380 merged channels including all the HD versions

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gnollo

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380 merged channels including all the HD versions

#1

Post by gnollo » Tue Aug 08, 2017 12:52 pm

I am a newbie with EPG123. The MCE guide stopped updating two weeks ago so I need to move away from that junk.
I am London based, with a dual satellite card in my HTPC, connected to a satellite dish leftover from a cancelled Sky HD subscription.
Run through the configuration and I see I am experiencing two issues due to many channels being automatically given the same channel number (over 300), i believe you describe them as "merged", as only one will appear in the media center guide.
- some of the merged channels are HD as the system correctly merges all BBC1 channels. How do I extract the HD channel out of the list and give it a different channel number?
- other merged channels are not the same version of the same channel at all. It caused the guide to indicate that the channel was ITV2 whilst it was for example DAVE. Upon investigation it seems that both channels were given the same channel number automatically. Is there any way to stop the channel merging, and for me to hide them manually instead?
The guide is there though, and the logos too, it is a promising start!
Thanks for your help in advance.

Ivan

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garyan2

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#2

Post by garyan2 » Tue Aug 08, 2017 2:18 pm

In your situation, it sounds like you cannot use the automatch feature. You have to manually connect the guide channel to a service listing in this case.

For those channels that have the wrong listings, in the client GUI right-click the channel and select unsubscribe. Then select the channel on the left, right-click the correct station on the right, and select subscribe. Repeat.

For the scheduled updates, make sure the "Automatically match ..." or "Automatch" checkbox is not selected.
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#3

Post by gnollo » Tue Aug 08, 2017 2:56 pm

Let's make a practical example so I can understand better.
Channel 101.
I have two applications installed
1) EPG123 Configuration v1.1.13
In this app it shows under Lineup1 13 different Callsign entries all matched with channel 101. StationID is different for each and so is CallSign and Name. Callsign and Name are coherent, they make perfect sense. THey are all local versions of BBC1, with the exception of BBC Radio 1, which is obviously something different altogether.
Rightclick in this window does nothing, I can only untick or tick the tickbox for each channel, although I have no idea what it would cause. My guess is that if I unticked all but one channel for 101, that program would be the one showing with the associated guide data.
2) EPG123 Client Guide Tool
I have two sections at the bottom.
At the left I have Guide Channels, showing only BBC Radio 1, at 101. Nothing else. If i right click on it, it gives the options of Subscribe, Unsubscribe or Rename.
At the right I have the Lineup Services, showing all 13 channels associated with 101. Right click only option is to subscribe.

"For those channels that have the wrong listings, in the client GUI right-click the channel and select unsubscribe. Then select the channel on the left, right-click the correct station on the right, and select subscribe. Repeat."
My problem is that I have two separate channels, both with Number 101. I need two channel numbers, and then associate the correct station on the right. How do I do that?

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garyan2

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#4

Post by garyan2 » Tue Aug 08, 2017 9:55 pm

gnollo wrote:1) EPG123 Configuration v1.1.13
In this app it shows under Lineup1 13 different Callsign entries all matched with channel 101. StationID is different for each and so is CallSign and Name. Callsign and Name are coherent, they make perfect sense. THey are all local versions of BBC1, with the exception of BBC Radio 1, which is obviously something different altogether.
Rightclick in this window does nothing, I can only untick or tick the tickbox for each channel, although I have no idea what it would cause. My guess is that if I unticked all but one channel for 101, that program would be the one showing with the associated guide data.
You are correct. Unchecking any of these items will prevent them from being downloaded. If you disable all but the proper station on channel 101, then there will only be one choice to automatch with.
qnollo wrote:2) EPG123 Client Guide Tool
I have two sections at the bottom.
At the left I have Guide Channels, showing only BBC Radio 1, at 101. Nothing else. If i right click on it, it gives the options of Subscribe, Unsubscribe or Rename.
At the right I have the Lineup Services, showing all 13 channels associated with 101. Right click only option is to subscribe.

"For those channels that have the wrong listings, in the client GUI right-click the channel and select unsubscribe. Then select the channel on the left, right-click the correct station on the right, and select subscribe. Repeat."
My problem is that I have two separate channels, both with Number 101. I need two channel numbers, and then associate the correct station on the right. How do I do that?
Ah, I see. I assume both tuner channels for 101 are the same station. On my site, on the right side of the download page, you can download Guide Tool (I recommend v1.2.5). To merge both tuner channels into one, follow this post (viewtopic.php?p=119378#p119378).

Sorry for the confusion, but you got everything correct regardless of my lousy understanding and not quite sufficient response. I think cleaning up the channels to download in the configuration GUI, merging your tuners, and maybe some additional cleanup in the client GUI to reassign stations to channels should get everything set up nice a proper.
- Gary
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#5

Post by gnollo » Wed Aug 09, 2017 9:45 am

Thanks for your reply, downloaded guide tool but I still cannot see a way out of my predicament.
I'll try to explain with pictures this time.
If I were to normally scan channels with MCE and accept the MCE guide, I would end up with many more channels that I have now, all separate, all with their own unique chanell number, and with their own EPG (potentially, altough the system is broken right now).
Using your system, something happens that groups tv channels together by giving it the same channel number. How can I prevent that from happening? How can I make sure that EACH channel will get a separate channel number? I can hide them later with Guide Tool, but it's not possible right now to ungroup them with guide tool.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Vy7 ... XpjOFU3WjA
EPG123 Configuration shows me that there should be 13 different channels but I only get one under 101. I want to split them out so I can watch any of them, some of them will be live some dead, right now it's luck of the draw if 101 works or not.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Vy7 ... 3R4d1l0X2c
In Guide Tool I can only see once BBC1 channel, I cannot change the channel number for any of the other challents. On the right side, one of the channel numbers is 951. If I look on the left side of the tool, I cannot actually find channel 951.

Another example of an issue. Channel 106 is BBC1 HD. It doesn't show any signal. Under Guide Services, in Guide Tool, I have another 5 BBC One HD variants, at channel 972, 978, 973, 963 and 976. None of those channel numbers are showing on the left sude of Guide Tool, under Channels.

I feel like I'm looking for a needle in a haystack, can we just unbundle all the channels and allocate unique channel numbers for all?

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#6

Post by gnollo » Wed Aug 09, 2017 10:52 am

So I thought, what if the channels are completely missing from the MCE lineup, instead of being an issue with the EPG.
I went into the MCE settings and setup a full transponder scan. It yielded another 500 channels. Sadly BBC HD channels were not in the ones added.
So I went here
http://en.kingofsat.net/find.php?questi ... Submit=Zap
and then did a single transponder scan for Astra 10847 and 11024 and low and behold it pulled the HD channels in.
I then manually linked the stations with EPG in the Guide Tool, and as long as i tick them, they get pulled in the MCE TV Guide as planned.

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#7

Post by gnollo » Wed Aug 09, 2017 11:16 am

And another weird thing. According to GuideTool channel 111 has Call Sign ITV1HDL. Therefore it assigned the ITV1 HD London EPG.
Sadly the channel is showing Channel 4 +1 programming instead. How can the call sign be mixed up? Isn't that embedded in the signal for that channel?
Many channels are displaying the same type of mixup so I have to go through them one by one....

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garyan2

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#8

Post by garyan2 » Thu Aug 10, 2017 4:51 am

My limited understanding of the Freesat lineup and services may send me down a wrong path, but here goes. It is important to note the EPG123 does not "give" you channels, it provides you guide listings to stations that you may or may not receive. Those channels on the left side is what your tuners were able to scan and pick up.

Channel 101 on Freesat is BBC One and is region dependent. I don't believe you actually receive all 12 stations on channel 101. So when you do a manual match (subscribe) in the client guide tool, you would select the BBC One station that you actually receive. The same would go for 103, 105, and 112. Note that all those stations are separated in the 900 channel range but I don't know if you can tune those.
gnollo wrote:And another weird thing. According to GuideTool channel 111 has Call Sign ITV1HDL. Therefore it assigned the ITV1 HD London EPG.
Sadly the channel is showing Channel 4 +1 programming instead. How can the call sign be mixed up? Isn't that embedded in the signal for that channel?
Many channels are displaying the same type of mixup so I have to go through them one by one....
The call sign is embedded in the signal, but when you assign a listing to it, it assumes the listing's call sign. If you unsubscribe channel 111 you will see the embedded call sign again. You can manually subscribe to the C4+1 station, which is listed by SD as channel 121 to match the proper listings to the proper channel. One of the comments I've heard from SD is that not too many people will alert them to incorrect guide information ... either channel numbers, stations, or both. For whatever you find that is incorrect, please submit a ticket to SD so they can alert Gracenote and get it fixed. That also includes any stations that are missing.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#9

Post by gnollo » Thu Aug 10, 2017 8:55 am

It is important to note the EPG123 does not "give" you channels, it provides you guide listings to stations that you may or may not receive. Those channels on the left side is what your tuners were able to scan and pick up.
I understand now. This was the primary cause of my problems, and my misunderstanding. I confused the listings with the actual channel tuned by MCE. My fix is going to be to use kingofsat as a guide to scan each individual transpondent frequency and get all the channels that are available. I found MCE notoriously bad at scanning channels in from satellite.
The call sign is embedded in the signal, but when you assign a listing to it, it assumes the listing's call sign. If you unsubscribe channel 111 you will see the embedded call sign again
.
Bingo. Unsubscribed, and the call sign is now Channel 4+1. Now I know how to fix that. The problem was an incorrect autoallocation of listings, but now I know how to fix it.

I will go through the channels one by one, and if I can't find listing for any of them I will raise it with SD. I am really impressed with the application so far and with the level of support offered.
Once I finished with channels and guide, I will set it up to schedule an update on daily basis, and make sure that automatch is not ticked. If that works all out as I hope, I will surely donate to support this great endeavour. I love MCE and I would be sad to have to let it go because of an unreliable or nonexistent guide.

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#10

Post by gnollo » Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:51 am

So I finally set up the complete list of channels I want (119), there are missing EPG for the following 18:

FrontRunner
FrontRunner 2
True Movies +1
Heart Summer
Chartshow Hits
Channels 24
truTv +1
Spike +1
Showcase
Showcase +1
Forces TV
NOW 80s
POP +1
Kix +1
UTV HD
STV HD
Scuzz
Capital TV

I reported it to Schedules Direct, let's see what I hear back.
Listings only go out to 5:30AM Saturday 19th august. I am on a trial which expires today 14/08/2017 15:29:12, so it still should be working.
I tried to update the listings but failed.

What I did:
- selected Full mode in EPG123 client tool
- put scheduled update time only a few minutes later
- ticked Wake
- clicked CREATE

It did run, and the application reports
"Ready. Last Run 14/08/2017 10:09:59 EXIT 0x00000000"

Automatch is unticked.

What am I doing wrong?

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garyan2

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#11

Post by garyan2 » Mon Aug 14, 2017 2:21 pm

I don't believe you are doing anything wrong. From what I hear, UK listings are updated once a week? and you get around 2 weeks of data. So on refresh, you will have 2 weeks but it will drop down to 1 week before the next refresh. Is there anything in the trace.log file to indicate a failure to download updated listings? It is a text file so can be opened with any text editor.

Getting the missing channels into the lineup takes some time for SD to notify Gracenote to notify whoever else, lineup verified, then added to database.
- Gary
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#12

Post by gnollo » Tue Aug 15, 2017 9:09 am

These are the relevant entries I found yesterday:

[14/08/2017 10:55:35] [ INFO] Successfully queried the Task Scheduler for status. Ready. Last Run 14/08/2017 10:09:59; Exit: 0x00000000
[14/08/2017 10:55:40] [ INFO] Successfully deleted the daily update task from Task Scheduler.
[14/08/2017 10:55:41] [ INFO] Successfully queried the Task Scheduler for status. No task is scheduled to run.
[14/08/2017 10:56:05] [ INFO] Successfully created the daily update task in Task Scheduler for 10:58.
[14/08/2017 10:56:06] [ INFO] Successfully queried the Task Scheduler for status. Ready.The task has not yet run. Exit: 0x00000001
[14/08/2017 10:58:00] ===============================================================================
[14/08/2017 10:58:00] Beginning epg123 client execution.
[14/08/2017 10:58:00] ===============================================================================
[14/08/2017 10:58:00] [ INFO] Beginning epg123 client execution. 2017-08-14 09:58:00Z
[14/08/2017 10:58:00] [ INFO] Import: True , Match: False , NoLogo: False , Force: False
[14/08/2017 10:58:00] [ INFO] epg123 client version: 1.1.13 for Win7
[14/08/2017 10:58:00] Entering importMxfFile() for file "C:\epg123\epg123.mxf"
[14/08/2017 10:59:05] [ INFO] Successfully imported .mxf file into Media Center database. Exit code: 0
[14/08/2017 10:59:05] Exiting importMxfFile(). SUCCESS.
[14/08/2017 10:59:05] [ INFO] Completed lineup refresh.
[14/08/2017 10:59:05] Entering reindexDatabase()
[14/08/2017 10:59:05] [ INFO] SUCCESS: Attempted to run the scheduled task "Microsoft\Windows\Media Center\ReindexSearchRoot".
[14/08/2017 10:59:05] [ INFO] Successfully started the ReindexSearchRoot task. Exit code: 0
[14/08/2017 10:59:05] Exiting reindexDatabase(). SUCCESS.
[14/08/2017 10:59:05] [ INFO] Completed EPG123 client execution.
[14/08/2017 10:59:05] [ INFO] EPG123 client execution time was 00:01:05.0467205.
[14/08/2017 11:08:24] ===============================================================================
[14/08/2017 11:08:24] Activating the epg123 client GUI. version 1.1.13 for Win7
[14/08/2017 11:08:24] ===============================================================================
[14/08/2017 11:08:25] [ INFO] Successfully queried the Task Scheduler for status. Ready. Last Run 14/08/2017 10:58:00; Exit: 0x00000000

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#13

Post by gnollo » Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:09 pm

Ok so it's a bit more complicated than what I reported. I was looking at the first guide screen, showing me channels 101 to 107. Those are not updating past 5:30 am this Saturday morning.
I started scrolling down and noticed that other channels have stopped updating a few hours before that (displays "to be announced").
Other channels have actually updated listings and show data to Tuesday 29th August (2 weeks, so no point requesting more data than that).
Any suggestions? I will try unsubscribe and resubscribe and pull the data through to see if it makes any difference.

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#14

Post by gnollo » Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:24 pm

Done that and re-run the scheduler. No change. What is the difference between displaying "to be announced" and "not available"?
The channels that have all programs for two weeks go into "not available" subsequently.
The channels that display "to be announced" (they are many and the main channels I need) after this Saturday morning, then also turn to "no data available" after two weeks.
This points to me to an issue with DirectSchedule programs?
Is there any way that I can see the raw feed of programs that I am paying for and troubleshoot?

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#15

Post by gnollo » Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:34 pm

This affects at least all the following channels for me. Is there anyone else here that is using Freesat in the UK with the EPG123+DS combo?
BBC1 + HD
BBC2 + HD
ITV
Channel 4
Channel 5
5HD
BBC4
BBC alba
ITV +1
ITV2
ITV2+1
ITV3+1
ITV4
ITV4+1
ITVHD
ITV Be
ITV Be+1
All the other channel 4 and channel 5 derivatives

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#16

Post by d00zah » Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:38 pm

NVM... I missed '[14/08/2017 10:58:00] [ INFO] Import: True , Match: False , NoLogo: False , Force: False.
.

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#17

Post by garyan2 » Tue Aug 15, 2017 2:17 pm

The "To Be Announced" is coming from the source data, while the "Not Available" is simply empty listings (no data).

The trace.log information you posted is only the client part of the update. You do have entries like the below for downloaded the guide data, correct?

Code: Select all

[8/15/2017 4:22:00 AM] ===============================================================================
[8/15/2017 4:22:00 AM]  Beginning epg123 update execution.
[8/15/2017 4:22:00 AM] ===============================================================================
[8/15/2017 4:22:00 AM] [ INFO] Beginning EPG123 update execution. 2017-08-15 11:22:00Z
[8/15/2017 4:22:00 AM] [ INFO] DaysToDownload: 16 , PrefixEpisodeTitle: True , AppendEpisodeDesc: False , TMDbCoverArt: True , LogoOverride: True , AutoAddNew: False
If you can give me specifics on what your lineup is, I can pull the data here and verify whether it contains "To Be Announced" placeholders and when the data stops. It will be much later tonight. There are a couple things you can do in case the problem is local. You can clear the cache using the button on the configuration GUI and perform another update. If that doesn't do anything, you can use the client GUI and do a database rebuild and import the latest epg123.mxf file. If there is no change, then what you are seeing is the data being provided by SD/Gracenote.
- Gary
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#18

Post by gnollo » Tue Aug 15, 2017 2:26 pm

I searched for DaysToDownload in the trace file, and I can only find one single mention on 08/08. Nothing after that.
I emailed SD also about the issue.
What info do you need about the lineup? I am in the UK, at the top of EPG123 Configuration app it states under Lineup1 Freesat - England (United Kingdom)
I just noticed an the bottom of the app in red ### Client Mode Only - Guide will not be downloaded ###
Is that normal?

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#19

Post by garyan2 » Tue Aug 15, 2017 2:50 pm

gnollo wrote:I searched for DaysToDownload in the trace file, and I can only find one single mention on 08/08. Nothing after that.
I emailed SD also about the issue.
What info do you need about the lineup? I am in the UK, at the top of EPG123 Configuration app it states under Lineup1 Freesat - England (United Kingdom)
I just noticed an the bottom of the app in red ### Client Mode Only - Guide will not be downloaded ###
Is that normal?
It's only normal if you are running client mode only. Delete your task, make sure "automatically import..." is enabled, and recreate the task. A Save&Exexute will perform the update immediately.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#20

Post by gnollo » Tue Aug 15, 2017 2:59 pm

Thank you Gary, I will try that.
I also cleared the cache, and clicked on Save and Execute.
Guide data now goes much further for most of the channels selected (Sat 26th August), but there is no consistency across all the channels in terms of guide data, some have data and some have "To be announced" which we have just proven not to be a problem with the guide data as I just got more than a week data through by clearing the cache.

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