EPG Collector Help

Global guide related discussion. All Windows versions.
Post Reply
andylee1892

Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2017 7:48 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

EPG Collector Help

#1

Post by andylee1892 » Thu Sep 14, 2017 8:33 pm

Good evening all,

Been pulling my hair out with the guide issues for the past fortnight, decided to draw a line in the sand and give EPG Collector a try. But I'm having issues :(

Firstly, UK based user on Windows 7 x64 with a DVB-S2 tuner.

I've downloaded the latest EPG Collector zip from sourceforge and unzipped to %ProgramFiles%
I run epgcentre.exe as admin and select the pre config for "UK - Sky TV" (I use free sat but the pre config ini for this doesn't return data and seems a widely reported issue).
I leave the settings pretty much as-is with the exception of the "output" tab being selected to "import directly to windows media centre", the name being "EPG Collector" and the options to "disable inband guide updates" and "automatically map guide to channels" selected.

I save the config and run it, it goes through totally fine with error code 0.

Unfortunately there are loads of channels which don't get the guide. No problem, this is also addressed in the user guide. Following this, I select "BBC One HD" (for example) which is channel number 101, has a stable picture but no guide data, and edit the listings telling it "combine" with another BBC 1 channel which does have listings. This works and means my HD channel now has listings.

All seems well. However... The next time I run EPG Collector "BBC One HD" disappears totally. It isn't anywhere in WMC even when I perform another transponder scan. If does sometimes show in third party software (like MCE Reset Toolbox) but this is intermittent.

In addition to this, no data at all is returned for some other channels e.g. 7 different "BBC 2" channels in WMC, none of them have guide data :(

Anyone got any ideas why this behaviour is manifesting? Anyone got a simple guide/SOP to follow so I know what I'm doing is correct - the .txt user guide supplied with the program is pretty comprehensive but also open to interpretation - particularly around combining channels...

On another point; EPG123 seems to get decent coverage on here (including its own site collection on this board). Is this a better alternative? Pricing isn't an issue, but it is in dollars, will it work for UK users?

Thanks for any replies :)

Andy

User avatar
garyan2

Posts: 7438
Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2015 7:23 pm
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#2

Post by garyan2 » Fri Sep 15, 2017 9:44 pm

I, of course, am a little biased towards EPG123. :shock:

Schedules Direct certainly provides coverage for the UK. You can see a list of countries they support here. I've gotten mixed reports on EPG123 with DVB-S setups, but I think that is mainly due to the need for a bit of manual setup at the beginning. If you have a mix DVB-S, DVB-T, and/or DVB-C, then it is even more of a labor to setup. Otherwise, once setup, I've heard nothing but good things from the UK.

I'm working on a method to make it easier, but don't think it will be ready for primetime for a couple months at least.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

technodevotee

Posts: 963
Joined: Thu Sep 10, 2015 4:10 pm
Location: West Midlands

HTPC Specs: Show details

#3

Post by technodevotee » Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:34 pm

I've been using EPG Collector for a while and have encountered a couple of things you mention here.

To get listings for a channel, rather than merge channels, you need to edit the listings and point to the one that says <channel name> - EPG Collector.

Channels only seem to disappear when you have automatically map data to channels enabled and edit the line up.

I could try to help you but Steve Bickell is very good at supporting his creation and I would highly recommend that you visit https://sourceforge.net/p/epgcollector/ ... on/1125945, so that you can ask questions.

The other thing is that I had an update last night so you might want to re-enable WMC downloads and see what happens before going through all the rigmarole of remapping all you channels. As I am sure you know, it isn't perfect because there is no original air date, series recording is a bit iffy and there's only 7 days worth of data anyway. This is not a criticism of Steve's handiwork BTW, it is the data he's downloading that is the problem.

It is better than nothing though and until recently, I had a mix and match setup on mine so that most channels had MS/BDS data and the channels where data was not supplied by them were populated by EPG Collector.

I'm really hoping that Gary can come up with a bullet proof configuration mechanism for DVB-S2 on EPG123 so that I can switch.

jelockwood

Posts: 61
Joined: Mon Sep 07, 2015 11:03 am
Location:

HTPC Specs: Show details

#4

Post by jelockwood » Fri Oct 06, 2017 11:00 am

@andylee1892

I had a similar problem when setting up EPG Collector for DVB-T2 and I have seen a similar post in the official EPG Collector forum on SourceForge. In my case I solved it (apparently) by doing the following.

I edited the channel lineup in EPG Collector to add the channel number and channel name for the affected channels.
I used GuideTool to obviously not map to Microsoft provided sources but to change the mapping method to match the channel name or number. (I was trying this repeatedly with various options each time the link broke.)

I only encountered this problem on a handful of HD channels, typically BBC2 HD, ITV1 HD, and Channel4 HD, although at one time BBC Four HD was also affected.

I explicitly tell WMC to disable inband for only those channels that I know it cannot handle itself e.g. HD channels. I leave inband enabled overall and for other channels e.g. SD BBC1.

I wondered if the fact that by default EPG Collector named channels something like 'BBC1 HD-EPG Collector8423' and the random number added may be changing and confusing matters. Hence why I tried adding a specific channel name in the EPG Collector channel lineup page.

I am not disabling inband because I have the majority of channels extracted that way, I have completely removed the Microsoft EPG sources, and I do have automatic mapping enabled. I only use EPG Collector for those channels WMC cannot itself get from the inband data which is mainly HD channels which use Huffman encoding. I believe FreeSAT makes more extensive use of Huffman encoding so you may need to use it for more channels. If I remember correctly EPG Collector reports channels that you need to do this for as using type 23 or 25 EPG guide format, you can see this in its log.

Note: Since there is no Microsoft EPG data and initially no inband data briefly viewing each channel is enough to get WMC to grab the inband data, thereafter it uses 'opportunistic scanning' to update this for those channels it can do this for.

Post Reply