Creating a TV Scheduler Application

[Bstrick75]

Does anyone know of any manualls, websites or applications that either show you how or allow you to create your own TV Guide Service?
I'm working with a company that needs to put thier program listings out on TV to thier customers in a fashion that is similar to the onscreen TV Guide Displays used by local cable companies. I would like to have it setup in such a way that there is a company logo at the top,
below that exists a frame that houses all the scheduling information. I would like for this to be in a top-down fashion where the channels are listed at the top and the times are on the side. I'm hoping to have this setup where it scrolls downward slowly till it reaches the bottom,
at that point it goes back to the top and starts over again towards the
bottom.
I want it so that every few minutes the forms transitions to another form. This form would be maybe a static commercial or just additional information. After about 30 sec, it would go back to the original screen.


Any advice would help me greatly.





Thank You
Bobby Strickland
Strictly Consulting, Inc

http://www.StrictlyConsulting.net

Bobby Strickland
Solutions Engineer
Strictly Consulting, Inc
http:

http://www.StrictlyConsulting.net

'Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work' -- Aristotle

 

[ThatRickGuy]

Creating your own? As in for all inclusive lists for all available channels? That's a toughy. First you'd have to grab the list of available channels (easy enough through Charter) and their number. Then you'd have to get a listing for each channel. I looked into this a while ago, and most online systems (ABC/NBC/TV Guide etc) use a flash interface to increase the difficulty of "stealing" their lists.

My project is currently in wait while one of my team mates works with Windows MCE to try to pull the channel listing feature out of the API.

I have also heard of online services that you can buy that will provide listings. But I haven't been able to find any recently.

-Rick

VB.Net Forum forum796 forum855 ASP.NET Forum
I believe in killer coding ninja monkeys.

 

[ThatRickGuy]

Check this site:

http://www.titantv.com/quickguide/quickguide.aspx

-Rick

VB.Net Forum forum796 forum855 ASP.NET Forum
I believe in killer coding ninja monkeys.

 

[Bstrick75]

Actually the applicaiton will not include any outside channels that I need to subcribe to. It will only have the 12 channels offered by the client. They will be maintaining there on program listings.

Bobby Strickland
Solutions Engineer
Strictly Consulting, Inc
http:

http://www.StrictlyConsulting.net

'Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work' -- Aristotle

 

[ThatRickGuy]

In that case, I would suggest getting them to maintain an XML listing online. Have your client grab that list (via web request, soap, TCP client, or even a VPN tunnel with ADO.Net). Once you have that listing it's just a matter of creating the form and display how ever you want it.

-Rick

VB.Net Forum forum796 forum855 ASP.NET Forum
I believe in killer coding ninja monkeys.

 

[Bstrick75]

In that case, I would suggest getting them to maintain an XML listing online. Have your client grab that list (via web request, soap, TCP client, or even a VPN tunnel with ADO.Net). Once you have that listing it's just a matter of creating the form and display how ever you want it.

-Rick

Are you saying that by doing this that I would just have a pre-existing application point to the XML listing? That would be nice.
The only problem I see with that would be that the app would need to sit within some other application as a container so that I could add a header as well as set the guide up to slowly scroll from top to bottom and back up to the top again. Also I want the page to transition to another page every now and then, and then back to the orginial page.
I'm looking at a control from

http://www.rekenwonder.com/aspnet/schedule.html

right now to see how hard it would be to implement it.

Bobby Strickland
Solutions Engineer
Strictly Consulting, Inc
http:

http://www.StrictlyConsulting.net

'Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work' -- Aristotle

 

[ThatRickGuy]

Ahh, if you are going web based, you should head over to the ASP.Net forum, they can help you more with the interface.

If you want a light windows client, you can set up the interface how ever you like (data grid, flex grid, custom layout, what ever). Then just grab the XML file from your server and populate the grid.

If you want to go fully web based, you could make a web page on your own server that accesses the XML localy. Then just have the customers browse to your page.

-Rick

VB.Net Forum forum796 forum855 ASP.NET Forum
I believe in killer coding ninja monkeys.