Creating a Show Reference

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

To create a show reference from episode data, your application can use either the ITelevisionServices::MakeLocalBroadcastSchedule or ITelevisionServices::MakeRemoteBroadcastSchedule method. With the first method, your application must pass in local broadcast information, including the channel number, local station, and tuning space. With the second, your application can create a show reference that substitutes wildcard values for these entries. Substituting wildcard values causes applications with WebTV for Windows–like functionality to search the Guide database for a matching episode or episodes using only the episode title, network, and show time.

MakeRemoteBroadcastSchedule is useful when you do not know which broadcast area might be local. For example, you can access a Web application from any broadcast area. If your Web application does not have information on and cannot calculate the user's broadcast area, it should call MakeRemoteBroadcastSchedule.

Note that you can achieve the same effect by calling MakeLocalBroadcastSchedule and passing in wildcard values for the Channel, Station, and TuningSpace parameters.

For more information on working with show references, see Show Reference Format and Resolving a Show Reference.