Platform Configuration and Overview

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Overview
Documentation
Troubleshooting

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Overview

The webGuide configuration program will walk through the few steps necessary to make your Media Center accessible to other machines - including the internet.

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Documentation

General Configuration

General Configuration

Guide Rows: This setting determines how many rows/channels will appear in the guide at a single time. If you have mor echannels than the set number, up/down arrows will be added to the guide to allow you to jump to the next set of channels.
Home Rows: WebGuide shows your most recently recorded and scheduled programs on the home-page. This setting specifies how many of each to show.
Color program guide: When checked WebGuide will color the rograms in the guide according to genre - dark-blue for general, light-blue for movies, green for sports and tan for kids programs.
Participage in "Recommended Programs": WebGuide includes a feature which will show you what the most popular scheduled programs are in your area. This is displayed on the "Recommend" page from the guide. In order for this to function, WebGuide exchanges anonymous data with a central server. Check this box if you would like to exchange this data.
Install Media Center Add-in: For Vista users, WebGuide offers the ability to "remote-control" your Media Center. This provides remote-like abilities from the web-page. In order for this to function, a Media Center add-in needs to be isntalled to execute the commands. Check this box to isntall the add-in;.

Users

Users
WebGuide offers multiple user-accounts with different permissions for each. Add a user-name and password for each user and specify the desired permissions"

Admin: Perform administrator functions within WebGuide - create/edit/delete users, modify settings, etc.
Schedule TV Recordings: Enables the user to acces the guide/search and scheduled recordings in order to add/edit/delete future recordings.
Watch Recorded TV: Enables the user to access recorded programs and view live TV.
Delete Recorded Programs: The user will have access to delete recorded programs.

Remote Control: If enabled (on Vista), the user will have access to web-based remote control functions, including the ability to play media on the TV and use the "virtual" remote-control.
Access Pictures/Music/Videos: Enables or disables access to the 3 areas of "shared" media.

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Network

Network
WebGuide uses 2 ports to communicate with users - web and video. The web-port is the main port used by WEbGuide to serve pages. The video port is used during "live streaming" of video.

Web Port: The port used by WebGuide's built-in web-server - UltiDev Cassini. At first install, this will be a random port. WebGuide will show if the port is available for use. The most common port used on the web is port 80. This port is always the assumed port when you type in an HTTP address in a browser. If you don't have another web-server running on your PC or network, you can choose port 80. If you want to connect to an alternate port, you will need to append the port on the end of the URL when entering it in a browser. For instance: http://web-server:1234
Video Port: This port will be used when a user requests a TV program to be streamed. The port will only be "open" by WebGuide when needed for streaming. This can be any port you like as long as it is not in use on your PC or network.
Create Windows Firewall Exception: When checked, WebGuide will add an exception to the Windows XP/Vista firewall to allow access through the chosen ports. The ports must not be blocked in order for users from other machines to connect.

Router Configuration
If you would like WebGuide to be accessable from the internet, your router will need to be configured to allow requests to be passed to your Media Center machinel.
Most routers include a feature called UPnP. This is a standard that allows applications like WebGuide to automatically configure the router. Note that you may need to enable this feature in your router's configuration.
The WebGuide configuration tool scans your network, looking for a router supporting UPnP. If found, WebGuide will display the name of the router it found and offer the ability to automatically configure it. This will create 2 port-forwarding rules on your router to forward requests on the set ports to your Media Center PC.
If WebGuide does not find your router, or it does not configure it correctly, you will need to manually configure the router to forward those 2 ports. This is a straightforward task in most routers. Look for a section called "port forwarding" or similar. You wil be offereed the option to forward a specific port to a machine on your network. Enter the web-port you specified above and the IP address of your Media Center PC. If you don't know the address of the machine, simply open a command prompt on the PC ("cmd" from the start menu) and type "ipconfig". This will list all of the addresses for your machine. Most likely, the address you are looking for looks like "192.168.?.?".
Repeat this process for the video port if desired.

If you have questions on this step, it is recommended you check the manual that came with your router, or visit a site such as "portforward.com", which lists common information for router configuration.

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Media Sharing

Media Sharing
WebGuide can share your media via the web-interface.

Recorded TV sharing: If checked, WebGuide will create a shared folder on your Media Center machine in order to allow other machines on your network direct access to the Recorded TV files - DVR-MS files.
Recorded TV Internet Streaming Settings: See the next section for more information.
Enable Music Sharing: If checked, WebGuide will read the media library from Windows Media Player and display it on the web.
Enable Picture Sharing: If enabled, WebGuide will make the chosen folders available on the web. Use the "add/remove folder" buttons to configure the shared folders.
Edable Video Sharing: If enabled, WebGuide will make the chosen folders available on the web. Use the "add/remove folder" buttons to configure the shared folders.

Media Sharing

Media Sharing - Streaming Settings
WebGuide supports 2 modes of streaming TV - on-demand and batch transcoding

On-Demand transcoding allow programs to be streamed without delay. This works for both recorded TV and Live TV. On-demand streaming is more convenient, however it requires higher CPU usage.

If enabled, the "stream" button will be available in the interface for both live and recorded TV programs.
Stream Quality: This setting has been superceded by the profile selection page when starting a stream from the web.
MPEG2 Decoder: Allow you to override the default MPEG2 video decoder used for transcoding. This may be necessary if the default decoder does not work correctly for your system.

The batch transcoding service will pre-convert all of the specified recorded programs in a WMV that can be streamed or downloaded. This process can be scheduled over-night so as not to impact the machine with the higher CPU usage that transcing requires.

Recorded TV folder: When enabled, batch transcoding enables an automated conversion process to be run on all recorded TV programs in the specified directory.
Delete WMV's when DVR-MS is deleted: If checked, then service will monitor the Recorded TV folder to automatically delete the converted WMV files when the original DVR-MS file is deleted.
Start Time/End Time: The start/end hours for the automated conversion program to run.
Quality: Selects the profile to be used for conversion. If these files will be used for streaming over the internet, a profile should be chosen that equals about 80% of the upstream bandwidth of your internet connection.

Localization

Localization

WebGuide has been localized for 11 global regions. Choosing a language/region from this list will display all text-strings in the web interface in the selected language.

If you would like to contribute a translation to WebGuide, click the "Add" button. Once completed, please email the created XML file to us for inclusion in future updates.
You can find the translated document in the "c:\program files\webguide\webguide4\localization".

Translations

WebGuide Translations

Use this page to create or modify a translation for WebGuide.
To modify an existing translation, select the language from the drop-down and click "load text". This will load th translated text-strings and list them along-side the English strings.
If you would like to create a new translation, click the "Add new" button then "OK". You can then add the translated strings next to the English strings. When completed, click the "save text" button at the bottom of the dialog box.
If you create or modify the translations, please submit them to us for inclusion in future updates.

Network Address

Network Address

Just like any other web-application, WebGuide requires that you know the address to type in your browser. The network address page attempts to identify your internal LAN address and external internet address.

You can access WebGuide by either the numeric IP address (12.34.56.78) or the DNS name (www.mymcemachine.com). If your IP adress or existing DNS name is not easy to remember, you can utilize a 3rd party service such as "www.dyndns.com" to get an easy to remember name. Please note that WebGuide will display the default DNS name, which is usually provided by your ISP, and may not display any 3rd-party DNS names that you may have.
If you have chosen a "non-standard" port to run the web-server on, note that you will need to include that port number in the address. For instance, if you chose port 1234 for your WebGuide server, you will need to access the machine with a URL like: http://www.mymcemachine.com:1234 It is also worth noting that you should include the "http://" at the beginning of the URL when using a non-standard port on most web-browsers, or they will dispplay a 404 error - file not found.

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Troubleshooting

Q. The WebGuide configuration tool is stalling during configuration of the UPnP router settings. How do I fix this?

A. If your router supports UPnP, WebGuide will try to configure it automatically. However, WebGuide may have issues with some routers and freeze during installation. If this happens, clear the check-box on the "Network" tab labeled "Create 'port forwarding' rule on your router." You will then need to manually configure port forwarding on your router.

More information on setting up routers and configuring port-forwarding can be found at the following sites: - http://www.portforward.com - http://lifehacker.com

Microsoft has a useful tool to test your router: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/using/tools/igd

Q. Do I need to have Microsoft IIS (Windows XP's and Vista's built-in web server) installed to run WebGuide4?

A. No. WebGuide no longer requires IIS to operate. It now relies on a lightweight web-server called "Ultidev Cassini."

If you choose to use IIS, WebGuide should still work, however, testing under this configuration is limited. To run under IIS simply map a new virtual directory to your installed WebGuide4 location.

Q. How do I setup Vista IIS 7 to work with WebGuide?

A. Here's a quick overview. Please note that this configuration is not yet fully supported, so little testing has been done. Using the "add/remove windows component" applet, add IIS into Windows. By default it won't know what to do with ASPX files (since you installed IIS after .NET). So, from an admin command-prompt, run "aspnet_regiis -i" from the "Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/V2.0" folder. Open the IIS manager and expand out to the default website. Right click on it and choose "add appication". In the window that pops up, choose an alias ("WebGuide4") and pick the WebGuide4 folder for the physical path. You should be able to load WebGuide now with http://localhost/webguide4. If you get an error about "classic mode", go back to IIS, choose advanced settings for the new application you created and change the application pool to "classic". That should be all it takes to get it up and running.

Q. How do I get past a "service already installed" or "2869" error when installing/upgrading WebGuide?

A. This is usually caused by a problem removing the transcode service. Try these steps to manually remove the service: 1) Open a command prompt (admin command prompt in Vista)

2) Change to the WebGuide "bin" folder: cd \program files\webguide\webguide4\bin

3) Type: \windows\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50727\installutil /u webguidetranscodeservice.exe

If that doesn't work, try using this utility to remove the install information. Select "WebGuide4" from the list and click "remove". Then delete the WebGuide folder (backup your "app_data" folder to preserve your settings) and install again. You can get research paper help almost for free. http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Secure-cleaning/Windows-Installer-CleanUp-Utility.shtml