Additional Features

Above the program list, you will find four tabs. In Tree view, you can see all the programs you selected for reminders clearly sorted by date and all of your favorite shows.

The Reminders tab to its right serves a similar purpose but shows all movies flagged for reminders in a list with detailed descriptions.

If you press one of the entries next to Remind me when the program begins, a drop-down menu appears; you can then specify a pre- or post-reminder action (Figure 6). The Manage favorites tab groups all your favorite shows and actors.

Figure 6: The reminder alerts you to upcoming programs.

To hide these tabs, right-click on one and select Configure tabs from the context menu. A Settings dialog appears that lets you choose to show or hide any tab and define the tab order.

In the toolbar above the tabs, you will find quick launchers for a whole range of different functions. If you want to customize your toolbar, you simply right-click it and then select Configure from the context menu. Following a well-known pattern from web browsers, this action opens a window in which you can drag and drop the desired icons in the toolbar.

A click on the green button to the far left refreshes the TV data. The File Manager icon next over opens a sidebar on the left with your Favorite shows and Reminders that contain the same information as the aforementioned tree view.

The search function, which you launch by clicking on the binoculars or magnifying glass icon, allows you to search not only for matching programs by title but also by descriptive text and the list of participants (Figure 7).

Figure 7: The extensive search function finds the entered text in titles, among the names of actors, or in the show descriptions.

Settings

One of the biggest benefits of the program is also its biggest drawback: TV-Browser offers such a variety of configuration options that its abundance of features can be confusing despite intuitive sorting (Figure 8). You can reach the basic settings for the software in the menu below Tools | Settings or by clicking the tool icon in the taskbar. Among other things, the General settings section contains the channel list.

Figure 8: The extensive configuration options in TV-Browser are a blessing and a curse.

In the Context menu, you can select what appears in the menu when you right-click a show. The Mouse buttons window lets you specify how the program behaves for mouse clicks with different buttons.

The Graphical settings section lets you change the look and feel of both the channel list and the program window. For example, you can define what information to display for each program in Program display, and you can choose from dozens of icons (e.g, for the genre or format). Some 50 checkboxes let you hide or display additional information, such as Original title, Age limit, or Music. The Plugins section lets you manage your extensions. Here, you can change the parameters of previously installed plugins and install new plugins.

Extensions

Just press the button Update/Install plugins. As in your first setup, you will now see a list of currently available extensions; however, it is much more extensive. Some of the plugins are used to control hardware and software, such as for recording movies; however, most of these relate to Windows software.

Other extensions expand the information content of the television program. For example, the IMDb ratings plugin adds an IMDb ranking to each program, which displays in the program table at the bottom left.

In a program's window, clicking Details for the IMDb rating link opens a small window that shows how votes were distributed. The plugin also creates an additional category in the tree view that classifies movies according to their rankings (Figure 9).

Figure 9: The IMDb extension conveniently displays all the scheduled programs ranked in order (left) and a detail of a selected program's voting history in its own window (right).

A similar plugin, Movie Awards, generates an entry in the tree view with all movies that have won a movie award, or were at least nominated for one, sorted by broadcast date. The Genres plugin gives you a different overview of your viewing possibilities with a corresponding list in the tree view.