Fernsehen Widget

By Pascal Pfiffner and Sebastian Krauß

(„Fernsehen“ is the german word for television)

Many many thanks to TV Star and Elgato for their fantastic support, thank you!

Display

Upon start, the widget displays all shows currently running on the channels in the main group. You can edit this group in the preferences.

At the head of the widget you can see the toolbar:

By clicking one of the numbers you change the group to be displayed. By hovering the name of the day you will see a list with the available days, click one to choose the day to be displayed. Upon clicking „Now“ or „Evening“ you can quickly change the time of the day to be displayed.

Tip: By pressing „Shift“ when clicking a channel group number you can tell the widget to display the shows of both groups.

At the bottom of the widget you can see the footer:

The three leftmost buttons change the display style. Click the first one to show a flat list of the shows; the shows will be sorted by starting time. Click the second for a grouped view where several shows per channel are displayed. And click the third one for a grid view (EPG).
You guessed right, use the arrow keys to browse the shows backwards and forwards.

Running shows feature a circle which represents the amount of time of the show already over. This means that a circle filled to a quarter tells you that a quarter of the show is already over.

You can set alerts for shows yet to begin. When there's no alert set for a show, the alert indicator looks like this: . By clicking this indicator you set an alert for this show and the indicator changes to .

Many shows feature additional information. Klick the to show/hide them. Clicking this symbol while holding down the option key shows or hides more information for all shows currently being displayed.

By clicking the name of a show, further details of a show will be displayed - if available. For feature films, a link to the internet movie database will be present as the logo IMDb, click this logo to visit IMDb.com in your browser. Furthermore, feature films display the name of actors and the director(s). You can click the name of a person to show all feature films (scheduled within the next week) this person participated in.

To search for a show type the desired term to the searchfield top right.
You can search the title, the description, the actors and the director(s). To change where you want to search, click the cogwheel next to the searchfield and (de)activate the desired searchcategories. To finish your search simply delete the searchterm manually or by clicking the (x)-button in the searchbar.

By clicking the widget titlebar you can „shrink“ and „grow“ the widget instantly.

EyeTV

If you have activated EyeTV support, to the left of any show the eye-icon will be displayed. Click this icon to switch to the corresponding channel. If EyeTV is not yet running it will be launched.
The currently selected channel displays this icon: .
Shows yet to begin show the tape icon ; click the tape to set a recording timer for EyeTV. This will change the icon to the activated state: .

FormacDVB

Operating mode as well as settings are the same as for EyeTV.

TheTube

TheTube works the same way as EyeTV does, but you cannot set nor delete recording timers through the widget.

Zattoo

Zattoo works the same way as EyeTV does, however Zattoo does not support recordings.
Support for Zattoo is unfortunately quite „experimental“ since it does not support AppleScript. Changing channels does only work if the window showing the available channels is visible. This is regrettably not the case when Zattoo runs fullscreen.
Also, the channel list has to be "flat", i.e. no channel group must be visible.

Zattoo support is very experimental and can be broken by Zattoo at any time.
It also is very slow.

Requires at least Zattoo 3.3 and requires "Enable access for assistive devices" to be enbaled in System Preference's "Universal Access" Tab.

Bluetooth

If Bluetooth is available you will see an activated Bluetooth-symbol bottom right. Click this activated icon to enable the Bluetooth Remote.
With any supported cellphone (complete list) you can now connect to the widget, take a look at the schedule, search for shows, set or delete alerts as well as switch EyeTV or FormacDVB.

Settings

FAQ (frequently asked questions)

Why does the widget also display shows that have already started?
These shows have already started but are still running.

Does the widget work without internet access?
To a certain degree. The widget loads TV data one week in advance for which access to the internet is required. After this process has completed you can use the widget up to one week without internet access.

Data shown is not correct. Why is this?
Most likely the cached data is outdated. Turn the widget around, choose the „General“ tab and click the „Empty cache“ button. Once you turn the widget back to the front it will re-cache TV data.

Why are there some strange characters in the channel names of FormacDVB channels?
These characters stem from the FormacDVB software. They do not constrain support for FormacDVB in any way, however.

Which font does the widget use?
The widget uses „Futura Condensed Medium“. Make sure you have this font activated on your system.