Guide Data Outage - Spring/Summer 2016 Edition

Global guide related discussion. All Windows versions.
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Space

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Guide Data Outage - Spring/Summer 2016 Edition

#1

Post by Space » Mon May 30, 2016 2:55 am

No new guide data since 5/27 @ 8am ET (guide ends 6/8/2016 @ 8pm ET). Anyone else?

lvsbooks

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#2

Post by lvsbooks » Mon May 30, 2016 3:41 am

My guide is not updating past 6/8/2016. Ran tv set-up 2x nothing changed. What gives this seems to happen alot.

Mike_TV

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#3

Post by Mike_TV » Mon May 30, 2016 11:28 am

Same here. No guide data past 6/9/16. Using Chicago OTA antenna. Rovi guide data.

End Date: 6/9/2016 1:00:00 AM

dahef

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#4

Post by dahef » Mon May 30, 2016 3:40 pm

Same Problem. They must take holiday week-ends off also.

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WC_Barnstormer

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#5

Post by WC_Barnstormer » Mon May 30, 2016 10:28 pm

Hi, It appears the guide data is down again. Several of us in the Microsoft Community have been discussing this also. Just thought I would post here. Either myself or Webminister will create a ticket tonight or in the morning on connect and see if Barb can contact MSFT also.. One thing I have noticed this time is that the movie guide data is taking forever to load and I am only getting some with empty boxes, some with text and some with covers. I have never seen it this bad before. Any way just wanted to confirm what you guys have said about the guide.

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#6

Post by SugarFree » Mon May 30, 2016 10:32 pm

Down to 10 days, and a manual download takes 10 seconds - - and does nothing.

Like Yogi Berra said:It's deja vue all over again. =Sigh=

adam1991

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#7

Post by adam1991 » Mon May 30, 2016 11:50 pm

And it's a holiday weekend....hmmm.....

I wonder if the guide update is some dude wandering into work in the morning and hitting a button. When there's a holiday, he's not at work, so...

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kdurbin82

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#8

Post by kdurbin82 » Mon May 30, 2016 11:52 pm

Yep...just noticed I have data until about 8:00 CST on May 8th. Then nothing. I rely on WMC for all TV in my house. If I have to go through this again, I'm switching to TiVo.
RIP WMC

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#9

Post by DOS4EVER » Tue May 31, 2016 12:02 am

How many times are you guys going to suffer through this before you make the switch to EPG123?

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#10

Post by webminster » Tue May 31, 2016 12:43 am

DOS4EVER wrote:How many times are you guys going to suffer through this before you make the switch to EPG123?
What he said. Works well on my test system. If only I got over the deal of retooling the record history and schedule would have done it a long time ago. All I need is a big push... like another MS/Rovi failure maybe...
-Alan

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#11

Post by adam1991 » Tue May 31, 2016 1:08 am

yeah, it's the complete setup thing that gets in the way. OTA is not nearly as bad, but still--I wasn't going to do it until after the TV season at the earliest.

Up to now, though, there really hasn't been the push. It hasn't self-destructed yet. And I don't have the esoteric requirements others here do--sports, news shows, talk shows, etc that seem to be impacted much worse than my standard primetime lineups. The worst I saw was part 2 of a Blacklist that Rovi thought was a rerun of part 1.

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WC_Barnstormer

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#12

Post by WC_Barnstormer » Tue May 31, 2016 1:20 am

Hi,

I just posted this on the Microsoft Community. Please uptick on connect so we can get traction on this and a possible quick fix. Thanks

Barb,
Please yell at MSFT about the WMC guide not updating again. It appears to be nationwide based on comments here as well as The Green Button.
Connect ticket: 2766042
https://connect.microsoft.com/site1145/ ... ls/2766042

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#13

Post by rkulagow » Tue May 31, 2016 1:28 am

Bottom line up front: I work for Schedules Direct, which is the service that EPG123 uses to get guide data.

Can I offer the following? The summertime doldrums may be the perfect opportunity to test a "new" guide data provider if you're having issues; you don't want to start fiddling with things during {Your Favorite Sports Team}'s season, or once the new Fall programs start if it turns out that the guide data isn't working through your regular provider when things get to the "Ahh! No Guide Data! 2 days remaining!" point. If it turns out that you're not satisfied with our service, then you also have time to switch back before the Fall season starts.

Since we have a 7-day trial, it should be fairly easy to evaluate our service and see if it meets your needs. We also offer extended trials if you're actively troubleshooting something with us or Gary; we usually just reset the clock to "7 days" once everything is stable so that you get the full amount of data instead of getting things figured out on "day 6 of 7".

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davidhp

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#14

Post by davidhp » Tue May 31, 2016 2:45 am

Microsoft, while I realize you don't want to commit an entire team to WMC, how about assigning one person to check the EPG download each day to see if it is working and to fix it when it is not - this should only take less than 10 minutes
each day - is that too much for us, your customers to expect from your multi-million dollar corporation?

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garyan2

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#15

Post by garyan2 » Tue May 31, 2016 2:57 am

For those still on the fence ... as stated in the EPG123 Guide, it can coexist with Rovi and steps 1 & 2 are optional. You can just perform step 3 to take a look and can recover back to Rovi pretty easily.

Here's what it will look like:

1) Perform step 3 in the guide to "install" epg123. What you will have is all the channels you selected to download will be enabled with SD/Gracenote guide data. Those channels not selected will be disabled and still have the Rovi data. Note that the category searches and movie guide might be a little off but will still be much better than what you currently have with Rovi. For scheduled recordings, as long as the titles are the same between Rovi and SD then they should be scheduled as they were.

2) To go back to Rovi completely, the "uninstall" method for epg123 is to run the GUI and deselect all channels (None) and execute. All channels in the guide will now be disabled with all Rovi guide data, so to complete the process you will have to reenable all the channels in WMC.

That's it ... you got to check it out and didn't harm anything.

^^ and yes, that capability was by design, not by accident. :D
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

Space

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#16

Post by Space » Tue May 31, 2016 5:52 am

I thought scheduled recordings had to be re-created when you converted to SD/Gracenote data...

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#17

Post by adam1991 » Tue May 31, 2016 8:48 am

It's pretty clear that steps 1 and 2 are not really optional.

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#18

Post by webminster » Tue May 31, 2016 1:25 pm

For it to work its best, they're not. I skipped the DB wipes in the beginning for testing. It worked mostly fine, just a few oddities like the Movie Guide (an issue with actors and upcoming movies they're appearing in). It worked fine to show Gary was on a great track - but you definitely want to go the whole process for the final product.
-Alan

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#19

Post by garyan2 » Tue May 31, 2016 4:44 pm

Space wrote:I thought scheduled recordings had to be re-created when you converted to SD/Gracenote data...
Poking around in the WMC dlls revealed that the scheduled recordings are not solely by series/episode IDs as I originally thought, but also uses series and episode titles. If the titles match, then the scheduled recordings should work. The only surefire way to guarantee the scheduled recordings will work would be to recreate them using SD/Gracenote data.
adam1991 wrote:It's pretty clear that steps 1 and 2 are not really optional.
Steps 1 and 2 are strongly recommended due to the quirks of leaving Rovi alive in the database and was definitely necessary up to and including v0.9.4. Starting with v0.9.5, epg123 can properly coexist with Rovi (with still some quirks).
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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STC

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#20

Post by STC » Tue May 31, 2016 5:03 pm

Back to the guide data, this obviously is not time change related. UK users had a blip a few days ago. I wonder if some bits are being restructured Rovi / MS side?
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