Those 41's that cropped up last week, plus all the other OTA changes made in my area over the past year, led me to start analyzing my OTA landscape. Interestingly, there have been over a dozen new channels added, channel reassignments, and channel takeovers but I never paid much attention because they didn't affect my recording schedule. I'm speculating that some of these changes have to do with the announced setup for ATSC 3.0 testing in my area. From the announcement ... "The first broadcasts in the new format could be on the air as early as spring of 2018".
I know I need to contact Schedules Direct for this particular issue, so this post is purely academic and seeks to satisfy my curiosity about how EPG123 handles things. It is not a call for changes or trying to place EPG123 in an unfavorable light. EPG123 is the best thing since fire and sliced bread (without which we couldn't have toast)!
END OF PROLOGUE
I'm just going to focus on one block of channels because it represents a microcosm of what I'm experiencing. Here's the comparison between Schedules Direct and Rabbit Ears. The block of 35's were missing from from my guide (and Schedules Direct) so I manually added them in WMC. I then went to the guide to see if they were live. Sure enough they were! They were listed with only their channel number and call sign, no listings. Therefore, I know I need to contact SD and have them added.
I didn't really care about 35.1 and 35.2, but I did think that 35.3 (GetTV) and 35.4 (Escape) would make nice additions to my lineup. I had another "Escape" channel so I assigned those listings to 35.4.
An interesting phenomenon occurred last night during the auto update. Channels 35.1 thru 35.3 vanished from the guide. They still exist in the "Edit Channels" section, but they're now unchecked. I started to analyze any channel changes that occurred over the past few days:
and there wasn't any reference to the 35's so I expanded my search specifically to channel 35.3 for the past year and found nothing.
Questions: (out of curiosity ONLY)
- 1. How did 35.1 thru 35.3 get removed from the guide?
- 2. Can channels added to the guide be made persistent even with no listings?
- 3. Does WMC control the inclusion/exclusion of channels in the guide?
- 4. Does the addition of channels by SD trigger the addition of new channels automatically in WMC by EPG123?
- 5. If EPG123 or WMC excludes a channel from the guide, how would I find out? I wouldn't have caught this if I wasn't specifically looking.
- 6. That's all for now????