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[Matt]

MC 18.0.187 adds several capabilities to improve dealing with television channels.

It's now easy to hide channels that never work, easy to see a grid of channels you frequently watch, and extensible so you can create custom groupings if you need more power.

This was originally proposed and discussed here and here.

The improvements:

Channels support any types of keywords
You can use, for example, Sports, Matt's Channels, Brooke's Channels, etc.

There are two new default keywords that are simple to set in Options > Television:

Hidden: use for a channel that doesn't work due to reception, encryption, etc. or that you never want to see (even with a search)
Favorite: one of the channels you watch regularly

Theater View and Standard View automatically hide Hidden channels
You will no longer delete channels because this leads to the problem of them coming back next time you scan for channels.  EPG loading skips loading data for Hidden channels (for efficiency).

Theater View has a new view next to 'Guide' called 'Favorite'
It's a grid showing only the channels marked as favorites.  To get this view (and filtering of hidden channels), you must reset your Theater View views to stock using: Options > Theater View > Reset!...

There is a 'Tag Channel' choice in Theater View
It offers the ability to toggle if a channel if a favorite or to hide the channel.

More
CableCARD and STB channel scanning was improved.  

All television options are now in Options > Television.

You can use the channel keyword system to apply custom keywords to channels (ie. 'Matt's Channels', 'Brooke's Channels', etc.).  Create a view of Television channels ( Smartlist: [Media Type]=[TV] ) and set keywords.  Then use the keywords in your Theater View views (see the stock 'Guide', 'Favorite', etc. views for examples).

Important
To use the Favorite / Hidden channel keywords in Theater View, you must reset your Theater View views to the defaults in Options > Theater View > Reset ...  Sorry for the inconvenience.

Enjoy.

[Samson]

you must reset your Theater View views to stock using: Options > Theater View > Reset!

Thank you for this udate.

Is there any way to avoid the theatre view reset and lose previous customizations?

Cheers

[JimH]

No.  Sorry.

[ldoodle]

Has it been 'localised', in that when scanning for channels it only adds what your aerial will pickup, like Windows Media Center does?

I'm thinking of ditching my Sky subscription (UK) and using JRiver for TV.

[Sandy B Ridge]

Has it been 'localised', in that when scanning for channels it only adds what your aerial will pickup, like Windows Media Center does?

It is localised in that it does an active scan of the aerial signal, so that for terrestrial it will only pick up your regional transmitter's channels. For DVB-T it won't show encrypted channels.

For DVB-S (ie Freesat in the UK) it will pick up every single channel whether encrypted or not, as well as 'additional channels' for those with extra audio 'tracks' (these show up as Channel name (1), (2) etc for example). So in my case it adds over 1000 channels which needs sorting through and making the dud ones 'hidden'. I've only bothered to keep visible about 30 channels and kept hidden the shopping, religious, etc channels. MC doesn't support encrypted channels yet, so none of these will play. It's probably not possible to decrypt Sky's encryption anyway - they don't produce a CAM for Sky like some European broadcasters do, and so pretty much keep their channels a 'closed shop'.

In order to 'localise' the DVB-S channels you need to 'hide' the out-of-region channels. Some are easy to choose, like the BBC and ITV regions because each channel is named according to region. It's more difficult for the Channel 4 and 5 because they are named the same. Programming on these tend to be identical though, with only advertising being localised to regions.  Since I never pay attention to the advertising I have no idea which region I'm actually tuned into! Kingofsat website might help to differentiate (based on tuning parameters) though if you are pedantic!

One of these days I'll get round to posting a channel list of Freesat channels on here that will make the process easier.  Having two kids under two (with insomnia) keeps me from tinkering with MC these days!

I'm thinking of ditching my Sky subscription (UK) and using JRiver for TV.

Did this about 18 months ago and haven't missed it one bit.

SBR

[csimon]

Has it been 'localised', in that when scanning for channels it only adds what your aerial will pickup, like Windows Media Center does?

I'm thinking of ditching my Sky subscription (UK) and using JRiver for TV.

A little off-topic, but have you thought about a Freesat PVR to use with your ex-Sky dish, such as the new Humax one with "freetime", i.e. backwards EPG? Obviously, you can use a terrestrial tuner (Freeview) with a PC but to be honest Freesat is a much better service than Freeview these days. As indicated in the post above, you can probably get a satellite tuner to use with a PC and specifically MC but [deep breath] I think a dedicated PVR can be a lot slicker than a PC TV solution and will use less power - it will also automatically maintain the channels without having to rescan.

[kstuart]

These new features are appreciated, as I am going to shift my OTA (aka "terrestrial") antenna from a satellite DVR to a PC with MC18, since I get better reception with Hauppauge PCI-E cards than with the DVR's built-in ATSC tuner.

Having Audio, Video and DVR capability all in one software package is helpful (as well as a good deal).

[ldoodle]

have you thought about a Freesat PVR

No because if I ditched Sky I wouldn't want to replace it with a separate box.

[ldoodle]

It is localised in that it does an active scan of the aerial signal, so that for terrestrial it will only pick up your regional transmitter's channels. For DVB-T it won't show encrypted channels.

For DVB-S (ie Freesat in the UK) it will pick up every single channel whether encrypted or not, as well as 'additional channels' for those with extra audio 'tracks' (these show up as Channel name (1), (2) etc for example). So in my case it adds over 1000 channels which needs sorting through and making the dud ones 'hidden'. I've only bothered to keep visible about 30 channels and kept hidden the shopping, religious, etc channels. MC doesn't support encrypted channels yet, so none of these will play. It's probably not possible to decrypt Sky's encryption anyway - they don't produce a CAM for Sky like some European broadcasters do, and so pretty much keep their channels a 'closed shop'.

In order to 'localise' the DVB-S channels you need to 'hide' the out-of-region channels. Some are easy to choose, like the BBC and ITV regions because each channel is named according to region. It's more difficult for the Channel 4 and 5 because they are named the same. Programming on these tend to be identical though, with only advertising being localised to regions.  Since I never pay attention to the advertising I have no idea which region I'm actually tuned into! Kingofsat website might help to differentiate (based on tuning parameters) though if you are pedantic!

One of these days I'll get round to posting a channel list of Freesat channels on here that will make the process easier.  Having two kids under two (with insomnia) keeps me from tinkering with MC these days! Did this about 18 months ago and haven't missed it one bit.

SBR

Thanks. Can the list be exported, such that a full PC re-install wouldn't require a complete manual re-do of such a task?

[ldoodle]

No.  Sorry.

Is there at least an easy way to see what customizations you've made without clicking through each one writing them down on a piece of paper?

Perhaps a little tool that can export the list to text file?

[Sandy B Ridge]

Thanks. Can the list be exported, such that a full PC re-install wouldn't require a complete manual re-do of such a task?

Yes, I think so. I think the channel data can be exported as a playlist and then reimported.  I'll give it a go later. Hopefully it works - I've never got around to trying it.

SBR

Edit: Yes, making a new smartlist of DVB-S channels and exporting it seems to work fine. I tested by making a new library and importing the playlist. The TV channel list populated OK in the new library. When I get a chance I'll do a full rescan and tag all the Freesat channels. I'll post the playlist file on the TV board. It'll save someone a bit of time when setting up the first time.