We Got Served

Today, I am taking a look at Brent Friedman’s TV Manager add-in.  To get an idea of what TV Manager is, I went to his website:

TV Manager is a Windows Home Server add-in that lets you move your recordings to your Windows Home Server for management and storage.

TV Manager is handy for users who record TV using Media Center and have a Windows Home Server. TV Manager moves the shows over to your Windows Home Server for management and viewing. This makes sharing recorded TV with the whole family a snap.TV Manager has the ability to play your recordings in Media Center just as if they were sitting on your Media Center PC. You can delete recordings from using Media Center like any other recording. You can also play the recordings on non-Media Center PCs over the internet using the TV Manager Web Interface or locally using Windows Media Player. TV Manager is free of charge and the client works with Windows XP Media Center 2005 and Vista Media Center. The TV Manager add-in works with or without Windows Home Server Power Pack 1.

Current version: v1.0.1

Please note that the above description is based upon Brent’s older version of TV Manager.  The change history for the current version, v1.5 Preview, is shown below.

TV Manager v1.5 Preview Sunday, August 23 2009 – Releases

It’s been a long time since I last updated TV Manager, with school and other projects keeping me busy. I’ve decided to release a preview build of TV Manager version 1.5. Mainly to get it out the door and show what I have. I’ve added and changed a lot of things..

Changes:

• Fixed deleting recordings via web interface or deleting shows from Media Center and then viewing the web interface – would mess up Shows.xml
• Fixed share not being created after install – causing service to crash and install to appear to fail
• Fixed not showing all options on client. Still requires being configured with full Administrative privileges (changing settings).
• Fixed bug in web interface causing an error message to show instead of the page content.
• Fixed Compatibility with WTV.
• Fixed some glitches with the Email Notifications options in the settings tab.
• Added a new interface for clients.
• Added show thumbnails to the web interface.
• Added sorting to the web interface.
• Added an about dialog to the client.
• Add the “All” item in the web interface to show all the saved recordings.
• Added moving recordings at midnight under client settings.
• Added a client service, recordings will be moved even if a user is not logged in.
• Added right click menu to the new client interface (Contains options Play and Delete)
• Added a Series catalog feature that lets you print a catalog of all your recordings.
• Added Windows 7 features (jumplists, progress bars, pin-able taskbar item).
• Added WTV converter for Comskip, allowing commercials to be removed from WTV recordings (Windows 7 Only)
• Added an option to move recordings at a specified time (assuming the client is turned on).
• Added an SDK so users can write plug-ins for TV Manager (read the documentation for more information).
• Re-Added Original Air Date.
• Re-Added ComSkip option — May cause problems.
• Re-Added the Home Server Console tab – The play option might not work yet.
• Removed accidental time zone from Original Air Date column in Web Interface.
• German and French translations implemented into web UI and client.
• Easily deploy client via the web interface or the Home Server Console tab. It auto-detects the language/version of the installer to use.
• The client application can now detect your remote access domain (via it’s SSL certificate) and will load that to prevent SSL error messages.
• The client now requires .NET 3.5 to run.
• The home server add-in now requires Power Pack 2 to function.
• The client and server can detect your “Recorded TV” share’s name (for non-English versions).
• Probably more..

As you can see, I’ve made a lot of changes and improvements. I’d like to thank my beta testers for their help and patience. Screenshots can be found in the docs. The iPhone application will be out in the coming months (I hope).

Download

Documentation

Update: When you try to change settings on a client with Vista or Windows 7, the client may crash. As noted in my third change, the client as to be run as Administrator to change settings. UAC won’t let it otherwise. I am only adding this update because some people didn’t read the whole change log.

Please note that the Update at the end was added for people like me.  Since I would have to consider myself a “new” user, a change log would have little meaning.  Regardless, the appropriate place for such a requirement is in the documentation.

Before I start the process of checking out Brent’s add-in, let’s find out a bit about Brent himself.

About CompuGeek Software

CompuGeek Software is an Arizona based ‘company’ founded in February of 2007. The founder is Brent Friedman, a nineteen year old college student. CompuGeek Software started out as a sandbox where Brent could hold things he programmed and has changed in to a full time hobby. CompuGeek Software is your home for free Windows Home Server Add-Ins and utilities. Sometimes you may find code snippits or tutorials lurking within the abyss.

About Brent Friedman

Brent Friedman is the sole developer and owner of CompuGeek Software. He has been programming since 2001 and started making Windows Home Server Add-Ins in April of 2007. Brent is currently going to a University to earn a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Information Systems.

Fluent in many programming languages, Brent is the go-to-guy for any programming project!

Languages/Frameworks Well Versed In:

• C#
• Visual C++
• VB.NET
• ASP.NET
• ASP.NET AJAX
• ASP.NET MVC
• PHP (Re-learning..)
• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript

Languages/Frameworks Learning:

• Objective-C
• iPhone SDK
• jQuery

A very impressive set of credentials for someone as young as Brent!

Installation

Installing the add-in is as simple as any other add-in.  Copy the msi installer to your D:Software/Add-ins folder, open the WHS Settings dialog in the console and install the software from the Add-ins tab, as shown below.

Reopen the WHS console, scroll over and click on the TV Manager tab.

At this point, there is not much to see as there are no TV shows to browse.  And there is also not much to do until you install the client software.  Which. by the way, is not what you want to do with the Deploy Client option in the TV Manager console window.  Perhaps this works (which I did not try) from a true Windows Home Server Console window vs. my normal RDC console method.  From a RDC console, clicking on this will create a folder under the software folder containing a msi client installer, which TV Manager then tries to install on your WHS and not the client.  Whether this is left over from prior versions or something else, it would seem that it should no longer be there.

The proper method to install the client software is do a remote login to your WHS, and install the client software from there.  As you can see below, you may encounter certificate errors from the TV Manager URL depending upon your IE security setting.  Of course, different browsers may or may not trigger this cert error.

Continuing on, log onto your WHS;

which will bring you to the TV Manager web interface.  I am assuming here that you attempt to directly access the TV Manager web interface by typing it directly: https://<yourservername>/tv.

Click on the deploy Client option

and go through a normal install process.

Once again, there really is not much to do until you generate some recorded shows and have moved them over to your WHS.  So, see you in a few days after I get some recording made.

A couple of days later…  Actually it turned into a week or so.

Program Usage 

One of favorite shows these days is NCIS.  The USA Network televises 3-4 shows a day.  And now that I have my digital stations working with the MC Guide, I can get all those neat extras like original air date and program synopsis, as well as the ability to record digital broadcasts.  It took a lot of work, discussed in this post, and the program suggested by Dan in the comment section does help quite a bit.

Back to TV Manager.

I had the program installed for those few weeks mentioned above.  Configured a few options and generally just let it do it’s thing.  Once I actually decided to take a more serious look at it, I uninstalled the program, and reinstalled it to do the installation write-up for this review.  I then deleted all the recorded data I had to that point and started to record several shows over the following week.  In the process, I went through the program options to see what was there and how they worked.

WHS Settings

In the WHS console settings, TV Manager adds a tab where one can configure TV Manager to email you a notification when a recorded program has been moved to your WHS (see the following picture).  Which can be a problem for many WHS users if one does not know how to setup SMTP protocols.  This feature, once configured, did work for the most part.  I stared to get some email DNS errors and undeliverable email notifications at one point.  This may have been more of a case of me moving some programs manually, or an email server problem than a program problem.  When these things happen, the round robin of finger pointing begins to occur, if you know what I mean.

The Assign Emails is an option (which is not available until you have some recordings moved) provides you with a more descriptive email notification of what recording has just been made available.

Without “assigning”:

With “assigning”:

Clicking on the Play Now link brings you to the following screen in your favorite browser (after you log on to your WHS):

The first time I tried this, I needed to install an IE add-in to allow me to view videos.  I then let this browser sit there for more than 30 minutes, without any change to the window as you see above.  I closed it and tried it again.  The result?  No change.  And, yes, I did click on the Refresh button during these times.  Of course, does one blame the IE add-in or TV Manager for this problem? 

Another problem I had with the Assign Emails option at one point, was when a console error occurred when using this option.  The console closed and when I reopened, I would get this error:

and the TV Manager icon was missing from the Settings window.  A machine restart and few open/closings of the console made life good again.  However…

Moving over to the client application, starting up the application will place an icon in the Taskbar

A single click on this icon will bring up the following window.

You will notice that this an aero-type fully semi-transparent window.  Really nasty looking if one has more than just a plain background displayed.  The above console application picture was taken prior to any recording being moved to my WHS.  The following is after several had been moved.

At this point, all one has to do is click on a show icon and TV Manager will open Windows Media Center and play that particular recording.

Going back to the Taskbar icon, if one right-clicks on this icon, you will presented with the following window

The top items are basically a duplication of the options available in the main program, while the bottom items should be self-explanatory.

Moving back to the main console window, you will notice some menu items along the top.  Clicking on Web UI will open up a browser window and take you to your WHS website.

Clicking on Settings will open the following window:

If one does not click on the first option, you will get those little windows that pop up notifying you, for example, that a program is being moved.  ComSkip simply never worked for me.  And Move At also never worked for me.  It is possible that I never gave it a long enough window to perform this task, however.  If you leave this item unchecked, TV Manager will simply move recordings at some convenient point after the recording process has completed.

Clicking on the Help option in the console window will take you Brent’s website and open the program documentation.  More often than not, the .pdf file would not open.  I found it much simpler to open the downloaded version of the documentation.  They are identical.  However, I just noticed that Brent has moved his website to a shared hosting account, from which I have personally noticed a much improved user experience in accessing.

Clicking on the Print option will open a window similar to the following, so that you can make a hardcopy of recordings that are located on your WHS.

Finally, one of the options available if you right-click on the Taskbar icon is to “Regenerate XML”.  If you have recordings already on your WHS when you install the program, or if you (or your WHS)move a recording, you will need to perform this task in order for TV Manager to  “see” the recording.

Moving back to the WHS console application, the TV Manager tab now has some usefulness.

You can delete recordings from this window, if so desired.  And…  If you have the proper software and hardware, you can play your recordings directly on your WHS.

By proper SW and HW, I mean you must have Windows Media Player 11 installed on your WHS, a SW option only for those users who wish to jump through the required hoops to install.  My WHS does not have a sound card installed, which is another prerequisite to be able to play media items on your WHS.  So, this is one program feature that I did not try.

And that is that.  Nothing less and nothing more.  Actually, I may have missed a screen option or 2.  Which is the beauty of a database program: there is always something new to discover.  So go discover!

Conclusions

It is difficult to discuss TV Manager in this context simply because the last WHS add-in I reviewed was Recorded TV Manager.  Recorded TV Manager is an incredible database program for recorded MC content.  TV Manager has more GUI enhancements than Recorded TV Manager.  And it does have a few features (ComSkip and the WebUI) that Recorded TV Manger does not have.  Unfortunately, I could not get either of those features to work properly.  Hopefully, you will have better luck.

And for what it is worth, opening up the WebUI will bring you to a webpage like this:

Real nice, if I could have gotten the show to actually play inside the browser.  And once one removes those features (ComSkip and the WebUI), the need for this program simply does not exist, since at that point, it is basically a duplication of what is already in Windows Media Center and Windows Home Server PP3.

Author: Brent Friedman

Version Reviewed: 1.5.0, build 230

Release: 23August2009