HTPC and PVR the home for MegaEPG

I've finally found the real reason of the Norway VMC EPG crashes and released the version 1.2.6 in the Downloads section. It wasn't any obvious and I have a good excuse on trying to fix everything around but the issue :). The EPG crashes were caused by... too long program descriptions. It seems Microsoft allocates buffers of 512 characters for a program description and does not check/cut the length of too long descriptions when copying them from the incoming EPG into the VMC Guide database. It rather prefers to crash the mediacenter. Norway EPG source provides very long descriptions for some movies/programs and the MegaEPG will cut them from now on to prevent crashes. Norway users are advised to download the MegaEPG 1.2.6. I'm looking forward to get feedbacks.

It has been reported that the latest MegaEPG 1.2.5 is still having problems with Norway EPG. Users from Norway are advised to wait and avoid installation of 1.2.5 till I verify the report and make another announce. Sorry for the inconvenience!

The MegaEPG 1.2.5 is available in the Downloads section. It introduces two fixes: 1) Norway EPG gap detection that caused Norway EPG to stuck in VMC/MCE and 2) producing no guide if no programs were grabbed. The 1st fix will (hopefully!) make the Norway EPG usable. The 2nd fix is applied to all VMC/MCE users that experienced the guide removal (replacement with an empty guide) at times the MegaEPG grabbed no TV programs due to errors, connection problems, etc. Now in such a case the system will at least stay with the current guide which is much better than no guide at all.

The MegaEPG 1.2.4 is available in the Downloads section. It fixes the Norway EPG crashes. I have completely rewritten the tv programs validation engine (the one that checks for programs' intersection, double and null programs, etc.). The immediate effect now is mostly for Norway users although the fix will cause any produced guides be more accurate in general. Special thanks to Ole Morten, Troels Walsted, Trond-Eirik and others that helped with the bug reporting and feedbacks. Many-many thanks to Ron Shani and Itay Shem-tov for their latest donation to the project!

A reminder for the Israeli users: tonight (28/3 2:00am) Israel switches to the daylight saving time which is one hour forward. Since the MegaEPG gets the timezone and DST flag from the operating sytem automatically, please ensure the DST is on in the system time Time Zone properties. Do NOT change the clock itself! After making the DST flag on, ensure that the system clock is correct.

The MegaEPG 1.2.3 is available in the Downloads section. I'd better wait a little longer with the release in order to add the support for Italian EPG and investigate the latest Vista "No EPG" issue, but the changes I've made already are quite significant and worth the release. The support for Norway has been improved much, including a fix for the annoying "Error 24" Vista bug, removal the episode numbers from program titles and parsing program orginal names making the IMDB script work for Norway EPG. Israel YES users are advised to upgrade as well due to the change in the YES movies channels (Hallmark, MGM, and Yes 5 channel which is now "Yes Stars Israeli" have changed their numbers).

Many people ask for the latest YES channels change and find it difficult to replace the channels.xml file. I've decided it worth a new release. The MegaEPG 1.2.2 is available in the Downloads section. The new YES Movies channel, YES HD channels and corrected MGM and Discovery channels are in the release. Linux users experiencing wrong Hebrew direction in Linux systems may now use the new forceflip switch in the megaepg.ini. There are also few cosmetic changes in the installer: no DOS windows are opened anymore when installing the Vista service.

It seems that the Microsoft server has a messy and inaccurate guide data for HOT users. You are advised not to use the vista_he script meanwhile. Leave only the hot_he script configured to obtain a slower but correct EPG. I'd appreciate if someone will check the Vista HOT EPG periodically and notify us when the problem is gone. I'll make then a public announcement that the vista script can be used again.

I'm back from my short ski vacation. Just to let you know about the delay in answering the forum questions and emails. I had no access to the Internet and honestly telling didn't want to :-). Now I'm online again. Thank you.

A minor upgrade MegaEPG 1.2.1 has been released in the Downloads section. The most significant change is the updated list of Israeli YES and HOT channels. I completely reviewed all the existing channels list and made a lot of corrections. To name a few, channels HOT Gold, HOT Kids and Amateur Babes were added for HOT; channels Logi, Planeta Sport, Knesset and Russia Today were added for YES. Many channels in YES and HOT changed their STB numbers (I have no idea why they change channel numbers so often!), there are also removed channels. You are advised to upgrade.