbuilt) and will also do paytv as long as u supply the data.

at the moment amilwain u r getting the paytv data from epgrunners site u would have to find another way of getting it.

as long as u have the data in the correct location BRP will certainly do the rest.

no doubt in time once other developers get a hold of it and reverse engineer there will be server side solutions poping up everywhere thats for sure.

Sorry for the possibly stupid question, but where could I find some of this payTV data?

[een]

Repeating what others are saying, kudos to all the developers involved in bladerunner...

This is sleek, no registry hack, no editing files, heck I don't even need to add a scheduled task... this is truly a labour of love
Anyway, I do have a problem in detecting SBS in sydney after instaling the program, but I believe this is a temporary thing (maybe SBS went off the air digitally or something...) cause this happens to a friend of mine in sydney as well. Anyway, I will try again tonight, and post the result...

Anyone in Sydney can confirm that they can get sbs right after instaling blade runner pro and doing a channel scan...

Cheers

[gogs]

As per previous posts, great work Bladerunner!! The install and instructions were very easy.

Cheers!!!!

[googlecom]

thank you impact for your detailed description of the problem.

I have used ezrunner from www.epgrunner.net for over a month now without the "one off recording" problem occuring. I would like bladerunner Pro if it also fixes this because it does not need a seperate program to be running.

Thank you

[merls]

I also need a Pay tv solution, but with a twist.

My MCE box has no internet capability as yet, due to Telstra screwing me and not letting me get adsl where I live (a whole 20 minutes from melbournes CBD).

I got the guide working ONCE and once only, and limited at that using TVXb and quickguide.

Anyone want to step up and tell me how to do it with BRP? Obviously I need to get the Listings2.xml file from somewhere, and make my channelinfo.xml file the same as it, but what do I get it with, nothing seems to work anymore. - Espically since I am trying to download from a regular XP machine (not MCE) and transfer the files to my MCE box.

merls