Overview of Program Guide Services

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

The Program Guide provided by Broadcast Architecture displays television and supports data services that broadcast television-schedule information to the user. In addition, users can use the Program Guide to tune to a specific show in the schedule and set reminders to watch shows.

In developing Broadcast Architecture applications, you use Television System Services (TSS) to set up scheduling and control of television shows to be viewed through the Program Guide. Various broadcast client components can use TSS, including the Microsoft® ActiveX® control for video (the Video control), the Video control's underlying Microsoft® DirectShow™ filters, and the Video Access server.

The TSS application programming interface (API) is available through Automation, as methods and properties of the ITelevisionServices interface and the supporting IScheduledItems interface.

The Program Guide maintains current information about program schedules in a Microsoft® Jet database, Tss.mdb. Because broadcast schedule information constantly changes, this Guide database must acquire and update broadcast data on a regular basis. This acquisition and update is done using a loader application.

The following topics examine Program Guide services:

• Guide Data describes the various problems involved in integrating Program Guide information from multiple networks. This section also discusses how dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) can be used to load data into the Guide database.
• Guide Database Loaders outlines the tasks that any loader application for the Guide database must complete to operate successfully. This section also includes details about how to write a custom loader application.
• Loadstub discusses how to work with the Loadstub component, Loadstub.exe, which starts a loader DLL.
• Guide Data Objects covers a set of objects that applications use to retrieve or set values in the Guide database.
• Guide Database Schema provides a detailed description of the tables and fields in the Guide database.
• Program Guide Registry Entries defines the entries created in the operating-system registry for tuning spaces and their associated loader applications.