In a Desert, TV-Browser is an EPG Oasis

Apr 27, 2009, 19:02 (0 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Gary Richmond)

[ Thanks to steve hill for this link. ]

"Well, it all began with my fifteen-year old analogue JVC twenty-nine inch CRT television. It had been playing up for several weeks before it finally gave up the ghost. Being the local scrooge, I has entertained notions of deferring changing over to digital until the great switchover here in the UK but it was not to be. It had to go. It was a beast of a machine that would have taxed the strength of an Olympic weight lifter. Before I despatched it to the great recycling centre in the sky I entertained fantasies of dropping it from the roof of a skyscraper but I sublimated my grief at the expense and bought a new digital TV. It has many great features but one of the most useful was the Electronic Programme Guide. I liked it so much that I began to wonder if I could source one that ran as free software on GNU/Linux. I found four: Freeguide,

"Maxemumtvguide, gTVG and TV-Browser. Freeguide worked but was very basic, short on features and lacked any significant degree of interactivity. Maxemumtvguide looked better but still lacked features. gTVG was basic too and hadn't been updated since September 2007. TV-Browser was different.

"TV-Browser has enough features and configurations to keep me diverted until Windows goes open source. The EPG built in to my TV had one odd feature though. It just would not work when the television was not on! What were the makers thinking of? I need TV-Browser to fill that gap."

Complete Story

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