Microsoft: We're SO SORRY for Media Center TV guide titsup
Telly info now back for Brits, Irish on todo list
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Microsoft has apologised for deleting TV guides on Windows Media Center. The data wipe left customers in the UK and Ireland "distraught" and struggling to record their favourite shows.
After The Register raised the issue yesterday, Microsoft has now restored the programme guides in the UK and said it will tackle Ireland next. The service went down on 1 January for Brits and 6 December for the Irish.
A Redmond spokesperson gave us this statement this morning:
Microsoft is aware of the issue with the Electronic Programming Guide for Windows Media Center in the UK and Ireland. We have identified the cause and have already deployed a fix for the UK. A solution for Ireland is in the works and expected shortly. We apologize for the inconvenience to Windows Media Center users in these countries.
Users of Windows Media Center found that although they could still watch and technically record TV using the service, information about what was being broadcast was completely missing so they had no idea what was on and when. Windows Media Center allows users to watch and pause live video and play back material among other things.
The contract to provide the electronic programme guide is held by Red Bee Media. The company had not responded to El Reg's repeated request for comment at time of publication. ®
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COMMENTS
WMC is the central hub for all my media throughout the house. It is brilliant and the best kept MS seecret out there. If more people knew about it, and if MS actually put enough resources into it, it could take out Apple TV completely. I can remote control it and stream recordings out to my Android (and iOS), but probably not WinPho bizarrely.
I have twin Freeeview HD tuners and feed my AVR via HDMI with 7.1 sound. Fab!
Re: well thats a surprise @Eadon
No shill here, but anyone who still thinks "M$" is a sign of witty hilarity gets an instant downvote.
Re: well thats a surprise
@Michael Habel - I'm a MythTV user, I have been for several years. It's a good system, but it's too complicated for average home users. The support for tv tuners is better than it was and the product is generally better out of the box, but you still need to go to the command line way to often for average users. When I used to have a Vista Ultimate machine, I put a USB DVB stick into it (currently used for MythTV) and it just setup media centre for me, this is something that you can only just start to get with MythBuntu and even then adding a second tuner is a bit of a badly documented nightmare.
I love MythTV, but it's not something that I think my partner could operate, I suspect she would be just about ok with a Windows Media Centre.
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