Media Center EPG Cutover

[imaham]

I am having an issue with all my local PBS (KAET) stations since Sept 1st. I can't get any signal in Windows Media Center for any of these channels.

8.1
8.2
8.3

I can view them just fine using HDHomeRun Viewer and using just the antenna.

I tried to get these channels on 2 different computers and they just stopped working on WMC but have 100% signal.

I don't know what to do at this point, did something change? anyone else having this issue?

The most likely problem for 100% signal without reception (also WMC hangs probable whenever you select channel 8.x) is that the RF/Physical channel is pointing to a channel that is in use by another station. This can happen if ROVI picks up OTA listings from a cable supplier. You should be able to display the actual broadcast channel on your TV set. To display the channel that WMC is using, go to Settings>TV>Guide>Edit Channels. Click on the description (NOT the checkbox) for Channel 8.1, then select "Edit Sources" from the column on the left. Near the bottom of the display you will see the RF/Physical channel number being set up by the guide data. It should match the channel that the TV Broadcast is on, not one that is in use by another Broadcaster.

JK

[16volt]

@16volt-

WMC tunes to only the channels that the EPG states it has. What this means is that your guide does not have the PBS stations in them. You can get WMC to tune the channels by going into TV setup and having WMC scan for more channels. You can then use WMC to map the correct guide listing to the new set of channels. You can also use guidetool to set this up.

In the long run you should create a ticket on the microsoft site so that Rovi knows the channels are missing in your zip code so that it gets fixed in a few weeks.

Actually I have a EPG for my PBS channels and they where working fine for about the last month, then Sept 1, I tune to that channel and it does not work anymore. The weird part is that it works fine in my HDHomerun viewer.

I think something changed with channel numbers or something or frequencies.

[dmagerl]

If you know the actual channel number the station is transmitted on, you can manually add the station into WMC using the add digital channel screen and see if you get reception then. If so, you can then manually assign the guide listing to the just added channel and everything should be good to go.

This has been fairly a fairly common problem in the past with WMC, where you get no reception but show good signal strength, but it's usually caused by an error in the station's PSIP data not caused via an error in WMC. Contacting the station's engineering department was the only way to fix it.

[16volt]

If you know the actual channel number the station is transmitted on, you can manually add the station into WMC using the add digital channel screen and see if you get reception then. If so, you can then manually assign the guide listing to the just added channel and everything should be good to go.

This has been fairly a fairly common problem in the past with WMC, where you get no reception but show good signal strength, but it's usually caused by an error in the station's PSIP data not caused via an error in WMC. Contacting the station's engineering department was the only way to fix it.

Maybe I have not explained myself well. I have the channels on my guide, the signal is 100%, the guide works fine, the channel shows. The channel worked fine, then 2 days ago, when i select the channel it does not produce a picture.

[stuartm]

If the channel is in your guide then a guide update may have changed the physical frequency or added source entries for low-power repeaters (This has happened to me before). Did you check your sources as others have recommended to verify that the sources are using the proper physical frequencies? If there are any that are not correct, uncheck them so that WMC will not attempt to use them when viewing or recording the channel.

[imaham]

Maybe I have not explained myself well. I have the channels on my guide, the signal is 100%, the guide works fine, the channel shows. The channel worked fine, then 2 days ago, when i select the channel it does not produce a picture.

WMC has to send the HDHomeRun an RF channel number (which Rovi calls the PhysicalNumber). In your case, this would be channel 8 according to Wikipedia description for KAET. It also sends it the LogicalNumber 8.1, 8.2, or 8.3 depending on which channel number you selected from the Guide listings. Both these numbers (physical and logical) come from the listings that MS/Rovi sends out nightly when your WMC Update takes place. The LogicalNumber originates from the PSIP data that the station broadcasts from their antenna. The PhysicalNumber is the actual Radio Frequency that the station is broadcasing on - in this case VHF channel 8. If Rovi has modified their guide since September 1 in your case, it is possible that you will not see any picture when you choose any subchannel on channel 8.x You also likely won't see any sound. This is because the LISTINGS from Rovi have to define the LogicalNumbers for 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 as PhysicalNumber 8 in their data. It is easy to verify the PhysicalNumber for 8.x in Settings>TV>Guide>Edit Listings. From there, select the "Channel Name" (not the checkbox), then select "Edit Sources". It should display Channel 8 at the bottom of that screen. If it's anything else, that is likely your problem, in which case you will have to add a "fake Channel 8.x" for each of the 3 subchannels on RF channel 8, then "Copy" (not "merge") the listings from the non-working channel 8.x to each new channel. Once done, you can uncheck the old non-working channel 8 listings. How you do this will depend on your proficiency and preference with WMC or GuideTool.

I'm making the assumption that you have all your tuners accessing the same guide data. If that's not true, it adds a bit of complexity to the task.

[16volt]

Maybe I have not explained myself well. I have the channels on my guide, the signal is 100%, the guide works fine, the channel shows. The channel worked fine, then 2 days ago, when i select the channel it does not produce a picture.

WMC has to send the HDHomeRun an RF channel number (which Rovi calls the PhysicalNumber). In your case, this would be channel 8 according to Wikipedia description for KAET. It also sends it the LogicalNumber 8.1, 8.2, or 8.3 depending on which channel number you selected from the Guide listings. Both these numbers (physical and logical) come from the listings that MS/Rovi sends out nightly when your WMC Update takes place. The LogicalNumber originates from the PSIP data that the station broadcasts from their antenna. The PhysicalNumber is the actual Radio Frequency that the station is broadcasing on - in this case VHF channel 8. If Rovi has modified their guide since September 1 in your case, it is possible that you will not see any picture when you choose any subchannel on channel 8.x You also likely won't see any sound. This is because the LISTINGS from Rovi have to define the LogicalNumbers for 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 as PhysicalNumber 8 in their data. It is easy to verify the PhysicalNumber for 8.x in Settings>TV>Guide>Edit Listings. From there, select the "Channel Name" (not the checkbox), then select "Edit Sources". It should display Channel 8 at the bottom of that screen. If it's anything else, that is likely your problem, in which case you will have to add a "fake Channel 8.x" for each of the 3 subchannels on RF channel 8, then "Copy" (not "merge") the listings from the non-working channel 8.x to each new channel. Once done, you can uncheck the old non-working channel 8 listings. How you do this will depend on your proficiency and preference with WMC or GuideTool.

I'm making the assumption that you have all your tuners accessing the same guide data. If that's not true, it adds a bit of complexity to the task.

Thanks for the explanation, I just checked now and it started working again all the sudden. Maybe Rovi fixed the issue or My local Channel 8 changed something. Working again today with no changes on my end. Too bad I deleted the WMC database and spend many hours for nothing.

[al_wilson2]

I live in the Youngstown market, but can pickup other markets with my rooftop antenna. I record both Cleveland and Youngstown channels frequently. I opened a ticket with Rovi directly about this. Below is the response that I received. Sure enough, the new lineup is there, and it includes Cleveland, Youngstown, Erie, Pittsburgh, and Wheeling. Great support from Rovi! My WMC lives on!

Which Youngstown market are you referring to Al? I'm using 14174 (Youngstown N.Y.) which contains mostly Buffalo area and a bunch of Canadian channels near Toronto. I don't see any OTA lineup for anything except Buffalo, remainder are Cable/Satellite listings. Headend ID is 309582194.

JK

Sorry, JK. That's a Youngstown, Ohio market that sits between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. I didn't realize that there was another Youngstown.

[al_wilson2]

If you know the actual channel number the station is transmitted on, you can manually add the station into WMC using the add digital channel screen and see if you get reception then. If so, you can then manually assign the guide listing to the just added channel and everything should be good to go.

This has been fairly a fairly common problem in the past with WMC, where you get no reception but show good signal strength, but it's usually caused by an error in the station's PSIP data not caused via an error in WMC. Contacting the station's engineering department was the only way to fix it.

If you wiki the station call sign, wiki will usually list both the digital and virtual frequency for you on the right side of the webpage. You can use this info to manually create the channel in WMC.

[16volt]

I got this error on my Windows 7 ultimate, I spent about 2 hours trying to fix it reading through the messages here.

Here is how I fixed it, I updated my Windows to all the latest updates which included Service Pack 1, reran the setup for WMC and it worked fine after that.

Check to make sure your computer has all the latest updates.

Download Failure
The new TV setup data could not be
downloaded. The existing data, if available
will be used as you continue through TV
signal setup.

* after this error message, the setup fails to ask me what Cable TV provider I use. When finished:
* no channel names are showing
* no guide gets downloaded no matter how many times I try (I suspect it doesn't know what cable provider I use, so it doesn't know which guide to get)
* I CAN watch all the channels including HBO, etc (I do have a cablecard and HDHomeRun tuner, but it's irrelevant info here)

My second PC when I re-run the setup does NOT have this issue, and the setup goes through all of the steps:
* I use the same zip code (01775) then after acquiring new TV setup data (no DOWNLOAD FAILURE),
* asks me to select whether I have Comcast or Verizon FIOS, then when finished,
* channel names are showing correctly.
* still an issue with the GUIDE, but that's a separate issue

I've re-installed Media Center multiple times, deleting the eHome dir, playReady and running manual commands to mcUpdate etc...
Something is screwed up in the Media Center setup on this PC and I don't know what it is.

How do I completely remove any and all settings for Media Center, and start completely new, besides what I have already tried and described above? What registry settings can be removed? Any other hidden files or directories?
What is blocking the new TV setup data from downloading successfully?

This post is NOT about the GUIDE not downloading - I hear it's a separate issue that a lot of people I experiencing.
This post is to get the TV setup data downloaded so that the Media Center ask for my Cable Provider and displays the Channel line up names
I am lucky in a way that my second PC with Media Center works correctly and goes through the setup without a problem.

I don't want to re-install Windows to get this issue fixed - there should be a way to completely reset Media Center, so it goes through the setup correctly and doesn't fail to acquire new TV setup data (not the electronic programming guide)

[mrtedweb]

After WEEKS of struggling, my guide listing is FINALLY working again! Below is everything that was done on my machine.

1) I followed the advice given by jkljkl72 to update my hosts file. This did not work. I kept receiving an error stating 'The new tv setup data could not be downloaded...' whenever I tried to re-setup my TV settings.
2) I followed the advice by ewtaylo to enter a zip code of 11111 for the TV setup, reboot and running the setup again with your actual zip code. This did not work. The same error from above was received.
3) I found this post at http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... fec58f094e to set my DNS server to 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS server). Here is Google's instructional page: https://developers.google.com/speed/pub ... docs/using. This did not work (same error as above).
4) I finally looked in my event viewer and found this error: 'Failed to retrieve nettv'. Googling this I stumbled onto this page: http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 1&start=80 with this posting by tzr916:

data.tvdownload.microsoft.com is coming out as
65.55.186.113 west coast/east coast
65.55.5.170 central/southern us

I re-edited my hosts file to reflect the central/southern us (I am in Atlanta, GA) ip settings for data.tvdownload.microsoft.com and re-ran the TV setup. For the first time I did not recieve the 'The new tv setup data could not be downloaded...' error message. Once the setup completed, I restarted WMC and my channel program information started showing again. I hope this helps someone out there. It definitely has been a painful experience that has lowered my confidence in Microsoft products.

[fzy8gc]

I cannot find a recent update by Microsoft on this topic. Does anyone know if Microsoft via Microsoft Connect, https://connect.microsoft.com/, is even addressing the issues submitted?

[Scallica]

I cannot find a recent update by Microsoft on this topic. Does anyone know if Microsoft via Microsoft Connect, https://connect.microsoft.com/, is even addressing the issues submitted?

The latest update from Microsoft is a published as a global announcement here.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =30&t=9179

[marjiea1]

I did all kinds of suggested "fixes" to try to get the EPG to update and nothing. Ran through them all again and I was having errors with the RecoveryTasks (service not registered errors). Kept getting no data found even though the MSN TV listings were showing for my zip code. Just when I was ready to give up I ran MC setup one more time and it worked. So, I decided to make a good system image, went to backup and restore and blank page, tried to go to Start and then search for something and blank start menu. AARRRGGGHHH! I had to restore to my last backup and I'm back where I started again with no good EPG guide data (I had saved my eHome ProgamData and AppData folders, replaced them after the restore but they didn't help.) I used to love Windows Media Center but I'm truly hating it now.

[dnsacks]

FINALLY got through the "new tv setup data could not be downloaded" roadblock after many weeks of efforts. Solution for me? disabling my DSL connection via centurylink (in denver) and connecting my htpc to the internet via a wireless connection and my iPhone's wireless hotspot (via at&t). Ran setup tv signal and and the EPG guide data file downloaded smoothly -- where I was seeing the hangup before.

Not sure what to make of this (i.e. since centurylink is now marketing a cable product that competes with comcast/MCE, are they purposely blocking my connection to move me over to prism? or going through another ISP bypassing a bottleneck, DNS issue/etc. similar to using a VPN to attempt setup) Either way, guide is down and fingers crossed that it'll remain stable

I'd previously gone the schedules direct route, but ran into an issue where I was not getting new/rerun data and running into scheduled recording messes (recording a bunch of reruns instead of new only, even though new only was selected)

Best of luck to all -- worth trying a cellphone hotspot tether, vpn or other alternate ISP connection if running into EPG guide download error log entries.

[fzy8gc]

I cannot find a recent update by Microsoft on this topic. Does anyone know if Microsoft via Microsoft Connect, https://connect.microsoft.com/, is even addressing the issues submitted?

The latest update from Microsoft is a published as a global announcement here.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =30&t=9179

Thank you for the reply. I had read that 8/28 update you referenced. I had one of the multiple WMC systems where one worked and the other did not. I was surprised more detailed system configuration information was not requested of the 2 systems to help pinpoint the root cause. I once had a similar problem with MagicJack. Magic Jack stopped working on one system while it continued to work on the other. It turned out to be the LAN driver update installed via Microsoft update that caused the problem. When I rolled back to the previous driver, the problem went away.

Just this week some of my guide information I was receiving changed to "No Data Available" on one of my WMC systems and not the other.

[grantndub]

It's been sometime since I've had to come to this site. My HTPC has been flawless until the other day I noticed some weird issues that I'll attribute to a failing OS drive. So I decided to do a fresh install with a new drive but I didn't know what I was getting myself into. Well...24 hours later I finally have the guide.

I tried following the instructions that dukeynstewie posted but it didn't work. I read through this thread and tried everything. Then late last night I decided time to start over again with a fresh install and this morning I followed dukeynstewie again and it worked the first time. Not with my zip but with one not far away. I live in Oroville 95965 but I used 95928 which is Chico. I'm on Comcast with a HDHomerun prime. Encase anyone was wondering I made my host file look exactly like the one Crash2009 posted.

Big thank you to this community. I don't come here often but when I do I find the answers I need.

[nathanio]

This seems to have just hit us in the UK. I have no more guide data.

I have used the http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/tv-listings page and it can't see any providers for the UK at all!??!

Are we even supported here in the UK still?

[marjiea1]

I did all kinds of suggested "fixes" to try to get the EPG to update and nothing. Ran through them all again and I was having errors with the RecoveryTasks (service not registered errors). Kept getting no data found even though the MSN TV listings were showing for my zip code. Just when I was ready to give up I ran MC setup one more time and it worked. So, I decided to make a good system image, went to backup and restore and blank page, tried to go to Start and then search for something and blank start menu. AARRRGGGHHH! I had to restore to my last backup and I'm back where I started again with no good EPG guide data (I had saved my eHome ProgamData and AppData folders, replaced them after the restore but they didn't help.) I used to love Windows Media Center but I'm truly hating it now.

Update: I was able to restore my guide to working even though I could not download for my zip code again after a restore. I had backed up my ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome directory. No hosts file modifications. I uninstalled and re-installed Media Center. I copied my latest mcepg2-x folder and db files over to the restored image. Renamed them mcepg2-0. Copied over the EpgListings folder to the Packages folder. Then I ran the Media Center setup, it failed at getting data for my zip code but when it said it would use previous data it read my copied files/package. I got the new guide information. My live TV did not work though. Instead of trying setup again I just went to Tasks\Settings\TV\TV Signal\Scan for More Channels and it works. Now I get live TV with the new guide data too.

[bmcpeak]

First off, I'm a Tech. No novice, but whether that helps or hurts, I can't say.


65.55.5.170 data.tvdownload.microsoft.com
65.55.186.113 data.tvdownload.microsoft.com
72.246.56.59 cdn.epg.tvdownload.microsoft.com
2.16.216.176 cdn.epg.tvdownload.microsoft.com
128.177.98.169 cdn.epg.tvdownload.microsoft.com

Help!

Do you really have all of those lines in your hosts file? Some of those are from the fall, 2014 fix and are just plain wrong.
Verify your hosts file before you go any farther. Edit the file hosts file according to these very detailed instructions:

click start button
type CMD in search box
right click CMD and run as administrator
cd c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
notepad hosts
if there are ANY lines in your file that are for data.tvdownload.microsoft.com or cdn.epg.tvdownload.microsoft.com DELETE THEM
Add the following 2 lines
65.55.186.113 data.tvdownload.microsoft.com
72.246.56.59 cdn.epg.tvdownload.microsoft.com
save the file and exit notepad

in your cmd window
ipconfig /flushdns



Now, verify WMC thinks it has a valid zip code: in WMC settings>TV>Guide there is there an "About This Guide" entry?

if YES, (THIS IS GOOD), then run through post #1302 (page 66) to try and force the update
if NO, then you need to run the TV setup section again to get a zip code into the system. Do not proceed to post #1302 until you have an "about this guide" entry.

ewtaylo,
I have been trying to get past the TV setup download fail, for weeks. Have been following your advice but still can't get it to go.! I have an OTA setup and I can't get to where I have the About This Guide" entry, that you mention.
I went as far as putting my tuner card (Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250) in another PC. It took a lot longer to get the download fail than my media pc, but I never could get it to download.
I suggestions would be greatly appreciated

I am playing around with NextPVR, and it downloaded the guide with no problems. I think it is Rovi? Not sure.
Thanks.