[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]
A show reference is composed of several fields that contain information about an episode or episodes of a show. Your application can access the episode information, for example the episode title, by parsing the show reference. To do this, you can use either the ITelevisionServices::SplitBroadcastSchedule or ITelevisionServices::SplitSimpleBroadcastSchedule method. Both methods split a show reference into its constituent fields. However, the first method returns the trigger information, time and date information, or both as a pointer to a ITaskTrigger interface, and the second returns time and date information only in a DATE variable and no trigger information.
If you are using the Microsoft® Visual Basic® development system to write your application, you should use SplitSimpleBroadcastSchedule instead of SplitBroadcastSchedule. Although SplitSimpleBroadcastSchedule returns less information about the show reference, it is preferred for Visual Basic applications, which cannot access ITaskTrigger.
For more information on show reference fields, see Show Reference Format. To locate more information about ITaskTrigger, see Further Information on Television Services for the Client.