EPG Week: Day Four

First things first, anyone who'd read yesterday's update (as opposed to just muttering "Christ, are they still on about EPGs" and moving on to B3TA or something) might want to take note of the correction we've made. It turns out that Paul Dacre is wrong, and that the BBC aren't pure evil. Who'd have thunk, eh?

EPG Five: DirecTV

Yes, we're off to the States to see the programme guide for the television service known to American viewers of the Extras Christmas special as Direct TV. And it's...

Original photostream: here, completists.

Yeah. While it's quite nice to see Adult Swim listed as an actual channel on something, EPG week isn't really going anywhere is it? And we'd so hoped we'd be able to find wonderfully lo-fi Russian cable TV showing repeats of Benny Hill Interactive, or Moldova's equivalent of Sky Sports News.

By way of apology, here's a scan of a Loaded article about Cluub Zarathustra. Click the small picture to make another more big picture appear on your screen.

We've thought of a new riff that we're slightly more confident of holding our interest for more than three days. As soon as we can tear ourselves away from multiplayer GTA4 for long enough to do something about it, you shall see. OH YES YOU SHALL.

We're still top of the Google rankings for "HDR-9300FS" by the way. And that's out of what's now 33 results. Go us.

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EPG Week: Day Three

Must... maintain... interest in... ill-considered running... theme... [deep breath]

EPG FOUR: BBC iPLAYER ON XBOX MEDIA CENTRE

Here's something that makes us wish our (original, modded) Xbox wasn't broken. Ah, the folly of dicking around with your default.xbe file*. A custom script for XBMC that allows the users to get the Beeb's iPlayer working on their proper telly. And not just in a little window on their big telly (like iPlayer running on the Wii). Excellent.

(*The result of which being that switching on the Xbox results in a "cannot read the disc, the disc may be dirty or damaged" error, even though there isn't a disc in the drive. Can anyone help us with that?)

Or, at least: it should be.

The people behind the custom script even got to visit the BBC in order to show off their magical wares. The BBC Backstage blog have a whole Flickr album devoted to the presentation. And here it is.

On display at the Beeb. It'd be doubly ace if The BBC already had a modded Xbox, but we're guessing the people behind the demo took their own with them.

Looks pretty ace, doesn't it? Certainly better than the unhelpful web interface for iPlayer, which is tremendously picky to use on an iPod Touch.

Here's another shot of it. Note the polite notice that the script isn't endorsed by the BBC, and that it only works in the UK.

At this point you might be thinking of blowing the dust off your own Xbox, in readiness for giving the script a try, and wondering where to get the script. It's here. But curtail those hurrahs for just a moment.

[Edit: 9th May 2008.

It seems that, not for the first time, BrokenTV has leapt quite handsomely to a wrong conclusion. The person behind the script left us a comment informing us that the Beeb had been quite honest and open about them plugging the iPlayer mousehole that made the script possible, and with their rights-holders reasoning for having to do so. As it seems they've since removed their comment, it would be improper and rubbish of us to reprint the whole message here.

We're leaving the end of this post below, mainly so everyone can see what this apologetic edit is here for, and partly because we like our picture of Mark Thompson on the phone. And because we're hoping most people will be aware that pretending to get tremendously stroppy about something the we don't really have any strong feelings about is one of the two official BrokenTV jokes. Of course, the other official joke is getting tremendously overexcited about something we don't etc.]

Yeah, nice one Auntie. Invite them over. Wine them. Dine them. Coo over their special profit-free invention that allows a limited number of licence fee payers the ability to watch BBC programmes that they'd forgot to record on their actual television sets. Send them merrily on their way. Then stitch them right up, less than a week later. Bah.

"Mister Gates? The rat is in the cage. I repeat, the rat is in the cage. Agent Thompson out."

[Edit: 9th May 2008.

You win this round, Thompson. By, erm, not actually doing anything wrong or improper in any way. But just you wait. *Shakes gloved fist at camera*]

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EPG Week: Day Two

Previously on EPG Week: the sexily graphical-interfaced (at least if you've got a Humax box) Freesat has been launched. We're almost tempted to speculate about possibly getting one (although as the standard HD box has no recording functionality, you can kiss goodbye to watching one programme and recording another unless you've got a Freeview PVR and decent aerial). More importantly, we're using it as an excuse to look at some electronic programme guides. You knows you loves it.

EPG THREE: ZIGNAL 2.0

It's Industria's IPTV interface, apparently. Or, to use the PR-speak of those behind it, "a groundbreaking and unprecedented IPTV middleware platform, designed to bridge the gap between the TV user's expectations and the solutions currently available in the IPTV marketplace". Do you know, we were just *bursting* for someone to bridge the gap between our expectations and the solutions currently available in the IPTV marketplace, so this is perfect.

Now, given that the images on their Flickr page aren't flagged with a Creative Commons licence, and that we've just been sarcastic about their press release, here are a couple of 'extracts' from the sample images. The full versions can be viewed here.

Smooth.


Pretty but wrong.

IS THAT REAL?

Clearly, these are concept shots that don't hold up to any sort of scrutiny. House, South Park and The Simpsons on BBC One? Not until we're Director General of it. Discovery Civilization broadcasting an hour of Tom & Jerry would be good, too. We wish our telly received a channel called 'Stoo 2'.

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT?

It looks really rather gorgeous, doesn't it? Lots of thumbnail screen grabs all over the TV guide and on the VOD screen. Good old Helvetica Neue as the typeface, channel logos on display in a nicely polite fashion, lots of information on screen at once. Well done.

WHAT'S RUBBISH ABOUT IT?

At this point, it does look like it's merely a conceptual EPG. We can't find any evidence of it 'in the wild', at all. Also, trying to view it on on a modestly sized HDTV screen could well lead to a headache. At least they didn't try to be that bit trendier and go for a font weight of '35 Thin', we suppose.

OVERALL: 8/10. Hang on, we're deducting two points because Industria's website refers to the things they do under the heading 'Solutions'. 6/10 it is, then.

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It's EPG Week!

So, Freesat has launched, which has got us pretty excited. Not because we've now got the option of spending about another £200 to see their EXCLUSIVE carriage of ITV HD - heck no. The only thing that'd be worth watching on HD on ITV would be Champions League football, and there's a grand total of one Champions League match due to be broadcast between now and August anyway. And that'll be shown on Sky Sports HD at the same time anyway. And ITV HD is not even going to be an actual channel, just a red button pop-up option.

No, it's because Freesat has - if the 'leaked' (i.e. mocked up) images we've seen are accurate - quite the prettiest EPG we've seen. Of course, odds are we won't actually get to see a Freesat box in action for quite a while, as pretty much anyone who hasn't got digital telly yet would probably be happy enough with a £15 Freeview box from Aldi. That leaves the people in the parts of the UK not already served by Freeview (and ex-pats living under the satellite footprint) as the main market, but we don't know anyone who ticks those boxes.

So, instead we're going to console ourselves by taking a look at some of the programme guides from around the globe. Is there anything more thrilling than watching an illicitly streamed football match on a Saturday, and spending half-time watching Johnny Uploader flick around his exotic foreign programme menu, trying to hunt down Latvia's equivalent of Jeff Stelling plugging the forthcoming Skonto-Ventspils clash? No, there isn't.

Just to add to the fun for everyone, we're going to try and drag it out for as long as possible, too. Essentially, we're not going to rest until we've driven away the last of our readers. Ah, that sweet self-destructive urge. Come the end of the month, the only IP address troubling our hit counter will be the legal representatives of Idiot Toys, who want a word with us about this being broadly similar to their running joke about foreign batteries.

PART ONE: THE FREESAT EPG

Erm. Quite uselessly, there aren't any pictures of the Freesat EPG on their website. Or on Flickr. And the Humax website only really includes a picture of the HDR 9300FS box in it's press release page. There's not a single hit for 'HDR 9300FS' in Google Image Search, and only three for it in Google itself. Maybe we'll be the fourth. Way to get your message out there, Freesat.

Luckily for us, Digital Spy have recently featured leaked pictures of it:

Ooh.

Aah.

IS THAT REAL?

Well, it's clearly not exactly as it will be seen on the boxes you can buy from Currys. If it were, it would suggest the twin outcomes of BBC One's schedule taking a notablyTeutonic tone for at least four consecutive days, and more distressingly, the screeching hatebags on The Jeremy Kyle Show being broadcast in 1080i Revolt-O-Vision.

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT?

It really is splendidly colourful, with loads of brightly hued little icons denoting things that you'd need to thumb through the encoder's manual to discover the meaning of. Lots of room for detailed programme information on the 'info' screen, with a 70% opacity background allowing you to keep those peepers on your show at the same time.

WHAT'S RUBBISH ABOUT IT?

That text would quite likely cause burst eyes for anyone trying to read it on a standard-definition set. And, in all probability, the real EPG doesn't actually look much like that.

OVERALL: 8/10


PART TWO: THE FORTHCOMING SKY HD EPG

Well, why steal one set of images from Digital Spy when you can just as easily pilfer two? Currently in beta testing for lucky Sky employees, this is due to be rolled out to Sky HD customers (and those with newer models of Sky+ boxes) later in the year. Marking the first genuine revamp of the 1998 original EPG design, this is designed to offer much greater functionality whilst retaining the same look and feel of the familiar system.

Blue.

Different.

IS THAT REAL?

We think so. If it were a fake, it'd be a pretty meticulous one. And as we all know, the sort of people likely to try and pull shit like this are conclusively the very worst kind of cack-handed imbeciles.

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT?

It certainly looks much nicer, being formatted to make the most of a high-definition widescreen display, but still offering a display viable enough for people with less than huge televisions, or people with poor eyesight, or people who like to sit a long, long way away from their telly. The current channel is now displayed in a little box-out on the TV Guide screen, which is a boon. The on-screen channel bar also gives a lot more information - the current programme is alongside the next two shows (as opposed to one), programme information for other channels is available as you you flick through (it's only possible for the current channel at the moment), and it certainly looks nicer than the current EPG.

WHAT'S RUBBISH ABOUT IT?

It's still a bit 'chunky', though. It's not as colourful as the non-subscription counterpart, with the same old garish blue looking dated by Freesat's nicely toned pastels. But then, Sky TV has never really been about toning things down, making you nice and relaxed, it's all about flinging primary colours in your face until you're punch drunk enough to get enticed by Colchester v Blackpool, or nine hours of live poker. And all that useful stuff won't be of much use to us, as we're cancelling our Sky at the end of the football season, as it's really not worth the £50 a month they're asking for.

OVERALL: 7/10


Tomorrow: an experimental feature-rich user interface. Ooh.

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