3-hour time problem on E! "live" shows (EPG123 1.0.1)

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DSperber

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3-hour time problem on E! "live" shows (EPG123 1.0.1)

#1

Post by DSperber » Sat Sep 17, 2016 7:56 am

I have observed what appears to be a 3-hour (i.e. time-zone) problem specifically for the "live from the red carpet" and "award" type shows which are aired simultaneously LIVE on both the east-coast and west-coast versions of a given channel. Schedules Direct believes their server data is correct, and believes the source of the problem is with the application (i.e. EPG123). I'm not so sure.

I think the problem may be more pervasive, and goes beyond just a mistake for the "live" shows being wrong. In fact, with the "server data snippet" provided by SD to my ticket with them (see bottom of this post) as compared to what WMC+EPG123 displays, it appears the ENTIRE SUNDAY IS OFF BY 3-HOURS!!! Every single program on this Sunday 9/18 is presented as starting 3 hours later than it actually will be aired! Every program (not just the "live" ones), for the entire Sunday, is off by 3-hours.

I am in TWC/LA Digital Hollywood/Westchester (former Comcast) in zipcode 90292, which the Time Warner Cable channel lineup refers to as "90292 Westside" as opposed to "90292 West LA, Century City, Pacific Palisades".

Yesterday I opened a ticket with Schedules Direct on what is their lineup for me of: Provider:Time Warner Cable, Type:CableDigital, Zip:90292, Lineup:CA57315:X Device:Digital. The issue this time concerns E! network's "live from the red carpet" (Emmy's special "live" broadcast, simulcast "live" on both EP 168 at 3PM Pacific time as well as at 6PM Eastern time).

They have responded with an assigned ticket number of schedulesdirect.org #14212. Their response (see below) includes a snippet of their server data for this coming Sunday Sept 18 on EP 168.


The history on this problem started for me a few weeks ago when I wanted to set a recording for the airing of the MTV VMA Awards show. This was broadcast on both MTV and VH1 channels, and was simulcast "live" on both the East Coast and West Coast versions of these two channels. I'm in Los Angeles and TWC/LA's channel lineup only carries the West Coast versions of both: MTV HD West 118 and VH1 HD West 117. I happened to pick VH1 HD West 117 for the recording, but was puzzled as I couldn't find the broadcast time where I expected to see it, but rather saw that it was seemingly scheduled 3 hours AFTER it should have been airing. The same thing was true for the MTV HD West schedule.

And of course, in fact, the show really WAS simultaneously aired "live" in both the Pacific time zone at 5PM Pacific as well as "live" in the East Coast time zone at 8PM Eastern.

I suspect the problem stems from the fact that normally the Guide for the Pacific channels is simply always the same exact times as all shows air on the East Coast, but delayed by 3-hours for real (since the network actually does broadcast the identical East Coast stream on a 3-hour delay to the West Coast). So East Coast sees a show at 8PM Eastern, and West Coast sees the same show at 8PM Pacific which is thus a 3-hour delay. We get this all the time with Olympics prime time, "live" shows such as America's Got Talent, The Voice, American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, etc. We're used to the 3-hour delay for "live" shows, but we still expect our Guide data to be accurate.

Anyway, on special "award Sunday" the day's broadcast schedule is thrown out of whack because the "live" shows on that day are simulcast live on both coasts. So we see 8PM Eastern programs at 5PM Pacific. It would appear that the interpretation of the network-provided broadcast times (or special codes?) for these special "live" shows is being mishandled either by Schedules Direct or by EPG123. But instead of the WMC Guide showing it at 5PM Pacific for VH1 HD West as it should have, it instead showed it at 8PM Pacific... 3 hours later than it actually aired (which was 3 hours earlier, simulcast with the exact same airing on the East Coast channel sent to the East coast).


Ok. Fast forward to this weekend. Emmy's Sunday. Again, we have the E! "live from the red carpet" shows, which air LIVE here on the West Coast (at least in LA) at 3PM Pacific, simultaneously airing with the East Coast feed on the East Coast which is at 6PM Eastern. But the WMC Guide shows the show at 6PM Pacific, not at 3PM Pacific as is truly the case.

Note that TitanTV (which is my other Internet-based TV Guide data) shows the 3PM Pacific airing on EP 168 correctly. It is only WMC EPG123+SD which has somehow messed up, showing it at 6PM Pacific. So TitantTV's source must be correct, properly distinguishing the fact that these "live" shows are not just the East Coast times physically delayed 3-hours in airing for the West Coast feed, but are actually "live" and simulcast on both East Coast and West Coast.

So that's the ticket I've submitted to SD.

The following is what WMC EPG123 shows for the critical mid-afternoon programs on EP 168. There are actually going to be two "live from the red carpet" shows, one truly airing at 1:30PM-3PM Pacific and the second truly airing at 3PM-5PM Pacific. But note that these program times are mistakenly shown 3-hours delayed, incorrectly at 4:30PM Pacific and then at 6PM Pacific:

Image

In contrast, here is the TitanTV schedule snippet for the same Sunday afternoon time period on EP 168:

Image

The above suggests that EPG123 has somehow interpreted all of Sunday's shows as off by 3-hours from where they actually were scheduled. An 11:30AM program appears in the WMC EPG123 schedule at 2:30PM, 12:30PM appears at 3:30PM, 1:30PM appears at 4:30PM, 3PM appears at 6PM, etc. Seemingly some kind of confusion between East Coast and West Coast data sent from SD to EPG123 for the entire Sunday, with the entire schedule showing wrong by 3 hours... but only for this special "awards Sunday"!!! Monday is once again correctly displayed!!


Here is the response from SD, showing what they claim is their "server data" (I assume for the West Coast EP 168 channel in my lineup):

This is the data that we have on the server. Is it correct? If it is, then you're having an application issue.

9/18/2016 12:00 am 60 Rob & Chyna Are You Still Texting B-tches?
9/18/2016 01:00 am 60 WAGS Moving on Out
9/18/2016 02:00 am 60 WAGS New Blood
9/18/2016 03:00 am 60 WAGS Pegging Party
9/18/2016 04:00 am 30 Paid Programming
9/18/2016 04:30 am 30 Try Total Gym for $14.95
9/18/2016 05:00 am 30 NO MORE WRINKLES! - Summer Skincare Makeover Secrets Revealed!
9/18/2016 05:30 am 30 Try Total Gym for $14.95
9/18/2016 06:00 am 30 Sexy Face at Any Age
9/18/2016 06:30 am 30 Create an Unlimited Wardrobe on a Limited Budget
9/18/2016 07:00 am 60 E! News Weekend Today's top stories
9/18/2016 08:00 am 30 Catching Kelce Catching Kelce Preview Special
9/18/2016 08:30 am 60 WAGS Moving on Out
9/18/2016 09:30 am 60 WAGS New Blood
9/18/2016 10:30 am 60 WAGS Pegging Party
9/18/2016 11:30 am 60 Keeping Up With the Kardashians The Digital Rage
9/18/2016 12:30 pm 60 Rob & Chyna Are You Still Texting B-tches?
9/18/2016 01:30 pm 90 E! Countdown to the Red Carpet The 2016 Emmy Awards
9/18/2016 03:00 pm 120 E! Live From the Red Carpet The 2016 Primetime Emmy Awards
9/18/2016 05:00 pm 60 Rob & Chyna Are You Still Texting B-tches?
9/18/2016 06:00 pm 60 Keeping Up With the Kardashians Blood, Sweat, and Fears
9/18/2016 07:00 pm 60 Keeping Up With the Kardashians Love at First Fight
9/18/2016 08:00 pm 60 Rob & Chyna Are You Still Texting B-tches?
9/18/2016 09:00 pm 61 Rob & Chyna Rob'ing the Cradle
9/18/2016 10:01 pm 59 WAGS Trouble in Paradise
9/18/2016 11:00 pm 60 E! After Party The 2016 Primetime Emmy Awards

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garyan2

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#2

Post by garyan2 » Sat Sep 17, 2016 2:46 pm

I bounced 168 EP against the Zap2It website which uses the same source as Schedules Direct, and it placed the show correctly at 1:30PM PST. I also downloaded the schedule for 168 EP from your lineup and placed it in my guide and it was displayed correctly.
168ep.png
168ep.png (5.51 KiB) Viewed 1219 times
2016-09-17.png
So this would confirm what Schedules Direct said in that it appears this is an issue with WMC+EPG123; OR I would add that is looks to be no longer an SD issue. EPG123 does absolutely no time manipulation with the data provided by SD. In fact, all epg123 does is take the incoming startTime string from SD and removes the ending 'Z' character to be placed in the mxf file. We do know that WMC has some complicated logic when changing/correcting some parts of the guide listings so I would surmise that at some point in the past, the provided data from SD was 3 hours off and WMC just refuses to make the corrections.

I do however find it odd that this has happened multiple times on you for multiple channels... makes this somewhat systemic.

When I get some time, I'll be working on a process to 'rebuild' the WMC database from the EPG123 GUI. I imagine it will close all eh* processes, delete the database, open WMC minimized, import your tuner/source lineups and schedule recordings, and import the epg123 listings. Once complete, then the user would have a nice fresh database with all guide information up-to-date. I believe this may be close to what the ObjectStoreRecoveryTask does.
- Gary
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garyan2

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#3

Post by garyan2 » Sat Sep 17, 2016 4:59 pm

DSperber, I did a little more looking and the listings you captured is definitely the east coast lineup; e.g. your listings are not the Pacific lineup shifted 3 hours, but the actual east coast lineup. There is absolutely no way epg123 could pull that out of thin air. Do you possibly have another lineup using the east coast E! channel that you may have attached to the tuner channel?
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

DSperber

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#4

Post by DSperber » Sat Sep 17, 2016 6:27 pm

Well, for some reason the Monday schedule on the same channel EP 168 was correct!! Here's a snippet from Monday night, showing "Fashion Police" at the proper time (I took this screenshot a few days ago, when the Sunday schedule was wrong and the Monday schedule was right):

Image

And I show the same two channels in the EPG123 channel lineup that you do:

Image

But here's the truly amazing part. I just double-checked the Sunday schedule, and now amazingly IT IS CORRECT!!! It appears to have "corrected itself" through last night's update (perhaps due to a correction at SD, sending out last night's data with the proper Pacific times for Sunday... perhaps due to my ticket?):

Image

Perhaps the original SD transmission to me of a few days back was mistakenly for the East Coast on Sunday alone. And yet, when they checked yesterday based on my ticket and it correctly showed Pacific times, maybe that subsequent SD transmission to me "self-corrected" the previously incorrect data. How else are we to explain why it now shows proper times, but two days ago it did not???

And yes, this is not the first time I've seen this anomaly. As I said I first noticed it on both MTV HD West and VH1 HD West a few weeks back on their VMA "awards Sunday" when they, too, have a series of shows which "simulcast live 5PM/8PM" on both coasts, rather than being 3-hour delayed for the West Coast (which would show the same 8PM airtime for both Guides).

Anyway, the problem now seems to have "disappeared by itself", seemingly self-correcting. Since nothing in EPG123 has changed I can only assume it was a mistaken transmission of the wrong Sunday East Coast vs. Pacific data for EP 168 by SD a while back, which by now has been corrected. The "pattern" of occurring on "award Sundays" when the "simulcast live" events have happened, well I would think that's a "giant clue".

Nevertheless... the problem seems gone now. I guess "case closed"???


P.S. - I actually had been running kind of with "stale data" ever since installing 1.0.1. Somehow the nightly started task was NOT running. I kept noticing this as I was looking for "Westworld" upcoming on HBO and even though I was within 21 days, it still didn't show up in my Guide. When I finally got to where About Guide showed I only had 13 days of data, I investigated. The EPG123 log showed that no nightly update had occurred since the one I had done manually when I installed 1.0.1 with "save and execute" on that date.

Turns out somehow the default for "started task" was delivered as OFF in the updated configuration screen, which I hadn't seen. I checked the box, set a time and OK (and the time changed to 03:00AM by itself), and then did a "save and execute". Perhaps this finally did a fresh update of the SD data for this Sunday Sept 18, which perhaps is what explains the magic "self-corrected" Guide data now properly showing Pacific times correctly for EP 168.

Now I once again have the 21 days of Guide data, and I assume I will once again have normal ongoing regular nightly updates at 3AM starting tonight.

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jfreiman

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#5

Post by jfreiman » Fri Feb 02, 2018 2:49 am

I know this thread was started over a year ago, but I'm having this same exact issue with Universal Kids Network in San Francisco (Pacific). The times listed for all the programs are 3 hours earlier.
I tried to look for a way to manually change the time zone for the network, but couldn't find any. I then posted my issue on the SD forum as well as opened a ticket logged into my SD account.
I gave the examples, of what was in the schedule and what was actually aired, etc.
No word back as of yet (24-ish hours).

I read the above mention that rebuilding the WMC database may help. I do see that as an option in the epg123 client app, so I'll give it a try.

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#6

Post by garyan2 » Fri Feb 02, 2018 2:55 am

jfreiman wrote:I know this thread was started over a year ago, but I'm having this same exact issue with Universal Kids Network in San Francisco (Pacific). The times listed for all the programs are 3 hours earlier.
I tried to look for a way to manually change the time zone for the network, but couldn't find any. I then posted my issue on the SD forum as well as opened a ticket logged into my SD account.
I gave the examples, of what was in the schedule and what was actually aired, etc.
No word back as of yet (24-ish hours).

I read the above mention that rebuilding the WMC database may help. I do see that as an option in the epg123 client app, so I'll give it a try.
Before you rebuild, I would check the zap2it listings to see if they match what is in your WMC. If the zap2it listings are the same, then the problem is upstream with Gracenote. The ticket you submitted to correct the issue is the only thing you can do.

If the listings at zap2it are correct, I would run an EPG123 update and import again just in case it recently got fixed but hasn't been updated in WMC yet. If WMC is still wrong after the update, then a rebuild might fix it ... (zap2it gets updated before the data is available through the Gracenote API and to Schedules Direct; so I've been told).
- Gary
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#7

Post by tigrao » Fri Feb 02, 2018 7:32 pm

I'm having what I think is the same kind of trouble with the Comedy Central Pacific Feed. I don't know if it is a timezone issue in this case. What's going on is that at some point generic descriptions of shows are downloaded and are stuck. For example, episodes of "The Office" are all showing with generic descriptions all next week:

Image

The data at zap2it shows that the episode descriptions should be there:

Image

I can get the proper episode descriptions to come in by rebuilding the WMC database. But I am doing this quite often lately to get the episode descriptions to come in. Is there no other way to make the updates from SD come in like they should and overwrite the stale data that initially comes in?

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#8

Post by garyan2 » Sun Feb 04, 2018 8:45 pm

tigrao wrote:I can get the proper episode descriptions to come in by rebuilding the WMC database. But I am doing this quite often lately to get the episode descriptions to come in. Is there no other way to make the updates from SD come in like they should and overwrite the stale data that initially comes in?
This issue is the reason I created the [Rebuild Database] option. WMC has some funny logic to decide whether to overwrite existing data in the database or not. For the most part this works without a hitch and I haven't heard of any problems in a long time. Is your problem isolated to CCHDP or are there other channels affected?

How many days do you download at a time? If you do 21 days, you might want to reduce it to 14 days to see if that helps.
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#9

Post by tigrao » Mon Feb 05, 2018 7:59 pm

garyan2 wrote:How many days do you download at a time? If you do 21 days, you might want to reduce it to 14 days to see if that helps.
This morning I changed the number of days from 21 to 14. It immediately rectified the CCHDP guide data issues. Interesting. I'll leave it at 14 days now. I'm not sure why I did 21 days in the first place. Is it the default setting?

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#10

Post by garyan2 » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:53 am

tigrao wrote:This morning I changed the number of days from 21 to 14. It immediately rectified the CCHDP guide data issues. Interesting. I'll leave it at 14 days now. I'm not sure why I did 21 days in the first place. Is it the default setting?
That is definitely interesting. It could be a coincidence, but I don't believe in coincidences. The default, when first installing EPG123, is 14 days... the number dial maxes out at 21 days.
- Gary
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