Help with missing channels and guide data

Global guide related discussion. All Windows versions.
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robin_castree

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Help with missing channels and guide data

#1

Post by robin_castree » Wed Jun 12, 2013 11:53 am

I'm running a PC as a media centre with two separate TV tuner cards on Win7 64bit. The cards are a Black Gold 3450 and a DVB Sky S952. I have only one satellite feed currently but I bought the Sky card because I couldn't get satisfactory results with the Black Gold. The system works ok with Freeview but Freesat is an absolute disaster. Whichever card I use I get plenty of signal but under MCE I get an underpopulated EPG and most of the channels just don't work and there are many missing HD channels. Over the last year I've tried and tried with setting up the signal automatically and manually but its the same result every time.
On the bright side the Sky card (not Murdoch's SKY) came with some native software and with that I can pick up thousands of TV channels from 5 satellites!! most are repeats but the quality is fab - it even has a working EPG. BUT,, the interface is bloody awful and completely inscrutable.
So I just want MCE to WORK! can someone explain in clear step-by-step idiot guide how I can achieve this without having to delve into the depths of tuning manually each channel etc.?

Hopefully fingers crossed thanks for looking,
robinc

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tony_park

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#2

Post by tony_park » Tue Jun 25, 2013 8:28 am

Hi Robin,

I would give the dvblink software a try - it would help with epg data too, if you use it with either their digiguide plugin, or EPG Collector.

Tony

bobbob

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#3

Post by bobbob » Tue Jun 25, 2013 9:17 am

would echo the above. it has so many great clients as well not just MCE. i can circumvent our iplayer and live tv restrictions at work by using the web player for example

AndyBMK

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#4

Post by AndyBMK » Fri Jul 05, 2013 9:10 am

Hi Robin

Further to the other guys' suggestions, if you are content to do everything manually then you could just simply use an up-to-date transponder guide and then use Guide Tool (http://1geek1tool.com/guidetool) to sort and tailor the resultant EPG to your own preferences. I think Guide Tool is still free to download (you can make a donation if you want to). Guide Tool is certainly better than attempting to make EPG adjustments within Media Center itself (a painful process if you've tried it!).

Unfortunately the data Media Center uses on automatic satellite tuning is hopelessly out-of-date which accounts for your missing channels. There are several up-to-date satellite transponder guides out there; LyngSat is a good one: http://www.lyngsat.com/Eutelsat-28A-and ... 2A-2F.html and this shows all the current UK Freesat and Sky channels (you can see the Sky unencrypted transponders - those without Videoguard - which, of course, can be added to a free-to-air set up). Look for the channels you want and then do a manual tuning set-up with the relevant details (but add single transponders manually one at a time with the transponder details rather than let it do an entire satellite group scan otherwise you'll simply end up with all the incorrect and missing data again).

Once you've the channels you want, run Guide Tool and you will see all the channels on one screen (from all platforms, eg satellite & terrestrial). You can choose which channels to display in the Media Center EPG, renumber and even rename them if you wish. You can also align one of the available listings guides to any one channel (since this data can often be incorrect or missing as well). Listings guide options for Freeview channels can be left untouched as I believe Media Center derives this data as embedded off-air rather than via the internet.

The downside to this manual set up is that any future transponder changes have to be done manually as well. Also, if you use Guide Tool to make changes to the way any Freeview channels appear in your guide (eg changing the default EPG channel numbers or removing unwanted channels from your EPG) you may find the Freeview channels regularly reappear in their default positions in addition to where you may have moved them. This is because Media Center regularly does a scan of terrestrial channels. This can be disabled in the registry (try a search for "EPG periodic scan enabled" on forums for details) however if you're happy to keep to the default channel positions for the Freeview channels, at least those channels should be kept automatically up-to-date.

I should say the above isn't a perfect solution and there will be a lot of trial and error. I still haven't managed to get all up-to-date EPG programme listings appear on a small number of rarely-watched "minor" channels. That said, even when I was using the excellent EPG Collector (during the problems with Microsoft's listings at the start of the year), data still wasn't available for some of the minor channels.

jbamford92

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#5

Post by jbamford92 » Sun Jul 10, 2016 3:23 am

Im having the similar problem. but in my case some channels have its listings and other channels only have the listings until i click on the channel any ideas? but listings for channels isn't there for the rest of the day or night.

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