A better EPG
Up till now, i’ve been using the XMLTV EPG. This basically downloads tv listings from the Radio Times and formats them in the open XMLTV standard for import into MediaPortal. This works ok, apart from the fact that a lot of channels don’t actually get listings in the Radio Times (albeit some of the more random ones) but it also means that ITV HD was always empty in my EPG as the way this works on “official” freesat is you just get a red-button “watch in HD” type thing when viewing normal ITV.
Well, one of the clever MediaPortal devs has worked out how to extract the full EPG info from the satellite stream, so we can now get the same EPG data as you’d get on a SKY box! Unfortunately this functionality isn’t (yet) in MediaPortal, but it’s very easy to set up. It involves using a patched TSWriter.ax, and then selecting the relevant channels for EPG grabbing (in the case of Sky, it’s actually a radio channel, the one that plays the funky lift music) and for Freesat it’s “Brit shorts”. Once selected (and given an hour or so as there is a lot of data) I now have a full EPG, including ITV HD and all the other random channels I rarely watch!
The only downside is I have had to re-activate the Grab EPG when Idle option, which if you’ll remember from a few posts back I disabled as the TV Service seemed to hang when this was on. Hopefully whatever that problem was (no one ever worked it out) isn’t present in the more recent releases, or this patch also doesn’t cause it. Certainly the initial grab has worked without any trouble. The reason for grabbing while idle rather than when timeshifting is because the process is rather CPU and memory intensive, so it could disrupt watching TV if grabbing during Timeshift.
Anyway - if, like me, you’re using MediaPortal to pick up Freesat, then I’d definitely recommend experimenting with this patch. The thread is here: SKY/Freesat EPG patch for MediaPortal
