The Topfield EPG Daemon (TED+), one of three applications in TEDS Suite, oversees the harvesting and transferring of an Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) to the Topfield 5000 and 6000 series of Personal Video Recorders (PVR). It also produces the EPG for 2 separate TV Guide viewers for your PC.

When used in conjunction with the Windows Task Scheduler the process of gathering EPG data, transferring it to your Topfield PVR and producing TV Guides for use on your PC can all be fully automated.

You could set all of this to occur while you are sleeping and wake up the next morning to a full week's TV Guide on both your PVR and PC.

The Topfield EPG Driver's Seat (TEDS+) is a companion program to TED+.

It enables you to interactively set Timers on your PC which can then be uploaded to your Topfield with a simple one-button press.

As you browse the week's Programme Guide you can add to your list of Favourites. A Favourites Search then finds all the matching programmes and sets timers for them.

The Favourites Search is also an option in TED+ so that your favourite shows can have timers set on your Topfield without any interaction on your part. A logfile tells you what Timers have been set without having to turn on your Toppy.

TEDS+ provides many features beyond the mere setting of Timers:

• The Programme Guide gives instant access to any programme scheduled for the next 7 days.

• Full details of the selected programme are visible in the Selected Programme area.

• The Programme Guide Search function allows you to quickly find any programme.

• The Filtered list allows you to filter the Programme Guide to match any search string or keyword.

• Timers can be set as either ongoing or OneTime Favourites Both use extensive keywords and filters.

• Keyword searching can be by the standard method or by regular expression (Regular Expressions provide a great deal of power to searches).

• Timers can have padding automatically applied to cater for programmes which may run over time.

• Each Favourites entry has a number of options and filters which can be applied:

  • Star Ratings which are used to resolve timer clashes.

  • A separate Repeat Rating applied to programme repeats.

  • Individual timer padding.

  • Title Abbreviations.

  • No Repeat filter (to exclude Repeat programmes).

  • Channel filter (programme must be on a certain channel).

  • Time filter (programme must start in a certain time period, eg. 8-9pm).

  • Day filter (programme must be on certain days).

• Timers for adjacent programmes will be automatically joined to form a Sequential timer.

• Title Abbreviations can be set for Timers. This is particularly useful for Sequential Timers where the joining of Timers may lead to an excessively long Timer name.

• The Timers currently set on the Toppy can be viewed.

• The existing Recordings on the Toppy can be viewed.

• Currently set Timers can be deleted from the Toppy.

• Both TED+ and TEDS+ resolve timer clashes by using the Star Ratings assigned in Favourites.

• When Timers are uploaded to the Toppy the Timer Upload Results (TUR) dialog shows the results, such as Timers which were not uploaded and the reason why, eg. Expired Timers, Duplicate Timers. It will also show how any timer clashes were resolved.

• The Favourites Search function in TEDS+ is also in TED+. In other words, TED+ will also perform a Favourites Search and all the Favourites settings (search strings, filters, title abbreviations etc.) apply. Therefore, if TED+ is run each day at a set time not only does the EPG data get uploaded to the Toppy, so does any new timers.

• When a programme is identified by TEDS+ as a movie there are menu choices to search for a movie review on IMDB (Internet Movie Database), MRQE (Movie Review Query Engine) and Rotten Tomatoes.

TrecX contains the following features:

• You can add files that have already been recorded to the list of scheduled transfers, plus you can also schedule existing timers or files that are currently recording.

• The transfers will occur in the order of the Scheduled Transfers list (bottom-left).

• TrecX can be run in Auto or Manual mode. In Auto it will transfer all the scheduled recorded files one after the other. Once they are all transferred it will sit waiting for a timer to finish recording, then it will initiate the transfer to the PC.

• You can optionally delete any transferred file from the Toppy to free up space for further recording.

• Transfers can be resumed.

• You can specify a destination folder for each transfer.

• You can specify a different name for the transferred file.

• It can transfer in Standard or Turbo speeds.

• You can specify certain periods of the day when Turbo must be off (so your remote will still work).

• Turbo mode will be restricted from operating if the Toppy is currently recording or if a Timer is due to start within 5 minutes.

• You can specify certain periods of the day when transfers can’t take place.

• Has “overflow prevention” ... prevents missed recordings due to your Toppy's HDD being too full.

• TransferNow! feature. When in Auto mode TrecX will automatically transfer and delete from the Toppy any Recorded Services placed in your TransferNow! folder on the Toppy. You can set the TransferNow! folder to any folder on the Toppy (under DataFiles) by the TransferNow!Folder setting in the INI file.

The following are some screen shots from the two TV Guide viewers. Click on each for a larger image.

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