bob_p wrote:I haven't looked at the details on how WMC is "phoning home" to Microsoft to get the program guide service, so I'm not sure if this can be done...
Is it possible to override Microsoft's connection to their program guide service - and have that instead go to a server providing something like EPG123?
When WMC goes through tuner setup - it's connecting to Microsoft's server to get information used to set up the program guide. If we could override that to use EPG123 instead, then there wouldn't be a need to uninstall WMC and reinstall - instead WMC could be modified to point to the EPG123 server - and then go through tuner setup again.
WMC must be getting the IP address or server name from the registry, a configuration file or from embedded code - and if that was replaced with a pointer to a different server, then that could be updated to point to EPG123.
Then, when Microsoft decides to pull the plug on their WMC server (and we really have no idea when that will happen), all ties to Microsoft will already be cut - and it wouldn't impact WMC users.
Just an idea...
I had the same idea since all the problems with the guide provider started. Redirecting the WMC call for the guide is trivial thru some clever updates in the machine host file. Emulating the EPG service and providing the data the way the WMC expects it is the hard part. Here is a simple log from my updates. Guide updates can be found at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\Packages\EpgListings
Code: Select all
6:37:48 PM - Retrieving EpgListings.
6:37:48 PM - Processing EpgListings.
6:37:48 PM - Retrieving EpgListing-2.enc.
6:38:57 PM - Extracting 28498856_ListingData.mxf.
6:39:02 PM - Processing 28498856_ListingData.mxf.
7:07:14 PM - Processing of EpgListings is complete.
7:07:14 PM - Retrieving EpgListings.
7:07:15 PM - Retrieving EpgListings.
7:07:15 PM - Processing EpgListings.
7:07:16 PM - Retrieving EpgListing.enc.
7:07:25 PM - Extracting 309582224_ListingData.mxf.
7:07:25 PM - Processing 309582224_ListingData.mxf.
7:12:01 PM - Processing of EpgListings is complete.
Here is how I thinks it works (could be totally wrong)
1. Retrieving EpgListings -> I assume the 28498856_ListingData.mxf is retrieved first (seems to be encrypted)
2. Retrieving EpgListing-2.enc (per tunner) -> I believe this is the decryption key.
3. Extracting 28498856_ListingData.mxf -> decripting the MXF file
4. Processing 28498856_ListingData.mxf -> Probably loading it into the WMC
That is as far as I went - not sure how gray is the area of reverse engineering of the EPG functionality.
There are many developers on this forum that are hard at work in developing a solution for the EPG management - You guys rock !
At the same time I believe it is time to combine all effort and create the single EPG solution being developed and supported by all of us.