INTERACT FORUM
Windows => Television => Topic started by: hazelglow on December 04, 2016, 05:07:19 pm
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Hi all,
Have just installed JRiver as a trial, to see if it has any potential to replace ageing Win7 MCE that I have been reliably using for years now. I need to be able to use it (in theatre mode) as my default method of watching and recording TV through my tv tuner card. If it can't handle that simply and well, then it's of no use to me really and so I won't be buying.
Have got JRiver itself up and running successfully, it's found all my tv stations no problems. However EPG is empty, and the system just permanently reports to me that the EPG is loading & that it'll take several minutes. But nothing ever happens beyond that; nor does it give any indication that it is making any progress. Obviously I have chosen the OTA option for EPG.
Win7 MCE has never had any problem with displaying the OTA EPG instantly, it just populates all by itself with nothing to set up and faff about with.
I've had a hunt around these forums, found endless pages with mind-numbing faffing about to try to get EPG up and running with third party utilities and manual scripts linking the data into JRiver; blah, blah, blah... Most of these posts seem pretty old and have never resulted in any entirely satisfactory outcome as far as I can tell.
My question is, has all this extraneous mucking about now been successfully superceded/bypassed and should JRiver be able to automatically do the OTA EPG without any drama? If so, how do I get it to work?
Many thanks!
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While Win7 MCE (WMC) was free, it was created by a multi-billion dollar company, and was never for profit. So they had some influence in getting things working properly, best in the USA, but also most the rest of the world.
JRiver MC is a paid product, but the team that create a maintain it is quite small, and they have about zero influence in the TV world, really. So there is going to be a bit of faffing around to get EPG Data into the MC TV Guide, unfortunately.
I still use "EPG Collector" because it works well for me, not only collecting EPG data, but enhancing it with metadata from TheTVDB before it is imported into MC.
JRiver have only recently added DVB-T EPG EIT data collection to the core software. Prior to that only the American ATSC data could be collected OTA, or an integrated or non-integrated third party application needed to be used to create an XMLTV file which was then imported into MC.
So, yes, you should be able to get EPG data OTA from the EIT data stream into MC with the core product. The current public release of the software, MC22.0.41, has the functionality in it, and it should work okay.
As I am not using it now, you may need to wait for one of our other Australians to turn up and help you. Jmone and Astromo have both been testing and using the new functionality. Unfortunately most of the discussion about it isn't available on a public forum yet. So perhaps your thread can be the one to clarify any issues.
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Ta for the reply; much appreciated. I'm using v32, which it tells me is the latest so I'm not sure what this v41 is that you're referring to?
\edit\ got it figured out how to upgrade to v41...will test OTA EPG and report back.
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http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,107927.0.html
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Build 32 is the "Stable" version. Build 41 is the "latest" version. The stable build is found on the download page, the latest build is on "JRiver Media Center 22 for Windows" board (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/board,50.0.html) (the 4th sticky topic). KingSparta gave the direct link above.
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Update: I got the EPG working; that's all great!
What I can't get working is any sort of satisfactory navigation backwards/forwards when watching TV recordings (or live buffered TV) - you know; to skip ads or replay bits. You would think that clicking on the '<<' symbol and the '>>' would move faster backward/forward through the recording (and move even faster the more times you click on it) but, no, it just changes channel (in live tv mode) or changes to the next recording (in recordings playback mode). Which is a bit unintuitive and illogical!
Also, it doesn't seem to remember where you were up to in watching a recording/video if you stop playback and then come back to it later.
These things would seem to be rather fatal flaws if you're trying to use this software as any kind of PVR. But perhaps there is some way to set it up to work properly?
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Yeah, the Wiki isn't complete. There is lots of information in the forum.
Left and right arrows to jump backward and forward. Set by how much in Tools>Options>Video>Advanced.
You can do everything in MC Theatre View using the left, right, up, down and OK buttons.
Read http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Bookmarking It works well.
There aren't any fatal flaws. Just differences compared to other programs.