Questions and Features

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rimmel

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Questions and Features

#1

Post by rimmel » Fri Apr 08, 2016 11:30 pm

Questions: (1) When the epg123 program executes does it refresh the entire guide from Schedule Direct (SD) or append new days to the end of a previous run stored in the cache? In other words, will all SD guide changes made since the last epg123 update be picked up by the next run.

(2) The Microsoft/Rovi guide does client maintenance about every five days. I don't know exactly what this does other than some sort of general clean up, but I do know that it uses the same executable as the guide update. Ongoing will the epg123 guide require clean up like this?

Features: (1) Would it be possible to create a WMC menu entry like Task-> Settings-> TV-> Guide-> About Guide Listings that includes the epg123 "Guide End Date" plus other relevant information and the Schedule Direct subscription end date (I know that the SD subscription end date already appears in the trace log)?

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Scallica

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#2

Post by Scallica » Sat Apr 09, 2016 12:17 am

rimmel wrote: Features: (1) Would it be possible to create a WMC menu entry like Task-> Settings-> TV-> Guide-> About Guide Listings that includes the epg123 "Guide End Date" plus other relevant information and the Schedule Direct subscription end date (I know that the SD subscription end date already appears in the trace log)?
Great idea, I was thinking the same thing.
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glorp

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#3

Post by glorp » Sat Apr 09, 2016 12:27 am

rimmel wrote:Questions: (2) The Microsoft/Rovi guide does client maintenance about every five days. I don't know exactly what this does other than some sort of general clean up, but I do know that it uses the same executable as the guide update. Ongoing will the epg123 guide require clean up like this?
There is some lengthy discussion about this in one of the threads here but I can't remember where now.

tl;dr: Garbage collection will occur every five days just like it does with MS/Rovi as long as you don't manually disable the Windows scheduled task that accomplishes this. If you have no need for package updates (for things other than the old MS/Rovi EPG updates) then you can disable the Download Options in Tasks>General>Automatic Download Options. GC will still occur every five days if you do. You can also leave WMC download options enabled as well for daily updates of packages if you use them (movie art maybe?). Daily package updates will run just like they always have but there is no chance your guide will be "updated" with MS/Rovi pollution as long as you refuse guide Terms per the epg123 install instructions.

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garyan2

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#4

Post by garyan2 » Sat Apr 09, 2016 1:13 am

rimmel wrote:Questions: (1) When the epg123 program executes does it refresh the entire guide from Schedule Direct (SD) or append new days to the end of a previous run stored in the cache? In other words, will all SD guide changes made since the last epg123 update be picked up by the next run.
The mxf file is recreated on every update using the cached files plus any new and updated information from SD. The resulting file will be complete and up to date.
rimmel wrote: (2) The Microsoft/Rovi guide does client maintenance about every five days. I don't know exactly what this does other than some sort of general clean up, but I do know that it uses the same executable as the guide update. Ongoing will the epg123 guide require clean up like this?
glorp filled you in on a bit of this. The garbage collection every 5 days is still needed to clean out the database of old guide data.
rimmel wrote:Features: (1) Would it be possible to create a WMC menu entry like Task-> Settings-> TV-> Guide-> About Guide Listings that includes the epg123 "Guide End Date" plus other relevant information and the Schedule Direct subscription end date (I know that the SD subscription end date already appears in the trace log)?
I've been trying to find where that information is to see if I can accomplish this. I would love to put an epg123 stamp on there with pride. Don't even know if it possible with the tools available. Anyone know if anyone else like Big Screen EPG has done this?
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

rimmel

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#5

Post by rimmel » Sat Apr 09, 2016 1:41 am

Another option might be to write an entry to the Media Center event log at the start and/or end of an epg123 run. The could include select information from the trace log and the guide end date.

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garyan2

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#6

Post by garyan2 » Sat Apr 09, 2016 1:57 am

rimmel wrote:Another option might be to write an entry to the Media Center event log at the start and/or end of an epg123 run. The could include select information from the trace log and the guide end date.
Thought about it ... I believe glorp requested it a while ago. I gave it a shot and didn't succeed right away, but can certainly try again. My thingis how many users actually check their event log? Your normal user won't even know how to get there, or even that it exists.
- Gary
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Space

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#7

Post by Space » Sat Apr 09, 2016 4:06 am

Certain entries from the event log also show up within WMC in the "History" screen. Only a few of the EventIDs also show up in the History, and those are ones about a program being recorded, deleted, canceled, or not recorded. There are probably no others that show up there, but you never know.

Here are the ones I've either seen personally or read about somewhere on the Internet:

Code: Select all

EventID Source      Meaning

0       MCUpdate    Get guide and other updates
1       Recording   Recording has completed successfully
2       Recording   Recording was started while the show was already in progress (e.g. manually starting
                    a recording of a show what has already in progress)
3       Recording   Show recording was manually stopped before the show was over
3       ehRecvr     TV tuner encountered an error
4       Recording   While recording a show, the PC lost power or experienced a temporary failure
6       Recording   Show was not recorded due to a conflict with other shows
7       Recording   Show was not recorded due to PC losing power or a temporary failure
8       Recording   Show was not recorded due to an unexpected failure, or recording of this content is
                    prohibited by the content provider, or tuner not working or not installed, or there
                    was no TV signal when the show was scheduled to record
10      Recording   Show was not recorded due to limit reached (max number of episodes for Series reached)
15      Recording   Existing recorded show was automatically deleted due to free disk space needed                       
16      Recording   Existing recorded show was automatically deleted due to Series limit reached
17      Recording   Existing recorded show was manually deleted
21      Recording   Series recording was deleted
23      Recording   Keyword recording was deleted
24      Recording   Scheduled recording was manually set to "Do not record"
While adding an entry to the Event Viewer is nice, it will not help most people, since it is not visible from within WMC (unless a generic EventID can be found that WMC will display in the History, or perhaps use one of the more rare EventIDs that do show up in History for an alternate purpose). I haven't made a list of the EventIDs that show up in History. You can see that my list above may be incomplete, since it skips EventID numbers, so maybe one of those also show up in History and can be co-opted for other purposes.

Another alternative is to create a WMC plugin that allows you to view a log or a summary of the last connection status.

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garyan2

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#8

Post by garyan2 » Sun Apr 10, 2016 5:55 pm

Getting there. Right now the only way I can get this to show is if a clean start is not performed (Rovi still in the system).
aboutGuide.png
If I can accomplish this with the clean start, it will be fantastic.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

artm

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#9

Post by artm » Mon Apr 11, 2016 1:33 am

To me it's not a big deal if this can't be done easily, without a clean start. In the guide, I simply move the cursor to the left side over the channel logo, click to see the upcoming shows for it and go to the end. That tells me the last date of the guide data. Simple.
-Art --
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Sammy2

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#10

Post by Sammy2 » Mon Apr 11, 2016 5:31 pm

garyan2 wrote:Getting there. Right now the only way I can get this to show is if a clean start is not performed (Rovi still in the system).
aboutGuide.png
If I can accomplish this with the clean start, it will be fantastic.
Does this show like this now in v0.9.x or is it in a future update?

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garyan2

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#11

Post by garyan2 » Mon Apr 11, 2016 6:01 pm

This will be in v0.9.5. I was planning on releasing it last night, but the SD servers were down for maintenance and I wanted to do some more testing for going from 0.9.4 to 0.9.5. For initial installs it is beautiful, for the upgrade it functions perfectly, but leaves behind some residue.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#12

Post by Sammy2 » Mon Apr 11, 2016 6:38 pm

Perfect!

I think I'll skip v0.9.4 and go from x.3 to x.5.

garymeter48

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#13

Post by garymeter48 » Mon Apr 11, 2016 6:44 pm

garyan2 wrote:This will be in v0.9.5. I was planning on releasing it last night, but the SD servers were down for maintenance and I wanted to do some more testing for going from 0.9.4 to 0.9.5. For initial installs it is beautiful, for the upgrade it functions perfectly, but leaves behind some residue.
I noticed when I checked the EPG log this morning that I did my automated update earlier today. I saw the error regarding the SD servers being down for maintenance. Does this happen often? Is there a certain time of time when it is best to schedule the epg update?

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#14

Post by garyan2 » Mon Apr 11, 2016 7:06 pm

garymeter48 wrote:
garyan2 wrote:This will be in v0.9.5. I was planning on releasing it last night, but the SD servers were down for maintenance and I wanted to do some more testing for going from 0.9.4 to 0.9.5. For initial installs it is beautiful, for the upgrade it functions perfectly, but leaves behind some residue.
I noticed when I checked the EPG log this morning that I did my automated update earlier today. I saw the error regarding the SD servers being down for maintenance. Does this happen often? Is there a certain time of time when it is best to schedule the epg update?
This is a question more for rkulagow to answer, but I think it is typically once a month for a few hours on the weekend. Last nights went pretty long from what I can tell.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#15

Post by garymeter48 » Tue Apr 12, 2016 2:41 am

Thanks. A question - at the end of the update process a 'reindexing' takes place. What is this?

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#16

Post by schottjy » Tue Apr 12, 2016 3:26 am

garymeter48 wrote:Thanks. A question - at the end of the update process a 'reindexing' takes place. What is this?
It running the "normal" Windows Search indexing that happens after the guide has been updated, which allows for the search functionality inside Windows Media Center (and other apps I presume).

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#17

Post by stuartm » Thu May 12, 2016 6:07 pm

It looks like you have a log file that EPG123 writes status, progress etc. to. Do you also write entries to the Windows Media Center Event log? The WMC guide updates get recorded there as well as a bunch of other WMC information/error/warning entries may be written there. The reason I ask is that the Windows event logs can be very useful. Since the task manager can perform tasks based on events appearing in the event logs it's quite useful for firing off things in response to certain entries that appear in the WMC event log. For example I have tasks that fire and send me an e-mail if a scheduled recording does not complete successfully. Also it would be nice to be able to have a task that e-mails me a warning if EPG123 fails to update the guide for some reason, or it could be useful for automating redistribution of the EPG in multi HTPC set-ups (on an EPG123 finished update event).

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#18

Post by garyan2 » Fri May 13, 2016 4:55 am

stuartm wrote:It looks like you have a log file that EPG123 writes status, progress etc. to. Do you also write entries to the Windows Media Center Event log? The WMC guide updates get recorded there as well as a bunch of other WMC information/error/warning entries may be written there. The reason I ask is that the Windows event logs can be very useful. Since the task manager can perform tasks based on events appearing in the event logs it's quite useful for firing off things in response to certain entries that appear in the WMC event log. For example I have tasks that fire and send me an e-mail if a scheduled recording does not complete successfully. Also it would be nice to be able to have a task that e-mails me a warning if EPG123 fails to update the guide for some reason, or it could be useful for automating redistribution of the EPG in multi HTPC set-ups (on an EPG123 finished update event).
I might look at this again. Originally when I was looking at the event log, I was trying to create a separate one for EPG123 ... I believe it would be easier to use the WMC event log. This was never really in the plans, but ...
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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