Comcast Lineup Update

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mldenison

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Comcast Lineup Update

#1

Post by mldenison » Tue Jun 06, 2017 11:43 am

This past Saturday, I got a message in WMC that a new cablecard was detected. I see this message every week or two and always attributed it to the vagaries of WMC. I always run through the setup anyway.

This time, it made me choose a new Comcast provider type (digital). It then downloaded the guide data and finished setup. Since I disabled the Rovi guide setup some time ago when I installed EPG123, I was a bit nervous. I exited WMC and rebooted when everything appeared to be done. After the restart, the guide as empty. I reran EPG123 manually and the guide was repopulated with a ton of new channels. I reran Guide Tool to get rid of channels I never watch and there quite a few that I never had before. I now have a lot of HD channels that are new. The channel numbers now run up through the 1800's.

Now I'm not sure if both Rovi and Schedules Direct are both running. The guide looks correct. And I'm having to reschedule recordings for channels that were moved. I used to get an indicator that showed when a recording is scheduled and another station is playing the same show in the same timeslot. This no longer happens.

How can I tell if both service are running? I suppose I could run setup again but if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

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garyan2

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#2

Post by garyan2 » Tue Jun 06, 2017 2:17 pm

It sound to me you did not do a clean start with Step 1 ... if that is not the case, or I don't fully understand the CableCARD setup in WMC, let me know!

To determine whether your guide data is from EPG123, pull up the details on any program and look at the language at the bottom of the synopsis. If is just says "English" it is EPG123; if it says something like "English - US" it is Rovi.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

glorp

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#3

Post by glorp » Tue Jun 06, 2017 2:27 pm

That's completely normal and you (probably) have only Comcast's guide. About 4-6 months ago Comcast duped all their HD channels into the 1000s and you should see one of each HD channel below 1000 and the same one again above in your guide. This is part of their "migration" to free up channel space and also to put all channels on the same logical number in all markets. One assumes at some point the dupe channels below 1000 will be removed. So far they haven't done that in my service area and both sets still are there and work. Whether or not that last step will be seamless is anyone's guess. It's Comcast, so probably not.

mldenison

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#4

Post by mldenison » Tue Jun 06, 2017 3:50 pm

garyan2 wrote:It sound to me you did not do a clean start with Step 1 ... if that is not the case, or I don't fully understand the CableCARD setup in WMC, let me know!

To determine whether your guide data is from EPG123, pull up the details on any program and look at the language at the bottom of the synopsis. If is just says "English" it is EPG123; if it says something like "English - US" it is Rovi.
It's not that. I've been using EPG123 for over a year. In any case, I just reran WMC's TV setup so I'm good now. I was just shocked that WMC ran the whole setup on me when setting up the CableCard. It may have gotten confused over all the new channels ComCast added to my 2 CableCards.

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#5

Post by mldenison » Tue Jun 06, 2017 3:52 pm

glorp wrote:That's completely normal and you (probably) have only Comcast's guide. About 4-6 months ago Comcast duped all their HD channels into the 1000s and you should see one of each HD channel below 1000 and the same one again above in your guide. This is part of their "migration" to free up channel space and also to put all channels on the same logical number in all markets. One assumes at some point the dupe channels below 1000 will be removed. So far they haven't done that in my service area and both sets still are there and work. Whether or not that last step will be seamless is anyone's guess. It's Comcast, so probably not.
I appreciate the info. It looks like I'll have to move everything I have set to record to the new channels in case they ever delete all the redundant ones.

mldenison

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#6

Post by mldenison » Tue Jun 06, 2017 5:05 pm

Well, it looks like I was temporarily on Rovi. When I redid the setup, Schedules Direct does not have the new channels/mapping. I reported this to them but, for now, my guide is not too usable. Drats.

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garyan2

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#7

Post by garyan2 » Wed Jun 07, 2017 2:23 am

So for my education, when Comcast is pushing this change are they reprogramming the CableCards? kinda like a firmware update? And is that causing everyone to re-setup their WMC with the "new" card?
- Gary
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garyan2

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#8

Post by garyan2 » Wed Jun 07, 2017 2:27 am

garyan2 wrote:It sound to me you did not do a clean start with Step 1 ... if that is not the case, or I don't fully understand the CableCARD setup in WMC, let me know!

To determine whether your guide data is from EPG123, pull up the details on any program and look at the language at the bottom of the synopsis. If is just says "English" it is EPG123; if it says something like "English - US" it is Rovi.
BTW: another way to check and will give you more information is to open epg123Client.exe. The lineups pulldown will show all the lineups in the database ... anything other than just EPG123 is from MS/Rovi and means it downloaded your guide based on zipcode. On the left side, you will see what each individual channel guide source is in the Subscribe Lineup column.
- Gary
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Space

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#9

Post by Space » Wed Jun 07, 2017 4:15 am

garyan2 wrote:So for my education, when Comcast is pushing this change are they reprogramming the CableCards? kinda like a firmware update? And is that causing everyone to re-setup their WMC with the "new" card?
CableCards have something called a "channel map" which is periodically downloaded from the cable company. This channel map consists of (among other stuff) a channel number, a short text which identifies the network name (15 characters), and the frequency/subchannel for each channel.

Because of this "channel map", the only thing you need to send to the CableCard device in order to tune to a particular channel is the channel number. The CableCard device looks up all the other info it needs to tune the channel.

So, I would assume that if all they are doing is moving channels around (or duplicating channels) then the only thing they would need to do is update the "channel map" which is something that is done all the time as new channels are added or old ones removed.

This is not something that should make WMC think there is a new CableCard, so I am not sure what happened in this particular case (if it is an aberration or is happening for all Comcast customers).

mldenison

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#10

Post by mldenison » Wed Jun 07, 2017 9:47 am

Schedules Direct is working on my problem at the moment. In the meantime, I'm back on Rovi.

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#11

Post by jwilson2899 » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:39 am

mldenison wrote:Schedules Direct is working on my problem at the moment. In the meantime, I'm back on Rovi.
Any chance this has to do with a bunch of channels being dropped by SD? I noticed that yesterday I had all my normal 800 series channels, and this evening when I went to watch TV, everything 500 and above is gone from guide and blanked out again.

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garyan2

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#12

Post by garyan2 » Thu Jun 08, 2017 2:27 am

I think SD is having some problems. I just tried to help someone with a lineup that is now marked DELETED and has 0 stations, not Comcast.

For those paying attention:

Any version 1.1.x of epg123 will abort the update when there is at least a 10% drop in the number of stations in your lineups to download. So if you are running 1.0.2 and below and get hit with this situation, you will be impacted by it. Hint, Hint ... not a bad time to update ... Hint, Hint.
- Gary
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mldenison

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#13

Post by mldenison » Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:33 pm

That's explains why my lineup ticket is still open with them. I'd gotten a reply 2 days ago that they were working on it. For the meantime, I'm back on Rovi. I wonder why Rovi immediately picked up on the new channel mappings as soon as I had enabled it in WMC.

DOS4EVER

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#14

Post by DOS4EVER » Thu Jun 15, 2017 1:53 am

So the channel lineup in my area just updated to the new Comcast numbering system. I've submitted a ticket to SD to update my lineup. When that is complete what do I need to do to get EPG123 to update my listings? Do I need to do a full reset or just do a Save and Execute?

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garyan2

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#15

Post by garyan2 » Thu Jun 15, 2017 2:32 am

DOS4EVER wrote:So the channel lineup in my area just updated to the new Comcast numbering system. I've submitted a ticket to SD to update my lineup. When that is complete what do I need to do to get EPG123 to update my listings? Do I need to do a full reset or just do a Save and Execute?
If you have automatch enabled, as soon as your lineup gets updated, so will your guide. If automatch is not enabled, then you should open the epg123Client GUI and click the Automatch by: [# Number] button to do a one-time match of all channels. No need to start over unless you actually deleted the channels (i.e. don't have 9999 channels in you channel listings).
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

DOS4EVER

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#16

Post by DOS4EVER » Thu Jun 15, 2017 3:49 am

Sweet. Thanks.

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