New guide features: director, actors, and year

[Russell at IceTV]

Hi!

We're now starting to add the director, actors, and year to the guide information.  This will primarily be for movies, but may occasionally appear for normal programs as well, to help distinguish them from other programs with a similar name.

Up until now, the guide team has been adding this information at the end of the description.  For PVRs that support separate fields for this information (such as MCE, or any PVR using the XML guide such as MythTV, ShowShifter, etc.), this info will begin appearing in the proper place in the program details, and be available for searches, etc. when the PVR supports it.  Click the thumbnail image below for a screenshot from MCE in Windows Vista to see how it shows movie details.  Keyword searches for director and actor names will work as well, for PVRs that support it.

For PVRs that don't support the separate fields in the guide data (Topfield, DigiTV, etc.) this information will continue to be shown at the end of the description, when there's room for it (PVRs have different limits on how much of the description they'll show, but we try to get as much in there as we can).

Obviously we can't convert our entire database all at once, but you should start seeing the new information appear in the guide soon, and over time we'll get more and more of it moved to the new separate fields.

Thanks!
Russell