Can I set-up a TV guide without having a TV card? (1 Viewer)

[CaptainJim]

Is it possible to set-up a Electronic Program Guide (TV Guild) in MP without having a TV card in my PC? Everything I have read so far indicates I need a card. For now I would just like to view the guide, then maybe later get a card so I could record, play, pause, etc. I have COX cable if that helps.

Cheers,
Jim

 

[milhouse]

Interesting idea. I honestly don't know.

TV Server, when installed, has a virtual tuner card for web streams. So it's not like it would crash or anything. I think you could then add channels, not assign them to a card, and you'd be okay. But that's probably a lot of overhead just for the guide.

The internal TV module (TV2 it's called around here) would take a little less overhead. But I can't recall if you can even enable that module without a tuner card. This is what I would try first if I were you.


Your bigger trouble is guide data availability. You use Cox, so I assume you are in the U.S. There are a number of XML scrapers (tools that go along with XMLTV) to get the raw guide data. But the most dependable source I've found is Schedules Direct and the MP plugin for it. The catch is that the SD service costs $15/year. I don't mind paying for it, but probably would mind if I wasn't using MP for TV. You do get 7 days free, so maybe check it out and see if it works without a tuner card.

If you aren't specifically looking for the guide inside MP, there's always Zap2It and a browser.

Hope this helps-
Milhouse

 

[Shinto61]

Yes you can, before I had a tvcard I used the EPG. Used a grabber and let it output the tvguide.xml file.
Only thing what happens is when you go to TV, MP pops up a window saying "No TV Card Detected" press OK and you're done.
An option I did not try is in the TV setup where you can opt to turn TV on or Off when entering the TV menu. Can't remember if I had it Off at the time.

 

[CaptainJim]

Well, I spent about 3 hours trying to get this to work, I give up for now.

My PC is hooked up to my TV, so to watch TV I just click on my TV input button. I don't need a TV card unless I want to record/pause live tv, so I just wanted to view a Guild from within MP. The current guild provided by cable company is a worthless scroll. I know there are some good websites for guides but I'm trying to do as much as possible from within MP.

My next question here was going to be if I could setup radio stations without a radio card, but I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to focus on setting up MP to play Video and Music files.

Cheers,
Jim

 

[dvdfreak]

Well, I spent about 3 hours trying to get this to work, I give up for now.

My PC is hooked up to my TV, so to watch TV I just click on my TV input button. I don't need a TV card unless I want to record/pause live tv, so I just wanted to view a Guild from within MP. The current guild provided by cable company is a worthless scroll. I know there are some good websites for guides but I'm trying to do as much as possible from within MP.

My next question here was going to be if I could setup radio stations without a radio card, but I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to focus on setting up MP to play Video and Music files.

Perhaps try For The Record. You can import an XMLTV file and don't need to define any recording card at all. You could even use its suggestions or alerts feature and go sit in front of the television when it notifies you

 

[milhouse]

With the TV Server, it installs a web radio card (software, of course) for you. Works great for streaming.

Not sure if that functionality exists with built-in radio client.

 

[CaptainJim]

"For The Record" fails to install, "failed to configure core services, this is required, setup will abort." I installed .net framework 3.0 but it still fails. I'm not the only one with this problem there is a post on their board from a couple of days ago. I'm not going to spend any more time on this (4tr).

I do want to thank everyone who posted on this. This would have been neat if I could have gotten it to work, but it's secondary to what I want from MP. I'm not sure if I did everything I should have? I did the best I could with the documentation in this area of MP. I'm sure this would work if I had a TV-card.

Cheers,
Jim

 

[dvdfreak]

"For The Record" fails to install, "failed to configure core services, this is required, setup will abort." I installed .net framework 3.0 but it still fails. I'm not the only one with this problem there is a post on their board from a couple of days ago. I'm not going to spend any more time on this (4tr).

It would help us to understand why you get this error. Nothing in the event viewer? Did you enter credentials for the Core Services to run under?

From one of our users:

Shame on me guys...

I´ve entered the false adminstration account for the Service...

Sorry for any convinience...