"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."