XMLTV guide source?

[John Lockwood]

I have just installed InstaTV Pro on my iPad Air and intend (to try) using it with a HDHomeRun 3 DVB-T. I can see that there are three choices listed for EPG guide data, none, community list and custom source which is a zip file containing XMLTV data.

I have a couple of questions and a suggestion. First the questions.

With regards to the community list for EPG data, what does this mean? How do additional entries get added if at all? Unfortunately the list only includes entries for US TV stations and I am in the UK. There is a free source of XMLTV data available in the UK from the Radio Times as an example of a possible UK community source.

My second question is does anyone know of an existing URL that can be used for XMTLV format data in the required guide.zip file format but for UK channels?

My suggestion of a possible generic solution is as follows. There is a free utility called mc2xml which is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, this cheekily downloads Microsoft's guide data as used by Windows Media Center and converts it to XMLTV format. It would be possible to run an automated script to periodically download the desired guide data, convert it to XMLTV format, and then zip it in to guide.zip and copy it to a webserver and thereby make it available to InstaTV. It should be noted that mc2xml is able to use the flexibility of Microsofts Media Center EPG service to let you get guide data for all the countries and tv systems Microsoft supports including of course in my case UK DVB-T guide data.

In my own case I do have a paid for Windows system running Microsoft Media Center and use a HDHomeRun as the TV tuner for it so the fact I am  considering 'pinching' the guide data for use with InstaTV is not as naughty as it might sound.