FreeGuide is an TV guide programme. It uses parser programmes to extract TV information from web pages and stores them for viewing without the need to connect to the Internet. The viewer allows the user to view television listings and create customised TV guides by selecting programmes and by building up a favourites list.
For the moment, it works for UK and North American listings, but contributions are welcome, especially in the area of getting the German listings grabber tv_grab_de to play nicely with FreeGuide.
FreeGuide is written by the FreeGuide contributors (copyright 2001-2002). Please do send code, ideas, bugs and comments to freeguide-tv-devel@lists.sourceforge.net. FreeGuide's home page is at http://freeguide-tv.sourceforge.net. You can contact the lead developer, Andy Balaam at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR), University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, UK.
FreeGuide uses the XMLTV format and parsers developed by the very friendly people at XMLTV (http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~epa98/work/apps/xmltv/ and http://sourceforge.net/projects/xmltv). It also contains a little code by Slava Pestov from the JEdit project (www.jedit.org).
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This licence is contained in the file COPYING
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 US
FreeGuide is written in Java, and thus should work on most types of computer. It is developed and tested on Linux and Windows.
Windows users should read the Windows installation docs.
Linux and other Unix-like users should read the Linux installation docs.
Other people should try following the Linux instructions, but note that you will definitely need Java 1.4, which may be a problem on Mac OS.
The first time you run FreeGuide it will check that everything is set up correctly, and allow you to change things if something's gone wrong. If you followed the installation instructions for your platform exactly, but you get an error here, it's a bug - sorry! - contact the developers and we'll sort you out.
If all has gone well, FreeGuide will know what channels you want, but won't be able to show any programmes because you haven't downloaded them yet. When it starts it will ask you whether you want to go to the download screen. Connect to the Internet, and click Yes. Cross your fingers and wait. If all is well, the listings should eventually download (it can take some time), and you can click OK to start using FreeGuide. If you've had problems, click "Show Output" and look at what's happened. Now you'll need to go to the Options screen and try to sort it out. Email if you need help.
On the main screen time advances from left to right (click "Go To Now" to see what's on now), and the channels are shown one below another.
The + and - buttons change the day you are looking at, or you can choose a day from the list.
You can click on a programme (making it go grey) to add it to your personalised TV guide for today, which is shown in the bottom section of the window.
You can make programmes highlight themselves by adding them to your favourites list (under the "Actions" menu click "Choose Favourites"). Any programme matching a favourite will be ticked automatically. You can always un-tick programmes if you wish. You can also make a programme a favourite by right-clicking it and choosing "Add to Favourites".
Clicking "Print this personalised listing" will open up your web browser with your customised TV guide, and you can print it by choosing "File" and then "Print" in your browser.
To download more listings, click on "Download Listings".
Check out the "Tools" menu to alter channels, colours and settings..
If FreeGuide used to work for you and has now stopped, it is probably because the web site it grabs listings from has changed its format. Check the XMLTV page for updated parsers.
If FreeGuide won't work for you, why not make it work? If you're having trouble, ask me and I'll be glad to help.
Check out my TODO list.