Media Center EPG: Rovi Guide Data Quality

[Space]

I still have the problem of same day repeats on MSNBC all being recorded as first run. information from Rovi is that they have been providing the data to MS, but MS is either unable or unwilling to use it.

also have noticed after a period of improvement the number of programs that just have generic descriptions instead of specific episode descriptions is on the rise again.
...

In looking at MSNBC it appears that most of the shows are missing ESI, they just have generic information. This will just cause WMC to record every airing.

In general, with Rovi data, if the show has a episode title, this is a clue that that episode also has ESI, if it doesn't have an episode title, then it will just display the generic description for the series as a whole and will not be treated as a discrete episode. Note that it is possible for an episode to have ESI but still display the generic description for the series (like most news programs), so in some cases, having an episode title is the only way to know if it has ESI.
If any particular episode does not have an episode title, but it does have ESI, Rovi/Microsoft will give it a title matching the name of the series.

News programming tends to not have specific episode titles, so they will just repeat the series title as the episode name. For instance, on CNN, the show "Anderson Cooper 360"; each episode has an episode title of "Anderson Cooper 360". You will also see that each episode has a different OAD, making it easier to see that they are separate discrete episodes (although having an OAD is not necessary for WMC to see them as separate episodes).

If you look at the shows on MSNBC, almost none of them have episode titles, which generally means they do not have ESI. This is something you have to contact Rovi to fix.

[gary94080]

I still have the problem of same day repeats on MSNBC all being recorded as first run. information from Rovi is that they have been providing the data to MS, but MS is either unable or unwilling to use it.

also have noticed after a period of improvement the number of programs that just have generic descriptions instead of specific episode descriptions is on the rise again.
...

In looking at MSNBC it appears that most of the shows are missing ESI, they just have generic information. This will just cause WMC to record every airing.

In general, with Rovi data, if the show has a episode title, this is a clue that that episode also has ESI, if it doesn't have an episode title, then it will just display the generic description for the series as a whole and will not be treated as a discrete episode. Note that it is possible for an episode to have ESI but still display the generic description for the series (like most news programs), so in some cases, having an episode title is the only way to know if it has ESI.
If any particular episode does not have an episode title, but it does have ESI, Rovi/Microsoft will give it a title matching the name of the series.

News programming tends to not have specific episode titles, so they will just repeat the series title as the episode name. For instance, on CNN, the show "Anderson Cooper 360"; each episode has an episode title of "Anderson Cooper 360". You will also see that each episode has a different OAD, making it easier to see that they are separate discrete episodes (although having an OAD is not necessary for WMC to see them as separate episodes).

If you look at the shows on MSNBC, almost none of them have episode titles, which generally means they do not have ESI. This is something you have to contact Rovi to fix.

before the switch to Rovi WMC was able to record only the first airing of the shows that had same day reruns for the West Coast viewers. occasionally there would be a glitch and it would pick up a rerun.

since the switch it has either been all or nothing when you try and record it as a series. right now I find it easier to pick off the individual shows to record than using series record and deleting the repeats.

I commented about this directly with Rovi and the person looked into the issue and saw what the problem was. I got a second email back from Rovi. I don't recall the exact wording they used, but Rovi said that they would be providing information to MS so that the EPG could id the reruns, but the Rovi representative said that Rovi had no control on MS actually using the information. since the problem still exists I read that as MS is ignoring the issue.

[Space]

Not much to report this week.

"All-American Makers" (SCIENCE) continues to have the wrong SeriesID (for several weeks now).

Rovi corrected the OAD for "Pawn Stars" but probably only because I reported it to them. I asked them to fix the problem of not updating the OAD of an episode if it is rescheduled to another date (the episode retains the OAD of the date it was originally scheduled), hopefully they will make a permanent fix.

I noticed that "Brain Games" (NGC) also is having this OAD issue, today's new episode and next weeks had/have an incorrect OAD so are marked as "Repeat". I use the "New & rerun" setting so it does not affect me, but I found this when looking for other instances of the issue to report to Rovi as examples.

[Alan G]

Just joined so this is my first post. In general for the shows I watch ROVI has been pretty decent in terms of the correct listings (I'm on Verizon FIOS in the Washington DC area). The big problem for me is that BeIN sports and Fox FS2 are not properly listed. BeIN was moved by Verizon from channel 805 to 596 (before it was moved ROVI had the schedule updated just fine; ROVI still updates it even though channel 805 is inactive) and HD FS2 has never been properly listed and is at 584. I put in a ticket at Microsoft Connect telling them about this. Judging from the inaction I guess these things are not dealt with. I watch a lot of European soccer and it's fine if I'm watching in real time as I can just tune in the channel. Unfortunately, I can't set up my HTPC to record any thing as all that's listed is "Message Programming" for these two channels.

Have others just given up on getting these things fixed?

[STC]

Contact Rovi directly plus set manual recordings VCR style while you wait.

[Alan G]

Contact Rovi directly plus set manual recordings VCR style while you wait.

Thanks, I've become so used to setting everything through the guide that I forgot about the manual feature! I haven't programmed a VCR in about 7 years.

[fzy8gc]

I have 2 WMC 7 PCs. One has a Fusion Dual OTA tuner and a Colossus Card interfaced to a Dish Network 211k; the other has HDhomerun dual OTA turner and an analog cable tuner.

It seems like every 2 to 3 weeks I lose guide information on one of the PCs (not at the same time). Sometimes my Colossus Card sends incorrect channel numbers to my 211K Satellite set top box. Sometimes my OTA tuners loose guide information. Every time I can re-establish service by running MediaCenterRecoveryTask and reset up the unit.

I have not been able to figure out what triggers these events. Has anyone seen similar events? Any idea what triggers an event?

[Space]

Does anyone with FiOS (or I guess other providers as well) have the SD guide listings being used for the HD version of WGNA?

68 - WGN America SD - Has guide listings for "WGN America-Satellite"
568 - WGN America HDTV - Also has guide listings for "WGN America-Satellite"

I was able to go to settings->TV->Guide->Edit Channels and select channel 568 and then select "Edit Listings" and change it from "WGN America-Satellite" to "WGN America HDTV-Satellite", and it seems to be correct now.

The main (only?) difference between the listings is that none of the listings for "WGNA America-Satellite" had the "HD" indicator to indicate which shows were in HD.

I've also noticed that if I go to "Edit Sources" it has the first three sources being my HDHR tuners with channel number 568, but then it has three more with channel number 68. Channel 68 has the same thing, only in reverse order (channel 68 are the first 3 and then 568 is the last 3). Perhaps this is the reason for the incorrect guide data? Is there any way to get rid of those three "channel number 68" ones, other than just unchecking them?

I am wondering if this is a mess-up with Rovi (that I can report to them), or if it is just a WMC issue.

Thanks

[al_wilson2]

I live in an area where I get 2 broadcast markets, both sets of channels were included in zap2it's guide, but Rovi forced me to choose either Shv, La or Tyler, Tx stations. I just set up a win 7 WMC PC, and Rovi now gives a Shreveport/Tyler option with both markets included. They heard me and fixed that.

I had to choose between Youngstown or Cleveland markets. I sent Rovi an email, and one week later, they created a "Cleveland surrounding area" guide, that included Cleveland, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Wheeling, and Erie. So I now have a full listing for all channels that I can receive.

[Space]

Weekly update...

2/29 11:05pm ET episode of "Colony" (USA) is the "Pilot" episode and it is therefore a repeat, but it is marked as new in my WMC, it has the episode name "Pilot", but no other ESI. This is strange because if I look at msn.com, it does have a description of the episode, indicating that the problem was with updating WMC not with Rovi. This same episode re-airs on 3/10 at 1am ET and it has all proper ESI and is properly marked as a repeat in WMC.

3/6 9:30pm ET airing of "The Good Wife" (CBS) episode titled "Hearing" is marked as a repeat with OAD of 2/24/2016. This is actually a new episode. Also, zap2it has it starting at 9pm ET, I'm not sure which is correct. This mistake is probably due to the ongoing Rovi problem of not resetting the OAD when a show is rescheduled to a new date/time, however in this case I would expect the incorrect OAD to be today's date (2/28/2016) since it normally airs on Sundays and was probably rescheduled so as to not compete with the Academy Awards tonight.

[Space]

Weekly Rovi issues...

"Dual Survival" (DISCOVERY) 3/9 episode "Bogged Down" is new, but Rovi has an OAD of 8/20/2010 which was a season 1 episode that had the same name. I guess Rovi can't handle two episodes in the same series that have the same episode name for different episodes.

"Top Chef" (BRAVO) has an episode with an episode title but no OAD, so WMC will attempt to record it as new, but it is an old episode: 3/10 @ 10am ET.

3/10 episode of "The Blacklist" (NBC) has no episode specific info, but neither does zap2it, so I guess NBC hasn't made up their mind yet.

[Scallica]

This thread is for Rovi guide data quality/accuracy issues only.

Comments regarding DST download issues have been moved to a "new" new thread:

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=5&t=9805

[lurch66]

Discovery ch has started having the wrong guide data. I looked at msn.com today and it listed diesel brothers at 12 and 1pm mountain standard time. This was correct. In wmc it listed the same show that was on at 10 and 11. Discovery has had quite a lot of recording errors lately. Both sd and hd match on the wmc guide. Anybody else having issues with discovery?

[Space]

Discovery ch has started having the wrong guide data. I looked at msn.com today and it listed diesel brothers at 12 and 1pm mountain standard time. This was correct. In WMC it listed the same show that was on at 10 and 11. Discovery has had quite a lot of recording errors lately. Both sd and hd match on the WMC guide. Anybody else having issues with discovery?

I think you'll find that your guide ends on Friday as well.

The data that is currently in the WMC guide (using Rovi data) is from 8 days ago, so it has not been updated since then. The initial data was incorrect (or the schedule was changed since then) and it was never updated.

This is caused by an ongoing issue that you can read about in this thread:
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=5&t=9805

[texasex1998]

Post#475 » Sat Nov 28, 2015 10:11 pm
I have had success with ROVI fixing items on its end. Use the TV Listings MSNtv to check the actual listing ROVI is producing. Anything wrong there, ROVI can and will fix it. What ROVI has fixed for me so far, the WMC guide has picked up. However, WMC guide is not necessarily displaying what ROVI is displaying on TV Listings MSNtv. Microsoft does not seem to be fixing anything on its end. As I mentioned before, TV Listings MSNtv is displaying Dish Network channel 118, but the WMC guide does not display channel 118 at all.

Saturday college football scheduled is another problem. TV Listings MSNtv shows the teams being played. The WMC guide just shows "Teams to be announced".

I still cannot get A&E 118 on Dish. I have tried different zip codes, I even tried to use DirecTV to see if it would come on there and it would not. I rest MCE and still nothing. I am wondering if A&E has asked to be removed from Media Center. I am using an HD PVR so I cannot figure out a way to trick it into finding the channel either with Guide Tool. Any help would be greatly depreciated, or at least confirmation that I am not the only one in this boat.

[Space]

Little late this week due to guide update delay...

Just one issue I found:

3/20 episode of "Once Upon a Time" has an OAD of 2/26/2016 and is marked as a repeat yet it is actually a NEW episode.

[tigrao]

Little late this week due to guide update delay...

Just one issue I found:

3/20 episode of "Once Upon a Time" has an OAD of 2/26/2016 and is marked as a repeat yet it is actually a NEW episode.

I'm glad I read this forum. My wife would have killed me if we would have missed the 3/20 Once Upon a Time.

[gary94080]

Little late this week due to guide update delay...

Just one issue I found:

3/20 episode of "Once Upon a Time" has an OAD of 2/26/2016 and is marked as a repeat yet it is actually a NEW episode.

mine is Comcast San Francisco area. it recorded ok and had the correct data.

[Space]

Little late this week due to guide update delay...

Just one issue I found:

3/20 episode of "Once Upon a Time" has an OAD of 2/26/2016 and is marked as a repeat yet it is actually a NEW episode.

mine is Comcast San Francisco area. it recorded ok and had the correct data.

They apparently updated it before airing, since my recorded episode also has the correct OAD now.

[Space]

The only thing to report this week is "Beyond the Tank" (ABC) 3/22 and "The Blacklist" (NBC) 3/24 are both missing ESI. "Beyond the Tank" is a new episode and "The Blacklist" is a repeat.

Note that "Beyond the Tank" replaces the canceled "Of Kings and Prophets" (after only 2 aired episodes).