Charlie Owen - Media Center Add In: Schedule TV Recording via RSS Feed

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Media Center Add In: Schedule TV Recording via RSS Feed

I'm embarking on a fun project this week. I'm going to start coding a Media Center Add In with the following features...

Background Add In.
Polls RSS feeds according to an OPML file.
Retrieves new posts from those RSS feeds.
Schedules TV recordings based on Click To Record document enclosures in the post.

I've got a couple of reasons...

I want to get back to C# and managed code. HTML + JScript has been fun, but it's SO last decade.
This could be an interesting scenario. We've got podcasts and videoblogs, what about a TVLog...?
This could lead to even more interesting scenarios -- breaking news alerts...?
Perhaps this could lead to a super-simple podcasting downloader?
Exercise our SDK documentation for Media Center Add Ins in order to give feedback to our product team.
Have an ongoing project to discuss here in the blogosphere (to date, most of my posts have been single topics).

I'm off to a great start -- just finished coding an Add In which takes this XML (learn more about the Click To Record Feature)...

<clickToRecord xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:ehome:clicktorecord">
<body>
  <programRecord isRecurring="false">
   <program>
    <key field="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:ehome:epg:program#title">Star Trek: The Next Generation</key>
   </program>
  </programRecord>
</body>
</clickToRecord>

...and schedules a recording of a single show via this C# code in an On Demand Add In (learn more starting at About Media Center Add Ins)...

void IAddInEntryPoint.Launch(AddInHost host)
{
try
{
  string strClickToRecordXML = string.Empty;
  Television objTV = host.Television;
  XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
  xmlDoc.Load("ClickToRecord.c2r");
  strClickToRecordXML = xmlDoc.InnerXml;
  objTV.ScheduleRecording(strClickToRecordXML);
  host.HostControl.Dialog("Completed ScheduleRecording Method Call", "Success", 1, 0, false);
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
  host.HostControl.Dialog(ex.Message,"Exception",1,5,false);
}
}

So, I have a couple of questions for the readers of this blog...

Are there any additional features you might like to see in this Add In?
Do you have pointers to great documentation on consuming RSS in managed code which might be helpful?

Categories: Media Center | Media Center SDK Code Sample | Comments [10] |

| Posted on Thursday, August 04, 2005 5:27:37 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Thursday, August 04, 2005 2:15:14 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Great Idea. I guess it's only going to be able to record programs broadcasted in my area.
As for RSS documentation, when I started writing my RSS reader for Media Center I found very little good managed content examples.
But working RSS is very simple and the XMLdocument object works well with it.
I am looking forward to seeing how you get on with this.

Ian

Thursday, August 04, 2005 3:08:27 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Charlie-

Sounds like a great project. There's a couple of articles on CodeProject:

http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/RssReader.asp
http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/rssframework.asp

Steven J. Ackerman

Friday, August 05, 2005 4:34:01 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

what about support for specific episodes? That would be fantastic. Looks like a fun project.

austin

Saturday, August 06, 2005 5:04:02 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Hi Austin,

The great thing about the Click To Record schema is you can specify individual shows or entire series as part of what to schedule -- very powerful. This Add In will be agnostic as to what you pass in to the ScheduleRecording method call.

Charlie Owen

Wednesday, September 07, 2005 3:24:36 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

I think this would be a good time to introduce a "C2R" utility that makes it easy to create the enclosure file for your add-in. Of course, this gets closer to the core problem of accessing the guide data, but it would still be nice to have a way to easily create a .c2r file.

Michael Earls

Thursday, January 05, 2006 12:23:36 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Friday, September 15, 2006 7:50:29 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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John Beck

Saturday, October 14, 2006 9:50:49 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Thanks for the interesting and informative site. That's definitely what I've been looking for.

Ruki

Thursday, February 08, 2007 7:56:21 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

I want to create a similar utility.
I think it must be possible to setup an IIS server and host WML files.
Using this WML files i would like to simply extract data from the EPG so that i can read the program guide on my WAP cellphone. Also using the click to record function, i would like to be able to schedule a recording via my cellphone. A WML page linked to an ASP script that generates the necessary XML sheets and posts them to click to record should't be that hard to create.

Is there someone with experience relating to this WML adventure?
It looks not that hard to create. Only how to extract information from the EPG is this possible?

Menu like this
- login
- list of favorite tv stations (can be plain text to reduce KBs being sent over cellphone)
-> click on tv station to get the program guide of that station
Click on a program to schedule the recording
It can be that simple to start with.
Extra options could come later.

Someone that can help me on the way?

Nymus

Friday, March 09, 2007 9:46:30 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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