Step by Step - Australian TV Guide Setup

There isn’t much worth watching on Australian free-to-air TV these days except live sport, especially compared with all the streaming options we have now. But for those who lament the lack of an Australian TV Guide in Simple Control, here’s my step-by-step guide to adding some basic guide functionality.

(If you read back in the forum archive, it seems like they were hoping to have Australian guide data available in Simple Control by the end of 2013 - but I guess that didn’t pan out…)

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. In Simple Control, select the room where you want to add a TV Guide button, e.g. “Lounge Room”. Select the “Pencil” edit button to the right of the room name, and then select “Add Activity”. You could also add a TV Guide button within an existing Activity, but I prefer the guide to be available from any activity.

  2. Give the Activity a Title and choose an Image. Select the “Add Command” option, then choose the “URL” option. At this stage you can either link to a TV Guide App (my preferred option), or link to a TV Guide website.

2A. LINK TO APP

  • Download an Australian TV Guide App from the App Store. I like the free “OzTV” App - appsto.re/au/5uJH6.i (I have no affiliation with the creator of this App)

  • In the Simple Control Add Command window enter the URL and Opens settings as follows:

    URL: oztv://
    Opens: in Safari

  • Select “Save” and then “Save” again.

  • Note that if you choose a different TV Guide App you would need to find out the correct URL setting for that App.

2B. LINK TO WEBSITE

  • I find using an App more responsive, but if you prefer to link to a TV Guide website - find out the URL from your web browser (e.g. au.tv.yahoo.com) and enter the following settings in the Simple Control Add Command window:

URL: au.tv.yahoo.com/tv-guide/
Opens: in Roomie

  1. Back on the main screen, select the “Edit” button to turn off edit mode. Select your TV Guide Activity - if you linked to an App it will now open. There is a new feature in iOS 9 that adds a “Back to SimpleControl” option in the top left hand corner of the App, so now you can jump between Simple Control and your TV Guide App with a single click. If you chose to link to a website it will now open in the built-in Simple Control web browser. Click on “Done” when you’re finished and you will be back on the main screen.

OPTIONAL
Make switching channels easier and add some logos for each station

  1. Do a google search and download some Australian TV Channel logos, for example:

github.com/AshKyd/australian-tv-network-logos

  1. Follow the instructions for adding Custom Images to Simple Control in this Support Article:

simplecontrol.com/knowledgeb … om-images/

  1. In Simple Control, edit your existing “Watch TV” Activity, select “Remote Design” and then “Add Button”. Select “Button” as the button type.

  2. In the Edit Button window choose one of the custom images you added in Step 2, for example the Channel 9 logo.

  3. Select the “Add Command” option, then select your TV from the list of devices, e.g. SONY. Now select the DIGIT command (or equivalent for your TV model) for the first digit of the TV channel number. Repeat this step for each digit. For our Channel 9 example (channel number 090), I would end up with the following list of commands:

DIGIT 0
DIGIT 9
DIGIT 0

  1. Select “Save”, and then repeat steps 3 to 6 for each channel you wish to add.

  2. Once you’ve added all the required channels, select “Save” on the Edit Activity window and return to the main screen.

There you have it - Australian TV Guide capability and some pretty logos for channel surfing.

It took me a while to work all this out when I first started using Simple Control - so I hope this might help someone else who’s just starting out.

Cheers.

Hi, do you think this link is still valid ? It does nothing on my ipod touch and I have the app installed !!