Introducing EPG123

An evolving, supported alternative to Rovi
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★ Download the latest EPG123 here: https://garyan2.github.io/ <> Setup guide here: https://garyan2.github.io/install.html
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garyan2

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#1321

Post by garyan2 » Tue Sep 27, 2016 6:19 pm

The Mac wrote:hmm...the database rebuild buttons dont appear for me in 1.0.2
Those buttons are only available when the OS is in Safe Mode. There are too many ways that epg123 would be unable to delete the database due to being "in use" by another program. So the easy way to make it work is to require the user be in safe mode to perform the database deletions.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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STC

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#1322

Post by STC » Tue Sep 27, 2016 6:19 pm

You could squeeze that channel logo column in a bit for more grid info IMO ;)
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#1323

Post by The Mac » Tue Sep 27, 2016 7:24 pm

garyan2 wrote:
The Mac wrote:hmm...the database rebuild buttons dont appear for me in 1.0.2
Those buttons are only available when the OS is in Safe Mode. There are too many ways that epg123 would be unable to delete the database due to being "in use" by another program. So the easy way to make it work is to require the user be in safe mode to perform the database deletions.
Aha, that makes sense.

Although stopping all the eh services technically should do the trick.

will the backup restore function restore series settings?

id like to rebuild the series recordings first wile i can still see the old ones for refernce, then wipe clean if possible.

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#1324

Post by garyan2 » Tue Sep 27, 2016 8:03 pm

The Mac wrote:Although stopping all the eh services technically should do the trick.
There are other libraries that put hooks into the database ... once I saw that the Hauppauge! tuner software did it as well, I decided to take the safe route. It would be a maintenance nightmare trying to account for all scenarios. Ideally, I would be able to determine what those processes were but didn't find an easy way to do it.
The Mac wrote:will the backup restore function restore series settings?
The rebuild function just deletes the database file and restores the backup lineup (tuner channels), subscriptions, and recordings (scheduled recordings/settings). Those files are automatically generated by WMC every time a change is made. If you scan for more channels (tuner) then backups are made. If you add/remove a scheduled recording then backups are made.
The Mac wrote:id like to rebuild the series recordings first wile i can still see the old ones for refernce, then wipe clean if possible.
Not sure what you are trying to do here. I don't believe the rebuild option will help you.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#1325

Post by DSperber » Tue Sep 27, 2016 8:28 pm

STC wrote:You could squeeze that channel logo column in a bit for more grid info IMO ;)
You're right. It was in the middle of the slider (as it always opens at, no matter how much space you currently have allocated). You're right, my screenshot configuration does kind of waste a bit of room unnecessarily and with no visible benefit.

I just tried 3 clicks to the left of center (i.e. "less") for the slider, and the channel number's a bit too close to the logo. Put it back to 1 click to the right, and that looks fine now. I want enough space between the channel number and logo to be able to distinguish both of them clearly. Spreading out the 2-hour Guide data itself a bit as a result is certainly beneficial.

I'd tried the 3-hour view initially years ago when first installing MyChannelLogos and I don't care for it. Too busy. Too much information on the screen. 2 hours is better for me, as more words or characters per cell are visible and it's just easier to read with fewer cells on the screen (i.e. 2 fewer columns in 2-hour mode than in 3-hour mode).

Thanks for the idea.

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#1326

Post by Ecurb » Thu Sep 29, 2016 2:29 am

Just converted Windows 7 Media Center with ATI TV Wonder (yes, pretty old) over to EPG123. Worked great the first time. I started with the safe mode clean step. I had a subscription to Schedules Direct for use with NPVR/Emby so that was perfect. I will be sharing the updated guide with two other Media Centers (another Win7 using the ATI TV Wonder and a Win8.1 with Ceton Infinitiv 4) -- which is a great option, by the way. My Comcast schedule in Champaign IL was slowly coming back but it had lots of schedules holes and the schedules (e.g., the holes) were different between my two primary Media Centers. The erratic lack of HD channel info was the last straw so I gave it a try. Once my wife captures her scheduled recordings list, I'll convert the other two. Great job, I'm in awe (in my programming days I was the lash up guy pulling/scraping data from various system not designed to share data and fusing them all together ... I love this type of stuff). Once I get them all running I'll visit the donation page.

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#1327

Post by Ecurb » Sat Oct 01, 2016 2:35 pm

Ecurb wrote:Just converted Windows 7 Media Center with ATI TV Wonder (yes, pretty old) over to EPG123. Worked great the first time.
Update: I never could get the epg123client to work. I had to pull the file over to the PC to get it to even find the file (dir found it fine remotely) and then when it found the file the "-match" option was rejected. Also epg123.exe kept being removed by windows defender, but only when it was in c:\epg123 directory. epg123.exe in the download folder (and not even in a zip file) was left untouched. I finally just excluded c:\epg123 from defender's scan. Superantispyware and Malwarebytes had no issue with c:\epg123\epg123.exe.

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#1328

Post by garyan2 » Sat Oct 01, 2016 3:50 pm

Ecurb wrote:
Ecurb wrote:Just converted Windows 7 Media Center with ATI TV Wonder (yes, pretty old) over to EPG123. Worked great the first time.
Update: I never could get the epg123client to work. I had to pull the file over to the PC to get it to even find the file (dir found it fine remotely) and then when it found the file the "-match" option was rejected. Also epg123.exe kept being removed by windows defender, but only when it was in c:\epg123 directory. epg123.exe in the download folder (and not even in a zip file) was left untouched. I finally just excluded c:\epg123 from defender's scan. Superantispyware and Malwarebytes had no issue with c:\epg123\epg123.exe.
For the client ... looks to me you may have needed quotes around the mxf file and location to get that kind of response.

And yes, Microsoft is at it again in declaring epg123.exe a trojan. I have submitted the false positive to MS and we'll see what happens. It's getting ridiculous. :evil:
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#1329

Post by Scallica » Sat Oct 01, 2016 3:56 pm

garyan2 wrote:And yes, Microsoft is at it again in declaring epg123.exe a trojan. I have submitted the false positive to MS and we'll see what happens. It's getting ridiculous. :evil:
We all know it's because Microsoft wants WMC dead and buried and you keep breathing new life into it! :lol:
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#1330

Post by adam1991 » Sat Oct 01, 2016 3:58 pm

Scallica wrote:
garyan2 wrote:And yes, Microsoft is at it again in declaring epg123.exe a trojan. I have submitted the false positive to MS and we'll see what happens. It's getting ridiculous. :evil:
We all know it's because Microsoft wants WMC dead and buried and you keep breathing new life into it! :lol:
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#1331

Post by garyan2 » Sat Oct 01, 2016 4:05 pm

Yah, and they're "generating" the false positives faster now ...

v1.0.0 was about a 4 weeks after release
v1.0.1 was about 3 weeks after release
v1.0.2 was about 1 week after release

I think at this point, they're going to "help" me with my coding and declare it immediately a Trojan. I wish I knew which part of the code it triggering this to work around it. I can't seem to find much information on it.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#1332

Post by glorp » Sat Oct 01, 2016 7:11 pm

garyan2 wrote:I think at this point, they're going to "help" me with my coding and declare it immediately a Trojan. I wish I knew which part of the code it triggering this to work around it. I can't seem to find much information on it.
Well, accessing the registry for write in the areas you do (no good reason for an app to do that since MS is the only app that ever sets/clears ToC agreement, etc.) and creation of a scheduled task with highest user privileges would be cause for some concern. If it's only Security Essentials that gets the hits and not other virus scanners, I'd think the former as MS probably knows best what areas of the registry are "off-limits".

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#1333

Post by garyan2 » Sat Oct 01, 2016 7:57 pm

glorp wrote:Well, accessing the registry for write in the areas you do (no good reason for an app to do that since MS is the only app that ever sets/clears ToC agreement, etc.) and creation of a scheduled task with highest user privileges would be cause for some concern. If it's only Security Essentials that gets the hits and not other virus scanners, I'd think the former as MS probably knows best what areas of the registry are "off-limits".
I'd agree with you except when it was first detected with v1.0.0, I checked all the older versions and got false positives on all versions down to 0.9.7 (or maybe 0.9.6, can't remember). Previous versions didn't have the highest privelege scheduled task (introduced in v1.0.2), ToS agreement has been present since way, way early (v0.7.x), and the tuner background scanner and cable channel numbers were introduced in v1.0.0.

The weird thing is, I just scanned all versions from 0.9.4 to current and got no detects. There is also the fact the false detects are triggered without even executing epg123.exe ... just by looking at it. Because of this, I don't think it's being detected because of its behavior but because of some pattern in the binary.

EDIT: Correction ... v1.0.2 is still being flagged as a Trojan but none of the previous versions are.
- Gary
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#1334

Post by STC » Sun Oct 02, 2016 12:31 pm

Rename 1.0.2 back to 1.0.1 then. Simple :wave:

*That's why they pay me the big bucks*
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#1335

Post by dafunk60 » Sun Oct 02, 2016 4:10 pm

Is schedules direct having problems? When I try to login through the epg123.exe I receive the message "Failed token request, code 3000. Server offline for maintenance."

EDIT: a notice just went up on the SD website. It appears they are aware of the issue.

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#1336

Post by jriker1 » Fri Oct 07, 2016 9:36 pm

I've been having two problems since I switched over to EPG123 and SD.

1. Even though I have the guide set to record say channel 187 only, it will record the analog channel 7 instead. Nothing in the logs why.
2. Sometimes even though I say to record NEW only, it will record an episode that shows it was from a previous time. So it's 10/4/2016 and the original airdate is 9/27/2016. Sometimes it will still record the show.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

JR

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#1337

Post by Space » Fri Oct 07, 2016 11:05 pm

1. I think the only time I've had this happen is if I have a one-off (single dot) recording set up, and it does not record it for some reason, it will try to re-schedule it to record at a later time, and it might record it on a different channel. I don't think I have ever seen it for Series recordings, but then I have most of the SD channels that have the same programming disabled.

2. An airing of a show is considered NEW if it has an OAD that is within 7 days of the air date of that airing. In your example, it is 8 days, so not sure why that one would record. This may also happen due to a data importing bug in WMC (it will schedule multiple airings of the same episode to record), but I am not sure if that particular bug is in effect if the show is outside the scope of being considered "NEW".

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#1338

Post by garyan2 » Sat Oct 08, 2016 12:12 am

jriker1 wrote:I've been having two problems since I switched over to EPG123 and SD.

1. Even though I have the guide set to record say channel 187 only, it will record the analog channel 7 instead. Nothing in the logs why.
2. Sometimes even though I say to record NEW only, it will record an episode that shows it was from a previous time. So it's 10/4/2016 and the original airdate is 9/27/2016. Sometimes it will still record the show.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

JR
For #1 I'd check to make sure all your sources are enabled for the channel. For some reason, sometimes the channel can be enabled in the guide, but none of the tuners are enabled (available) for recording.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#1339

Post by jmsnyc » Thu Oct 13, 2016 10:11 pm

DSperber wrote: Do you use MyChannelLogos? If you don't, you should. Talk about a "beautiful new, multicolored grid"... but with large gorgeous channel logos. I suppress the channel ID and simply display the channel number and XL large logo, configured to 10 rows per page and arranged in channel number sequence.

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If you use mychannellogos, you uncheck use logos in EPG123, right? Just making sure :think:

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#1340

Post by DSperber » Fri Oct 14, 2016 1:23 am

jmsnyc wrote:If you use mychannellogos, you uncheck use logos in EPG123, right? Just making sure :think:
I don't think it actually makes a difference, checked or unchecked. I actually DO have the EPG123 option checked, but it seems irrelevant. All of my channels use the MyChannelLogos logos.

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