Guide Data Outage - Winter 2017 Edition

Global guide related discussion. All Windows versions.
TiVoPrince

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#361

Post by TiVoPrince » Sat Feb 18, 2017 4:58 pm

TiVo
Series3 (Rovi data) seems to have been tweaked. CBS Morning News have been episode identified by broadcat date on TiVo for about a week. Interestingly TiVo/Rovi data was a couple of days ahead of V-MCE but the differences seem to be resolving as time goes on. By Friday almost all the guide data seems equal across platforms. Nice to see an apparent end of WMC guide data chaos is in sight...

Space

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#362

Post by Space » Sat Feb 18, 2017 8:22 pm

As experience has shown, something that looks good for a week does not mean it will stay that way, give it several months before you declare that something has been fixed for good...

dkrom

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#363

Post by dkrom » Sun Feb 19, 2017 4:10 am

Also - have they done anything to repair the HORRIBLE image matchups with movies? I hated having to browse movies by title only because the cover art was wrong or missing about 50% of the time. TV images were just as bad.

After switching providers I've realized just how bad the ROVI switchover was to our WMC experience.

Space

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#364

Post by Space » Sun Feb 19, 2017 5:31 am

I don't think I've heard any complaints from TiVo users about the images, so if that is the case, then it would be evidence that the problem with matching up the movies/shows with the images is a problem with the date import Microsoft is doing rather than the source data (Rovi/TiVo).

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cubbie_blu

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#365

Post by cubbie_blu » Sun Feb 19, 2017 4:00 pm

The overall data quality does seem better and the images have improved. Right before the latest outage my images were probably around 50% accurate, now I think they 100%. The only issue I see now is that some of the basketball games still show Teams TBA. Even this has improved, as now it is only espn that isn't showing the teams, and even they are showing them sometimes. The big question is whether this improvement in quality and images will hold.

webminster

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#366

Post by webminster » Sun Feb 19, 2017 5:44 pm

Space wrote:I don't think I've heard any complaints from TiVo users about the images, so if that is the case, then it would be evidence that the problem with matching up the movies/shows with the images is a problem with the date import Microsoft is doing rather than the source data (Rovi/TiVo).
TiVO does have issues with show/movie images... just noticed the other day the really wrong image for "Tomorowland". Exactly the same wrong one that Rovi served up on WMC with Rovi guide. There may be a MS component to some of the problems, but Rovi is definitely a player in the issue.

And Tivo users haven't had a new data download in several days, most have their schedule stuck at 2/28, and have for 3 or 4 days.
-Alan

dileas

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#367

Post by dileas » Sun Feb 19, 2017 6:18 pm

Two things - my guide data was working earlier in the month, but now I'm out of data starting this coming Friday. Tried a manual update and got the message that data had been downloaded - checked again and no dice. I'll be patient to see if it comes in.

I'm just curious if anyone else has noticed their guide data also ends on or around this coming Friday. I'm OTA in Southern Ontario.

Second - I just want to thank everyone who contributes to this forum as, if not thing else, it really helps to know if this is something I need to troubleshoot, or if it's a generic, across the board problem.

Cheers everyone!

~dileas

wifiwanderer

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#368

Post by wifiwanderer » Sun Feb 19, 2017 7:17 pm

dileas wrote:I'm just curious if anyone else has noticed their guide data also ends on or around this coming Friday. I'm OTA in Southern Ontario.
My Guide End Date: 2 March 2017 03:00; Fresno-Visalia OTA, California; been automatically updating without any problems for weeks, now. :thumbup:

Space

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#369

Post by Space » Sun Feb 19, 2017 11:21 pm

webminster wrote:...
TiVO does have issues with show/movie images... just noticed the other day the really wrong image for "Tomorowland". Exactly the same wrong one that Rovi served up on WMC with Rovi guide. There may be a MS component to some of the problems, but Rovi is definitely a player in the issue.
...
I don't have a TiVo but have been monitoring a few threads on the TiVo forums and didn't remember seeing anything about it, so I guess I missed the complaints...
dileas wrote:...

I'm just curious if anyone else has noticed their guide data also ends on or around this coming Friday. I'm OTA in Southern Ontario.
...
No, my guide looks normal with data ending on March 2nd.

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Crash2009

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#370

Post by Crash2009 » Tue Feb 21, 2017 3:44 am

dileas wrote:Two things - my guide data was working earlier in the month, but now I'm out of data starting this coming Friday. Tried a manual update and got the message that data had been downloaded - checked again and no dice. I'll be patient to see if it comes in.

~dileas
One thing you could try is go to WMC/Tasks/TV/Guide and select "Get Latest Guide Listings"

Don't make any changes until you run out. The guide will likely fix itself like it has in the past.

webminster

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#371

Post by webminster » Wed Feb 22, 2017 12:10 am

Don't know if this will affect WMC users on Rovi data... but after a few days of no-downloads for TiVo users, some guide data finally did download. And, seemingly, regurgitated some bad data. Like resurrecting "The Kelly File" on FNC. It's truly unbelievable how bad Rovi is...
-Alan

dileas

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#372

Post by dileas » Thu Feb 23, 2017 12:15 am

I've done the manual requests and still have not received any guide updates.

Data ends 7:00pm Tomorrow night.

This might finally be the catalyst to move onto a paid service as much as I would hate to have to do that, and all the work that goes along with it!

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Crash2009

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#373

Post by Crash2009 » Fri Feb 24, 2017 5:29 am

dileas wrote:I've done the manual requests and still have not received any guide updates.

Data ends 7:00pm Tomorrow night.

This might finally be the catalyst to move onto a paid service as much as I would hate to have to do that, and all the work that goes along with it!
Did it fix itself? OR Are you ready to start smackin it?

marcustaz

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#374

Post by marcustaz » Fri Feb 24, 2017 3:26 pm

webminster wrote:Don't know if this will affect WMC users on Rovi data... but after a few days of no-downloads for TiVo users, some guide data finally did download. And, seemingly, regurgitated some bad data. Like resurrecting "The Kelly File" on FNC. It's truly unbelievable how bad Rovi is...
Something updated, Tucker Carlson back in the 9pm time slot, thank goodness!!! ROVI=HORRIBLE!!!!

dileas

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#375

Post by dileas » Sat Feb 25, 2017 1:09 pm

I threw in the towel and installed epg123 with Schedules Direct. Aside from the modest fee this approach was pretty painless, and my kudos go out to the developer who made this happen. As much as I think it sucks having to pay for this I have to remind myself that I have an antenna, I don't pay for cable or satellite, and I have great flexibility in how I watch my tv.

Eventually I'll have to upgrade Windows and I'll lose WMC altogether so that will be a whole other challenge to figure out what I'll do then. Until then, this was just a small bump in the road which, it turns out, was relatively easy to navigate once I made the decision to just do it.

Thanks for the support and interest in helping me solve my problem.

~dileas

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davidhp

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#376

Post by davidhp » Sat Feb 25, 2017 2:39 pm

Just a head's up, no update in 89117 (Cox Cable) for WMC EPG on Sat 2/25/2017. I just tried a manual update and my last program showing is for Wed 3/8/2017 late afternoon just like yesterday.
If it doesn't update by Monday I will open a ticket for a new outage.

wifiwanderer

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#377

Post by wifiwanderer » Sat Feb 25, 2017 3:13 pm

davidhp wrote:Just a head's up, no update in 89117 (Cox Cable) for WMC EPG on Sat 2/25/2017. I just tried a manual update and my last program showing is for Wed 3/8/2017 late afternoon just like yesterday.
If it doesn't update by Monday I will open a ticket for a new outage.
Almost the same here for Fresno-Visalia OTA, California. However, just did a manual update and got an extra day, a 9 Mar 2017 end date.

adam1991

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#378

Post by adam1991 » Sat Feb 25, 2017 5:55 pm

dileas wrote:Eventually I'll have to upgrade Windows and I'll lose WMC altogether so that will be a whole other challenge to figure out what I'll do then.
Why not simply keep that PC as is, and go to a different piece of hardware for all your non-Win7, non-WMC work?

It's a small price to pay for keeping WMC.

wifiwanderer

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#379

Post by wifiwanderer » Sun Feb 26, 2017 5:52 pm

Fresno-Visalia OTA, California. Just did another manual update. Got an end date of 11 Mar 2017.

davefoc

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#380

Post by davefoc » Mon Feb 27, 2017 6:21 am

EPG joy:

We have been struggling for the last week to get the EPG data to load and this evening success. Based on this thread and other internet reading it seemed like there was some widespread EPG download problem. For us, this was a red herring. Our problem was in WMC on our machine.We got the guide is out of date message and it seemed like we were receiving data because the MXF file was being updated when I forced an update either in WMC or by running MCupdate. But the on-screen guide wouldn't update. We also didn't seem to be receiving .enc files and supposedly the .mxf folders and .enc files were supposed to have a one to one relationship. I was hesitant to reinstall WMC because I had done that for a different problem and it hadn't helped. This is what I did that fixed our problem:

1. Run the "Media Center Recovery Task"
Link to instructions: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... aa920c6d6a
Comment: The instructions say to "wait awhile for the task to do its stuff". I waited about 5 minutes but my guess is that this works almost immediately.

2. Start WMC. It should be in the state it is in when it was run for the first time.

3. Run WMC setup from within WMC. WMC went into an endless wait loop twice. Once when it was retrieving Cable Company data and once when it was retrieving the schedule data. Both times the problem was that MCupdate wasn't started. So....

4. Force MCupdate to start a couple of times after WMC setup stalls
Link to instructions for forcing MCupdate to start: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Fo ... itpromedia In our case running MCupdate as in the link caused WMC to start again almost instantly.

Comments:
1. When you do the above you will lose all the recording tasks that have been previously entered.
2. Certain actions were taking a great deal of time before this problem. Doing the above mostly fixed that. It seems like what was going on here is that the WMC internal data base had gotten screwed up which was causing actions that accessed the database to take a long time and the screw ups in the internal database eventually led to a situation where WMC wouldn't update the on-screen guide and probably its internal EPG database.
3. It took some self control as I wrote this to not go into a long rant about Microsoft and WMC. Many aspects of the program strike me as brilliant, but Microsoft's nearly useless and stupid error messages, the lack of transparency about the details of WMC implementation, the brittle nature of the program where it fails without any apparent attempts at self recovery and the routine way it hangs with that stupid rotating circle displayed without giving the user the slightest idea about what is going are disgusting. Right now I don't know whether the idea of an entertainment PC is so flawed that in the end it wouldn't have been a success no matter what Microsoft did or whether Microsoft's combination of hubris and incompetence with regard to WMC was the cause of WMC's lack of acceptance. If HDhomerun Prime is successful with their DVR effort where Microsoft failed I think we will know the answer.

ETA: We have TimeWarner/Spectrum Cable in Fullerton, CA

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