Typical EPG's display a tiny snapshot of the guide - a small number of channels and the next couple of hours of programs - all in a 40 point font designed to be visible to blind granny on the other side of the room. Navigation with the up/down/left/right/OK buttons on a remote control is also a pain. My kingdom for a QWERTY keyboard and a mouse!
Here are some use cases that EPG's fail at miserably:
- Draw a circle around your favourite show. Not to record it - just to remind you that you may want to watch it.
- Tell you if a program has moved to a different timeslot.
- "Oh cool! Doctor Who is back on again!"
- Noticing a new show out of the corner of your eye - the narrow two hour view of an EPG makes this impossible.
My attempt to improve upon EPG's is a Qt 4.7 based application for the desktop. No DVR integration or HDMI control protocols. Just you, your laptop, and the TV guide.
Plain boring desktop Qt application (patches to add a QML front-end welcome, although the whole point of this is taking advantage of the big screen). The guide data for all TV free to air and Pay TV channels in Australia comes from OzTivo in XMLTV format, and is quite comprehensive.
Most of the use cases are handled with the "bookmark" feature, which displays your selected shows in a chosen color - altered slightly if the timeslot or day doesn't match. The "7 Day Outlook" feature will display the bookmark matches for the next 7 days on a particular channel (or "All Channels" if you select it), which acts as your "viewing guide".
Code here: https://github.com/rweather/tvguide
Documentation: Press F1 for help.
