Hello Jess

1. Control Panel -> Administration Tools -> Component Service

2. Expand Component Services -> Computes

3. Right click My Computers and select Properties

4. Under Com Security, under "Lanuns and Activations Permissions" click "Edit defaults".

5. Click Add

6. In the Select Users or Grousp write "ASPNET" (not "ASP.NET") and click "Check Names" and click "OK"

7. Give the new "ASP.NET Machine Account (mycomputer\ASPNET)" the follwoing to premessions: "Local Launch" and "Local Activation" and click "OK" until you are back.

That is it.

Thomas

 

Hello everybody

I updated my MCE 2004 installation guide to 2005. Please excuse me for spelling erros and the like.

Updated: 28-12-2004

FYI: It is very important that you follow the guid step-by-step.

Also if you are on a clean machine then please start MCE, and make sure you get a TV signal. This will initialize the MCE. All settings however will be deleted, when you follow the installation instructions, so don't spend to much time customizing the setup.

1.      Install required prerequisites:

·          Install IIS

1.      Start “Control Panel” -> “Add Remove Programs” –> “Add Remove Windows Componetns”.

2.      Select “Internet Informations Services (IIS)”, and click “Details”.

3.      Select “Common Files”, “Internet Informations Services Snap-In” and “World Wide Web Services”.

·          Install .NET Framework 1.1 (I guess this is installed by default in MCE 2005 OS). Otherwise use Windows Update for this.

2.      Install and configure WebGuide

·          Download WebGuide2 from http://www.showtell.com/mce_webguide/2/.

·          Install WebGuide using default settings.

·          Optional: Update xmltv. You can get xmltv separately from SourceForge (see www.xmltv.org). Replace the filse in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\WebGuide2\XML_TV with the downloaded files.

·          Configure the WebGuide using the “MCE WebGuide 2 Configuration” program.

1.      Selected your country and click configure to select which channels you want guide data for.

2.      Click “Download Data”.

3.      Click “Create Schedule”.

4.      Go to the Channels tab, and arrange the order of you channels. Click “Save Channels”. Notice: If you run step 1 or 2 again these changes will be lost.

·          Replace the WebGuide2.dll, with the one Reinhard has posted here:
http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=27&messageid=72332#bm72654
Delete or remove the old one (don’t rename it).

·          Change security so recoding works

1.      Control Panel -> Administration Tools -> Component Service.

2.      Expand Component Services -> Computes.

3.      Right click My Computers and select Properties.

4.      Under Com Security, under "Lanuns and Activations Permissions" click "Edit defaults".

5.      Click Add.

6.      In the Select Users or Groups write "ASPNET" (not "ASP.NET") and click "Check Names" and click "OK".

7.      Give the new "ASP.NET Machine Account (mycomputer\ASPNET)" the following to permissions: "Local Launch" and "Local Activation" and click "OK" until you are back.

·          Confirm that you have data in webguide. Surf to http://localhost/webguide2/

3.      Install and configure SmartGuide:

1.      Download SmartGuide. Look for the latest version in this thread (this is very important).

2.      Copy the contents from the binaries dir into the Windows\eHome directory + create shortcut to smartguide.exe.
(Alternatively, you can copy all *.dll files from the eHome directory to the SmartGuide directory).

3.      Double click the C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ MCE2005_EPG_Enable.reg.

4.      Run CasPol.exe -s off . It shold be in C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322.

5.      Kill all eh* processes using Task Manager.

6.      Delete everything under C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\eHome\ (incl. prefs subfolders). Warning: This will delete anything configured in MCE including Secheduled Recordings, Channels Setup etc.

7.      Edit the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Tuning Spaces\#\MinChannel to 1 using regedit.exe (where # is number of the tv setup you use (1 is for "Local Analog Cable", 2 is for "Local Analog Antenna"... I changed all of them to be sure). This will make channel 1 available as preset channel.

8.      Delete every key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune using regedit.exe. This will clear all existing channels, and only use the one which will be configured using SmartGuide (we will not use MCE 2005's new scan feature).

9.      Edit c:\windows\ehome\smartguide.exe.config file using notepad:

·          WebGuide2DSN. Make sure this points to you WebGuide2 Access database. Default should be OK.

·          TuningSpaceCountryCode. Set this to you own country code (the same as international phone number prefix. E.g. 49 for germany, 45 for Denmark etc). In MCE 2005 it is not necessary to change the Regional Setting to German :-)

·          TuningSpaceSignal change this if you need to.

·          It should not be necessary to change anything else.

10.  Start “c:\windows\ehome\smartguide.exe /i”.

·          First click Channel Editor and click "Load" to load all the channels configuration from WebGuide.  Fill in all the frequencies for each of your channels (my cable company has a list of frequencies on Text TV on the Info/Mosaic channel). The format for e.g. 725,25 is 725250000.
I use the exact same number for "number", "virtual channel" and "preset". That is... I use the defaults that I configured when setting up WebGuide.
Make sure that you that you fill out all columns.
Click Save (this will create a c:\windows\ehome\output\frequencies.reg file and also add an extra table "channel_extra" to the WebGuide's Guide.mdb. This table contains your frequencies, so you might want to back this file up when reinstalling WebGuide). Close the channel Editor.

·          Click "1. WebGuide2MCE!"

·          Click "2. LoadGuide from XML"... this should produce a "Congratulations. It worked...". This will create a brand new MCE EPG Storage file that only contains your custom channels and no extra channels which you don't use.

·          Close SmartGuide.

11.  Double click the c:\windows\ehome\output\frequencies.reg to import you own customized frequencies settings. I have to do this every time I used SmartGuide (se later for how to configure this in a Bach job)

12.  Start MCE and confirm that you can watch TV and have Guide data and all the right channels in the right order (same order as in the WebGuide). If it dosn't work you might need to reboot, and then run step 14.

13. (New as of 27-12-2004). Disable automatic download of EPG data. In MCE, go to Settings\General\Automatic Download Options.

14. From now on it is only necessary to start SmartGuide and click "1. WebGuide2MCE!"and then "2. LoadGuide from XML", or you could setup the batch job in the next step.

4.      Setup batch job for importing

·          Add the following two lines to the  (the /f  imports frequencies.reg everytime) “C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\WebGuide2\MCE_Wizard\ download_guide.bat”:
cd C:\WINDOWS\ehome\
C:\WINDOWS\ehome\smartguide.exe /f

      del C:\WINDOWS\ehome\output\*.xml (new as of 27-12-2004)

That is it. If you have problems please read this thread first.

If anyone finds errors in this installation guide, please let me know, and I will edit the steps.

Thanks a million to Reinhard for this great job.

Thomas

 

PS: Reinhard... you may ofcause include this guide as a readme.txt in the next version.

Thanks Thomas,

Now it works perfekt!!!

//Jesse

Hi All,

Here's a new distribution archive for SmartGuide 2005. It includes the excellent manual from Thomas (and his fixes (BTW: Thomas, if you fix my bug, please don't include another one: title = max 512, not 1024 . You're excused, because I was   )

Furthermore, it includes the WebGuide2 fixed dll and the object reference error fix (it was in the PresetHandler, where I forgot to include an init() call that MCE 2005 requires. Behavior: EPG import worked fine, but updating the channellineup (presets) fails. This is consistent with the reports from the users).

Regards,

 

Reinhard

PS: JB: No thunder stolen. I mean, if we can keep people happy for half a year and soon offer something more advanced, that's ok. Even so, if nobody has to use SmartGuide anymore, then we really have a Smart Guide (and we all use EPG2WebGuide )

Hello Reinhard

Sorry. I'm glad you found my 512/1024 error.

So now I have a Question.

How do I add channels which I don't have WebGuide data for. Eg. the Mosaic channel?

I think you answered that i the old thread, but I can find it.

I tried to add the channels and channels_extra to the WebGuide MDB. But ir looks like the WebGuide doesn't accept channels without program info.

Anyone?

Thomas

I'm getting frustrated.

Did excactly what the latest instructions said. Step by step.

Webguide2 works, smartguide2 still reports something wnet wrong etc... when clicking 2. load guide from xml. Puts up a 320k epg.sdf and a 180MB arbitrary named .sdf. Still no guidedata in MCE.

Ill take any help i can get & thanks for the efforts so far.

Best regards

Richard

 

Update,

I still think there is a bug in the truncate function. It all worked perfectly after i truncated the "description" field in guide.mdb down to max 256 chars.

Can you pls recheck the routine that checks the length and enters just the first 1024 chars.

best regards

Richard

 

Hello Richard

OK... I tried to change the description of one of the program entries in my guide to above 1024 chars, and it failed for me to.

I then changed the SmartGuide.exe so that it cuts the description to 1023 chars (instead of 1024), and then it dosen't fail.

I also changed the title form 512 to 511 chars (althoug WebGuide only allows 255 chars, so that shouldn't be a problem in the first place).

Can you confirm that it works now. If yes... then Reinhard, would you change the source code to the following (notice the >= also):

title = System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(programs[i]["title"].ToString());
if (title .Length >= 512)
{
    title = title.Substring(0,511);
}
descr = System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(programs[i]["description"].ToString());
if (descr.Length >= 1024)
{
    descr = descr.Substring(0,1023);
}

Again... you have to trust me for attaching a .exe file.

Thomas

Hi all,

OK... I can confirm that all the binaries posted here work.

Thanks for all your nice debugging Thomas.

I only have 1 problem. If I do not scan for services and do a guide update then MCE tells me that there are no channels setup when I try to use the guide or watch TV etc. Must I perform an initial TV setup in MCE?

As mentioned in an earlier post, if I do scan for services I can update the EPG but I have to map the channels back to the guide data manually afterwards. I have to do this each time I do a guide update. Thank goodness I only have 5 channels

Reinhard, you mention "Behavior: EPG import worked fine, but updating the channellineup (presets) fails." Is this the behaviour that I am experiencing? How would one go about programatically fixing it?

Cheers

Chris

---

My Blog | South African MCE Community | Xbox Bloggers

Hello Chris

No thanks needed. It is Reinhard how should get the credit, as he does all the hard work, even though he doesn't even need SmartGuide anymore.

Regarding you problem, then first, did you follow my guide step by step? If you did, then you shouldn't have to do a initial TV Setup in MCE. This is all done by SmartGuide.

It looks like you didn't setup the channels using SmartGuides Channel Editor. To get SmartGuide to work perfect that is necessary. Take the time to find the right frequencies.

The next important step is to import the C:\WINDOWS\ehome\output\frequencies.reg after each time you run smartguide. Somehow the import of EPG data resets the channel lineup. This is why you have the "SmartGuide.exe  /f" option when importing in batch mode (se my instructions for making SmartGuide import a part of the WebGuide download batch job). This will import the data and the run the frequencies.reg aftewards. So when you got it working once "SmartGuide.exe /f" is all you need to do afterwards.

If you for some reason don't want a scheduled job, and prefers to use the smartguide user interface, then I suggest to make a batch file like the following when starting smartguide (instead of running Smartguide directly).

C:\WINDOWS\ehome\smartguide.exe /i
regedit /S frequencies.reg

Hope this answers you question.

Thomas

Hi Thomas & Reinhard,

I can now confirm that everything works and the description field is truncated correctly.

All is now ok, i got a working guide with record etc.

Two more issues to be solved:
-Add channels not covered by the guide
-Add composite input of PVR 250
-and finally how do we best clean up the epg directory for old xml & sdf files, i like to keep my directoies clean.

Tried to fix the smartguide myself, but only had Vstudio 2002, getting 2003 tomorrow, so ill might be able to participate in further development.

Again thanks,

Richard

 

 

Hi

Almost everything is working for me now.

My only problem is, how to rearrange the order of the channels in the mce guide.

The channels is in the order of the xmltv numbers but I would like to rearrange them.

I have tried the channeleditor in smartguide. It worked before but not with the laest version of smartguide.

I hope someone can help me with this. When this is fixed everything workss perfect.

 

 

---

regards

John

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the reply. Your guide is pretty much the exact one I followed to setup both my MCE 2004 and 2005 machines.

I obviously messed something up on Saturday when I setup my new MCE 2005 machine. I can't remember how many times I reset the config and went through the setup to finally get it to where it is now.

I will give it another crack as soon as I have some time. I had the frequencies perfect for MCE 2004 and I have noticed that the service scan on 2005 does not give the best signal so I want to fix that anyway. I find it quite odd that Microsoft does not allow one to fine tune the channels.

Thanks again!

Cheers

Chris

---

My Blog | South African MCE Community | Xbox Bloggers

I've got the same behaviour as Chris. When I go through the steps, everything seems to behave as it should. However, when I run MCE, it doesn't seem like the channellineup got written to MCE.

I've followed guide (the one Thomas wrote) very closely and tried numerous variations.

Funny thing is that I had the original version working over the weekend. Then when I updated to the latest version of Smartguide, nothing seems to work.

Michael

PS: I've peeked the WebGuide access database (using access) and it contains good data. That's not where the problem is.

Hello John

Do you want a different order in MCE than the WebGuide? Then you need to use the SmartGuide channel Editor (I've never done that though, and don't know if it works).

If you want to rearrange the WebGuide then use the "MCE WebGuide 2 Configuration". On the "Channels" tab, you can change the numbers. Then click "Save Channels". Remember that, if you use step 1-3 on the "Grapper" tab you have to change the channel order again.

Then in the SmartGuide's Channels Editor, make sure that the "virtualchannel" and "preset" is the same as the "number" column. The "number" column is the one you configured in the "MCE WebGuide 2 Configuration".

If you followed my guide, you should already have done this. But I now you setup was working before I wrote my guide, so maybe you missed a step.

Thomas

PS: Also remember to import the frequencies.reg after running SmartGuide.