About the Program Guide

One of the most powerful software components of your Media Center is the electronic program guide (EPG), which serves as your conduit to live television programming. If you have ever subscribed to a service such as TiVo or ReplayTV, or a digital cable offering, you may already have some experience with an interactive EPG. If not, you're in for a treat ” especially because Microsoft is treating you to a free EPG. Although standalone digital video recorders such as those previously mentioned charge a subscription fee to use their EPG offering, Microsoft is giving away the service to users of its Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system.

The guide lets you check what's currently playing on TV and provides more details on each show, but that's just the beginning. You can also browse for TV shows, searching by title, keyword, or category. By selecting shows you have found using the guide, you can also record them with the touch of a button (for more information on recording shows, see Chapter 8, "Recording Shows You Find"). You can even choose to record an entire series of programs, so you'll never have to miss another important plot twist in your favorite soap opera, or the final installment of that blockbuster miniseries.

tip

Here's an interesting way to change your point of view. While looking at the program guide, instead of scrolling forward to view upcoming programs by pressing the Right ( ) button on the remote, try pressing the Left ( ) button and selecting the program-guide square that contains the channel number and call letters . Rather than getting the usual grid showing the time across the top and channels listed down the left side, you'll be able to see in detail what's playing on that particular channel for the next several hours (see Figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1. The channel-specific program guide view is a handy way to check the show lineup on a single channel.

The basic EPG grid displays channel and network information in the first column, alongside title and scheduled broadcast times of shows you receive. When you highlight a show, by highlighting it with the remote control or by placing the cursor over the title using the mouse, a short description of the show appears at the bottom of the screen. (For instructions on viewing more detailed show descriptions, see Chapter 6, "Watching the Show.")