Second in a series of responses to Media Center Development: What topic(s) shall I blog about next?

--> Niels: An idea: In a number of countries (like Denmark...) we don't have tv-guides in MCE2005. So we are forced to rely on the build-in screen to start recordings. And its not very good (have to know channel number and so forth). So being a nerd, i want to make my own. But how do you go about doing that? The Television-class with a hosted html-application? Or how about making a webservice, that interfaces with MCE (for recordings and stuf), so that i can create a Compact Framework-app, that can start recordings...

This would be my approach...

1) Create the Guide UI with a Media Center Hosted HTML Application and license the guide metadata from a third party.
2) Use MediaCenter.FindProgram and MediaCenter.FindService to tune currently broadcast content from the Hosted HTML Application.
3) Use the Click-To-Record Feature to programmatically schedule the recording of TV programs and series from the Hosted HTML Application.