Listings problem in UK?

In the UK, listings are provided by BDS (Broadcasting Data Services). Does anyone know if there's a problem with their listings at the moment. SD channels such as BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four and ITV have listings that go up to about 4 August (ie a week) but the HD versions of those channels have no listings beyond the end of today (27 July). I've forced an update with Get Latest Guide Listings and it gives two dates:

Guide End Date 04/08/2017 18:00
End Date 28/07/2017 06:00



Since I used to get about 2 weeks of listings, I'm wondering whether all the listings are gradually dying...

[HTPC Specs:]

Yep. Same for me on all my PCs with terrestrial tuners.

But the one with three satellites configured has an end date of 01/09/2017 because the guide data seems to be go much further into the future on Hotbird (13e) and Astra I (19.2e) than the guide data on Astra II (28.2e).

I think your SD guide data is probably coming from the in-band guide loader rather than the internet.

I have been tagging info about this onto existing threads on here, on connect.microsoft.com and on answers.microsoft.com since the twentieth but so far, I've have had no response from anyone anywhere.

It doesn't seem worth opening new threads/issues because it appears that absolutely no-one at Microsoft is interested any more.

Yep. Same for me on all my PCs with terrestrial tuners.

But the one with three satellites configured has an end date of 01/09/2017 because the guide data seems to be go much further into the future on Hotbird (13e) and Astra I (19.2e) than the guide data on Astra II (28.2e).

I think your SD guide data is probably coming from the in-band guide loader rather than the internet.

I have been tagging info about this onto existing threads on here, on connect.microsoft.com and on answers.microsoft.com since the twentieth but so far, I've have had no response from anyone anywhere.

It doesn't seem worth opening new threads/issues because it appears that absolutely no-one at Microsoft is interested any more.

Ah, so it's not just me. If the EPG is going to be unreliable, this might be the impetus I need to switch over to using NextPVR as my PVR. At least NextPVR can decode in-band listings for all DVB-T2 channels (including channels like Talking Pictures TV) which WMC can't: I always have to set a manual channel-and-time recording to record from Talking Pictures.

It's a shame, because WMC is a good product and it didn't deserve to be unceremoniously dumped by Microsoft. What was particularly had to understand is why they actually went to the length of forcibly removing it on a Win 7 PC that was upgraded to Win 10. As with so many MS products (eg Outlook Express and Windows (Live) Mail), it should have been downloadable and installable independently of the operating system so you can mix and match what software you install, rather than being welded into the operating system.

On a PC that has WMC installed and configured, if I no longer want to use WMC, what's the best way of preventing it trying to link to the tuner, which can cause other software (eg NextPVR) to sometimes see that the tuner is already bound to another program (WMC). Is it a case of looking for MSCONFIG startup programs and services, and disabling them?

[HTPC Specs:]

Microsoft have been trying to kill off WMC for a long time, first by not developing it, then by offering it only as a bolt on, then by forcibly removing it and now a lot of people are wondering if these guide outages are actually their final attempt to kill it off.

It doesn't seem to matter to them that a lot of people bought into it and want to continue using it.

It works fine on Windows 10 as long as you don't need cable card support but you have to install the patched version available on My Digital Life.

Now that the BDS/ROVI EPG is frequently failing, many people have switched to using one of the other add-ons such as EPG123 or epgcollector to populate the guide instead.

I've been running epgcollector in a mix and match manner alongside the Microsoft data to populate the channels with no data for some time now. It's not perfect but it is highly configurable as you can control which channels it downloads or just remap the channels with missing data to the epgcollector ones.

I'm seeing the same problem (as martinu's post) - in the past the guide data seems to come back eventually. Perhaps there's someone at BDS on their hols who normally fixes this - has anyone had any experience of informing BDS ?

Anyone know of an update on this issue?
I have ended up mapping the guide data from the SD channels onto the (empty) HD channels so that I can record in HD - disappointingly there's only a weeks worth of guide instead of the two weeks you normally get with the HD channels.

Also lost HD listings since recent channel update.

Loss of WMP on Win 10 is why I'm still using Win 8.1.

ARE YOU SEEING THIS MS?

[HTPC Specs:]

You might want to take a look at EPG123 which uses a different source for the listings, so you are not reliant on the unreliable MS service. It may not suite a complicated setup with multiple tuner types, but otherwise it works very well.

[HTPC Specs:]

I had some updates over night and this morning I have data until 03/10/2017 on Astra 1 (19.2e), Astra 2 (28.2e), Hotbird (13e) and Terrestrial (Sutton Coldfield).

Strangely, I have data until 04/10/2017 on SKY DIGITAL (210103).

[HTPC Specs:]

Had some more last night, which has filled in the gaps.

Had some more last night, which has filled in the gaps.

As per your related post(s) in the main UK EPG thread here viewtopic.php?f=96&t=9191&start=600 more and more people have given up on the Microsoft provided EPG - via BDS in the UK. The most recent and longer outage finally forced me to give up as well.

Of course many of us suspect this is a 'cunning plan' on the part of MicroShaft.



I had also been using EPG Collector originally to fill in missing channels from the Microsoft/BDS line up. (Even when Microsoft's was running it was missing a lot of channels.) I now have the majority of channels supplied by WMC itself extracting DVB guide data and for those channels it cannot do this I use EPG Collector.

For those unaware WMC itself cannot extract EPG data from DVB channels which use Huffman encoding, this is predominantly HD channels on DVB-T2 at least here in the UK. I believe FreeSAT may also extensively use Huffman encoding.

I initially had a problem with a handful of HD channels repeatedly losing their link to EPG Collector but it has all settled down now after a fair amount of tweaking and in terms of completeness it is better than it has even been when I was using Microsoft's BDS data. The only drawback with EPG Collector and the Microsoft extracted DVB data is that it is limited to just a week instead of two weeks.

[HTPC Specs:]

@jelockwood

Do you have the same problems I mentioned?

e.g.
newest episode name replacing actual episode name below thumbnails
random unrelated series names replacing actual series name below thumbnails
series recording every available showing on every channel and completely disregard HD preference

I am sure that some of these issues are down to the data but others may be due to the fact that I have never done a clean start.

But I upgraded the cards in one of my other PCs, replacing two DVB-T cards with one Quad DV-T2 card. They have the same configuration (all normal MS functionality retained but with EPG-Collector listings assigned to UK TV channels) but the one with DVB-T2 seems worse on that one than the one with DVB-S2 cards.

[quote="technodevotee"]@jelockwood

Do you have the same problems I mentioned?

e.g.
newest episode name replacing actual episode name below thumbnails
random unrelated series names replacing actual series name below thumbnails
series recording every available showing on every channel and completely disregard HD preference
quote]

I have not noticed the first two of these issues but have noticed the third issue. This is I feel a combination of settings for a series in WMC and also I feel down to EPG Collector and how it labels episodes. It is possible to edit a series recording per individual series so that it can be for 'any channel' or for a specific channel.

Normally it would first try the specific channel you set it up for and if the recording failed it would then try other channels e.g. +1 and non HD channels, again this behavior is WMC controlled.

I am as mentioned however also feeling that EPG Collector at least with the settings I currently have is not labeling episodes in a way that allows WMC to properly identify them, I keep intending to have a look at the settings to try other options but it has not so far been a priority. Frankly as long as the right episode gets recorded deleting extra copies is a small price. It maybe that the data available via FreeView DVB EPG does not make this possible and then either we have to live with it or switch to Schedules Direct via EPG123 or if it is working for the moment Microsoft's.

[HTPC Specs:]

I have tried both the 'use broadcaster references to generate links' option in the Media Center section of the output tab and the 'check for programme repeats' option of the repeats tab but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

The other issues (replacement of the titles under the thumbnails) is more of an irritation than anything because the real title shows when you hover over the thumbnail. It confuses my Wife though.

I raised a ticket for these issues with Steve Bickell but he said he wasn't able to reproduce the problems because he doesn't use Media Center.

But I am veering toward switching to EPG123 in the near future given that the MS/BDS feed has been down for so long now.

The other option to consider is getting EPG Collector to add meta data from TVDB.

"As an option, additional data can be added to each EPG entry by looking up the programmes on internet databases. This feature is enabled using the Lookups tab in EPG Centre and can be individually enabled for movies and TV series. The TMDB database (http://www.themoviedb.org) is accessed for movies and the TVDB database (http://www.thetvdb.com) for TV series. Both are free to use and open to the public and downloading data to a local PC is within the terms and conditions of use. The databases are maintained by the internet community."

Or if it is on try turning it off, however I currently have it off to speed up processing so if anything turning it on would be more likely to improve this issue.

I also found this thread https://sourceforge.net/p/epgcollector/ ... /?limit=25 which discusses how to use MCE Reset ToolBox with TVDB to 'enhance' the series/episode meta data. Perhaps that would help

[HTPC Specs:]

Yeah, I used to use the lookup feature but got fed up with how long it took to download the data.

I am surprised that you don't see the other problem (replaced titles under the thumbnails) because I've had it happen on all of the PCs I have used EPGC on. As I said, I used to think it was because I hadn't done a 'clean start' but even with a clean start, it is just the same.

The clean start thing is one of the reasons I've been holding off on making the switch to EPG123 but now I've got the Quad DVB-T2 tuner up and running, I think I'll give it another go on one of the spare PCs and see what happens.

I don't keep that many TV episode recordings, I use it to record when I am not available, watch them and then delete them. Hence I typically only have one episode of each program and do not see the problem as obviously.