At last, after so many *YEARS* of procrastinating, I actually created something on VB.Net. The last serious programming I did was on VB6 and that wasn’t saying much. This utility would probably take an expert 30 minutes to do, it took me 2 days.
I use TV Scheduler Pro to record TV shows on my home theatre PC. This is on a Windows 7 system. Unfortunately, TV Scheduler Pro will not warn you if you try to put the computer on hibernate while a show is being recorded. This is where this utility comes in. Instead of going through the shutdown procedure and selecting Hibernate, this utility gives you a program to click on that will first try to check that the NowRunning.xml file in the TV Scheduler Pro program folder contains a running show. If it does not, it initiates a hibernate. If it does, it displays what is being recorded, its end time and the channel. It has buttons to continue the hibernate or close the utility. Double-clicking on the details of the recordings will bring up the TV Scheduler Pro web dashboard on your default browser.
Prerequisites:
- .Net Framework 4
To install:
- Unzip the WhatsRecording.zip file to a folder in your computer.
- Edit the set_env.cmd file to set the environment variables to let the program know the path to the NowRunning.xml file and the web address of the TV Scheduler Pro dashboard. This uses the setx command to set the environment variables. The setx command is available by default in Vista and Windows 7. It allows the environment variable settings to be made permanent. For people on Windows XP or earlier, read this as Windows XP does not have setx by default.
- Run set_env.cmd.
- If you don’t want your computer hibernating right after installation, make sure TV Scheduler Pro is recording something as the next step will install *and run* the utility. Wait a few moments (e.g. make sure the recording symbol shows up on the TV Scheduler Pro tray icon) as the NowRunning.xml file does not seem to get updated instantly.
- Run setup.exe.
- Create a copy of the program icon from your Start menu onto your Start bar and Desktop.
Since I’m still quite a newbie on VB.Net programming, I won’t be surprised if this utility doesn’t work for you. I did not put enough error-checking in the code so if it doesn’t work for you, it’s most likely that the set_env.cmd file is not yet customised for your system, and make sure that it is run so that the expected environment variables are available. Let me know of any issues and I’ll try to make it work.
Click here to download the What’s Recording? utility.
Tags: Hibernate, HTPC, TV, TV Scheduler Pro, Windows
