Guide Data Outage - 2017 Edition

[foxwood]

I wonder how many terabytes of Internet data they waste with every update with no new data.

Terabytes? I think you're overestimating the number of people who actually use WMC these days!

[kensiko]

Hey all, just installed a new analog card for my wife who wants to record.

I successfully installed WMC in Windows 10 Creator update and I know the EPG has been an issue for a while now. So, is it supposed to work or not ? I'm in Canada.

[adam1991]

I wonder how many terabytes of Internet data they waste with every update with no new data.

Terabytes? I think you're overestimating the number of people who actually use WMC these days!

I think you're underestimating the number of times each unique individual in this thread has banged on the "update now" button over the last 4 months...

[anotheruser]

I wonder how many terabytes of Internet data they waste with every update with no new data.

Terabytes? I think you're overestimating the number of people who actually use WMC these days!

Do you realize how big updates are for cable/FIOS users. I'm guessing 4000 per terabyte and a lot more than 4000 users doing daily updates.

[foxwood]

I wonder how many terabytes of Internet data they waste with every update with no new data.

Terabytes? I think you're overestimating the number of people who actually use WMC these days!

Do you realize how big updates are for cable/FIOS users. I'm guessing 4000 per terabyte and a lot more than 4000 users doing daily updates.

If WMC is downloading 250MB of guide data per day (4,000 * 250MB = 1Terabyte) then there really is something gone wrong. At a quick back of the envelope calculation, that'd represent between 5K and 10K of program data for every half hour segment in a 1,000 channel lineup over 12 days, with moderate levels of compression.

[Crash2009]

Speaking of moving a lot of data.....Somebody told me the 2015 July EPG problem, was blamed on a faulty router.

[Space]

A single guide download for my system is about 10MB.

If there is no "bad data" in that download, then it will only download once that day, however if there is something that makes it get an error, then WMC will reschedule it to download multiple times in a single day.

So 1 terabyte would be 100,000 downloads per day assuming no errors. I am sure that not every download is 10MB (OTA listings are probably much smaller) so this may not be a good average download value.

If the download causes errors when loaded, however, that can greatly increase the total amount of data downloaded, perhaps it will try 5-10 times a day and download the same exact file each time.

[jimi1000]

I wonder how many terabytes of Internet data they waste with every update with no new data.[/quote]
Terabytes? I think you're overestimating the number of people who actually use WMC these days![/quote]Do you realize how big updates are for cable/FIOS users. I'm guessing 4000 per terabyte and a lot more than 4000 users doing daily updates.[/quote]
If WMC is downloading 250MB of guide data per day (4,000 * 250MB = 1Terabyte) then there really is something gone wrong. At a quick back of the envelope calculation, that'd represent between 5K and 10K of program data for every half hour segment in a 1,000 channel lineup over 12 days, with moderate levels of compression.[/quote]


Anotheruser might have meant the daily download pulls by all users with no new data. If the user base is a few hundred thousand+ and pulling the data every day that would be much traffic for nothing.


Thanks,
Jimi

[n127]

FYI, since mid June, about 500 members registered. Not sure how many out there that didn't bother to register, but I doubt it's a huge number.

[n127]

I think big companies don't pay by the number of bytes, but by bandwidth. So if they have 100 Mbps data link, they can use it full time if they want to.

[thallipoli]

Hey all, just installed a new analog card for my wife who wants to record.

I successfully installed WMC in Windows 10 Creator update and I know the EPG has been an issue for a while now. So, is it supposed to work or not ? I'm in Canada.

Does WMC in Windows 10 creators update setup for cable cards (silicondust hd homeprime) or OTA? If so what version of WMC did you use?

Thanks

[kensiko]

Hey all, just installed a new analog card for my wife who wants to record.

I successfully installed WMC in Windows 10 Creator update and I know the EPG has been an issue for a while now. So, is it supposed to work or not ? I'm in Canada.

Does WMC in Windows 10 creators update setup for cable cards (silicondust hd homeprime) or OTA? If so what version of WMC did you use?

Thanks

It's set up to analog cable. It's WMC manual install 8.8.1 from digitallife

Envoyé de mon Nexus 4 en utilisant Tapatalk

[anotheruser]

Today's update available now has 3 days of new data. Actual data ends 8 pm EDT August 5.

That's about as good as we ever get. 13 days of full data delivered far enough ahead of prime time to be useful.

It's not the 13 days of data that means much to me but the fact that today's download is at least a day more current than we've seen for a while.

[Roginator]

With the latest guide update I found that Rovi finally updated their listings for MeTV to include Maverick on Saturdays. UNFORTUNATELY this didn't correct the schedule BEFORE August 6. July 29 still shows incorrect data.

Does the EPG123 method show Maverick correctly on July 29?

I would think if the entire schedule is being downloaded each time this should not be an issue - unless Rovi dropped the ball again.

[garyan2]

With the latest guide update I found that Rovi finally updated their listings for MeTV to include Maverick on Saturdays. UNFORTUNATELY this didn't correct the schedule BEFORE August 6. July 29 still shows incorrect data.

Does the EPG123 method show Maverick correctly on July 29?

I would think if the entire schedule is being downloaded each time this should not be an issue - unless Rovi dropped the ball again.

It shows season 2 episode 10 "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres" for the 29th. The other dates are on a different station (Heroes and Icons). The episode on 8/5 is season 2 episode 11 "Island in the Swamp."

[jtbnet]

FIOS East (MA) latest update says 8/6 but actually ends 08/05 @ 8PM but I''ll take 3 more days anytime

[superdave6653]

I wouldn't worry about Microsoft's bandwidth. More than 100 exabytes (100 billion gigabytes) of data is uploaded to the internet every month (not all by Microsoft). Microsoft sends a small fraction of that to WMC users.

Not entirely sure which file is the EPG download file but if it is EpgListing.enc then my file is 8,016kb And it is still dated 7/22 in spite of the number of times WMC has tried to redownload it since 7/22 (note just did a manual update results several paragraphs down)

There are however 3 separate numbered files in a subdirectory named mcepg2-16 that are exactly 15,543KB each and all three files are dated 7/23 3:15 am, 3:17 am and 3:46 pm respectively I assume these are the uncompressed versions of the epg listings files. I also note that the size of those files nearly doubled from the previous mcepg2-9 when they were 9,228 KB this increase happened with the 7/3 epg update files. That must be when Comcast added all those channels above 900 to my cable card settings. And yes I am aware that they have been there for a long time on my Comcast box just not available through my cable card until then.

It does seem clear that WMC reprocesses the epglisting file every time you ask for a download. I'm just not convinced that the file is actually downloaded each time you request a download. (I now believe it is redownloaded and retains the same date and time on the file)

So does WMC really download the file even if the file has not been updated since your last download attempt? ie is Microsoft smart enough to prevent unnecessary repeat downloads of the same file to the same user? (Probably yes)

If the file was really being downloaded each time wouldn't the file show a different modifcation date and time when you look at it's directory listing? (Probably no but don't understand why)

The guide download process seems to immediately understand that the file it sees on Microsoft's server is the same as the one that had already been downloaded and the media center log file reports the epglistings package is already up to date.

Note just did another manual download of EPG data. The EpgListing.enc file now shows a 7/23 8:55 am date and time So is this the date and time that Microsoft created the file? If so maybe WMC actually does redownload the same file over and over each time it does a download. The subdirectory named mcepg2-16 now has 3 numbered files dated 7/23 3:47 am, 3:46 pm and 8:48 pm So it would appear that this directory keeps the last three sets of listings data downloaded.

I now have an actual updated EPG through 8/6 4 pm per Rovi (ie some program placeholders have end times at 4pm on 8/6) and 8/5 6pm actual useful EPG data (ie no programs with start times after 6pm are listed). So apparently when a new file is downloaded the file date in the directory is updated too but it is not updated if there is no new data on the Microsoft server.

It seems odd that my 3 pm update did not download the 8 am EPG listings file so maybe it takes 12 hours or so for Microsoft to make it available for download?

It would seem that SugarFree's suggestion that the best time to download EPG data is after 9pm is pretty accurate. My taskscheduler is set to run MCupdate at 3 am every day so I assume if I had waited the latest update would have been picked up at that time. I think I'll leave things alone until 7/25 to see if the 7/24 update gets picked up

[anotheruser]

Latest update available now contains no new data.

Doesn't look like the update issue that's been going on for over 2 months has been fixed.

[HighVolTag3]

anybody else missing data again on hd channels

i scrolled forward on my hd channels and there is no listing data again after July 25 7pm


guide end date is 8/6 1am for ota channels and "digital" list ends 8/5 8pm but its back to the same as before with the outage


ok so i went back and checked it's not the same as before this go round i have No data available for ALL CHANNELS starting at jul 25 7pm

[Roginator]

i scrolled forward on my hd channels and there is no listing data again after July 25 7pm

Seems to work fine for most of us now.

Have you tried going to the administrator command prompt and entering c:\windows\ehome\mcupdate.exe -uf

(give it half an hour to fully complete)