Poll: Should "MOVIE:" be removed from movie titles in Win7's EPG?

[Russell at IceTV]

Update: we've added the ability to remove the "MOVIE:" prefix from movie titles in the Windows 7 guide.  See this post for the details.

Media Center in Windows 7 has the option of colouring show titles differently based on their category (Movie, News, etc.).  This makes spotting movies much easier, because they're all purple in the guide.  You can vote in the poll above as to whether or not the "MOVIE:" text should be removed in Win7's EPG.

To enable this feature in Media Center, go to Tasks / Settings / TV / Guide / Guide Page Options.  Then enable the checkbox for "Apply colored backgrounds to shows, based on their category".

[Circuitau]

I voted yes because it makes sense to me, but I am not sure if there are any reasons not to do this.

Circuit

[dgaust]

I believe so.... given the colour category (and the fact I asked for this prior to Win7's release anyway). 

[s3070416]

The guide colouring looks good, but the programs in the guide don't seem to be comprehensively tagged so it loses a lot of it's value. For example, Lateline and World News are coloured yellow, but Ten News isn't. Likewise the movies The Guardian and Braveheart are coloured purple, but Hitch isn't.

Is this an IceTV guide issue that will be amended over time?

[Russell at IceTV]

Lateline and World News are coloured yellow, but Ten News isn't. Likewise the movies The Guardian and Braveheart are coloured purple, but Hitch isn't.

Hmm, that's very strange, because I'm definitely seeing Ten News in yellow and Hitch in purple.  I checked the guide data also, and it seems to be correct as far as the categories those shows are in.  Ten News is tagged as "News, Live" and Hitch is "Comedy, Romance, Movie".  Anyone else seeing that?

Russell

[s3070416]

Hmm.... Hitch is also missing the "Movie:" in the title. In fact the title is "Hitch -Rpt" and the record series option is present so it seems to think it's a series rather than a movie.

Also, it was actually "Ten Late News" that was failing to be coloured. "Sports Tonight" directly afterwards gets the correct colouring though.

More data in case this helps:

The movie Be Cool also isn't being coloured, is titled "Be Cool -Rpt" and has the record series option present.

The movies, True Blue, Braveheart and Hot Shots! Part Deux are all being coloured correctly.

For tomorrow night, the movie Center Stage is correctly coloured but 50 First Dates has the same non-colouring, Rpt and series recording problem.

I'm in canberra and i use the "Win TV Canberra" and "SC10 Canberra" and "Prime Canberra" channels.

[Russell at IceTV]

Ok, it sounds to me like you're not seeing the IceTV guide data -- you're probably seeing the EIT data that comes over the broadcast.  Those show names are definitely not in our database, and we don't use "-Rpt".

When you setup the IceTV guide, did you check all the channel names on the Edit Channels page, like I described in my original post?  Are you seeing "-IceTV" at the end of all the channel names on the Edit Channels page?  If not, take a look at my instructions again and see if you can manually map the IceTV listings to the channels.

Russell

[s3070416]

ahh, you're right. thanks.

I'm pretty sure they were there when i first mapped them. It might be related to some flakeyness in the Windows 7 signal setup and guide:

- in the Edit Channels menu i get each channel repeated 3 times. e.g.

   5    SC10 Canberra
   5    SC10 Canberra
   5    SC10 Canberra
   8    WIN TV Canberra
   8    WIN TV Canberra
   8    WIN TV Canberra

This happens even on the first scan, or if i delete all channels and rescan.

- every few days i get a whole bunch of new channels appear in the guide. I like to disable all but 7 channels so i can see them all at once, but randomly i get additional channels tha were previously disabled appearing there.

This is all a bit off-topic, but just in case it helps.

[ancall]

Yes - makes sense.  Also shows up saved movies in the Movies tag.
ancall

[s3070416]

ahhh, fwiw, anyone who notices that disabled channels keep reappearing and their IceTV guide keeps getting replaced by the in-band guide you might want to check out this thread:

http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/community/windows-7-media-center-software/34943-channels-keep-reappearing.html

It looks like the opportunistic scanning bug in Vista has reappeared in Windows 7 and tends to affect Australian users. There's a registry fix linked to from that thread.

[dgaust]

Yeah, it's not the same bug unfortunately. The opportunistic scanning registry keys don't fix the issue on Win 7 (at least for me, and everyone else I've spoken to about it).

MS are aware of the problem, and it should be fixed by release.

[s3070416]

The first time i tried the registry fix it didn't work, then i rebooted, deleted all channels rescanned and it's been good for a whole day now. Previously it wouldn't last 2 minutes so hopefully that's the end of it. i wouldn't be surprised if it's back tomorrow though. Glad to hear that microsoft knows about it.

[s3070416]

ermm...ignore my last post.

[dgaust]

  It's a painful bug. On occasion I open up the guide and everything (including a couple of channels) is missing. It's worse than the opportunistic scanning bug in Vista.

Anyway, in relation to movies, if you want some really good extra meta-data for movies like Similar Movies, Cast & Crew information and an extended synopsis, then you can change the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\MCE.GlobalSettings\systemGeoISO2

from Au to US. You'll then get additional information downloaded from AMG if the movie contains a Name (obviously it would) and a year that can be matched with the AMG database.

Sometimes Win7 will overwrite the registry key though (i think MCUpdate does it), so you need to keep an eye on it. There is a tool that can do this for you, and automatically change the key back to US when it's changed, but I don't know if I'm allowed to link to external software on this forum (I wrote the app, so I know there's nothing bad in it).

[Marc]

I don't know if I'm allowed to link to external software on this forum (I wrote the app, so I know there's nothing bad in it).

Don't see an issue with that at all.

Link away!