TheGreenButton - Windows Media Center Forums

Hi all,

I live in the boonies, and am stuck with AT&T data for my primary internet. I'm capped at 10GB (though I've fought hard to retain unlimited Verizon data on my phone).

Anyway, this month my usage has skyrocketed and I'm at 90+% of my allotment and only 1/2 way through the "month". I've certainly done some remoting in to home for troubleshooting and the like through this Rovi crap, but this has never happened before. My brother (who cannot remote in) is at about 80% of his cap, on the same plan, and he also has WMC.

We suspect the high resolution guide images. Has anyone quantified the difference in data usage? I have NO idea the old vs. the new, but I now know I download the OTA, Cable, and I assume Dish/Directv guides every day. Is that spiking my data usage?

I could apply the "fix" to eliminate the images, but I do rather like them. Of course, I'm not going to upgrade my data plan for them.

Thoughts?

As a test, I just enabled all the movie channels and pulled up Movie Guide. 1490 movies are on. It required about 450 MB of bandwidth to download all the covers. And that's just for the movies...nevermind all the TV shows.

So yeah, I'd say the new images probably have something to do with your high bandwidth consumption.

richard1980 wrote:As a test, I just enabled all the movie channels and pulled up Movie Guide. 1490 movies are on. It required about 450 MB of bandwidth to download all the covers. And that's just for the movies...nevermind all the TV shows.

So yeah, I'd say the new images probably have something to do with your high bandwidth consumption.

Wow, 450 MB just for some movie posters in an EPG! Thanks for testing and quantifying.

I'm sure they can downscale a lot more, considering the small screen space these pictures take up.

In another thread someone suggested blocking the images by adding entries to the hosts file (the thread is about speeding up the guide). Blocking the addresses would definitely stop your data usage problem and speed up your guide. Maybe you should follow the directions in this thread http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 251#p92251 and check back with the forums later to see if the images have been downsized.

Did I see/hear that the guide "lagginess" has been fixed?

Can anyone confirm/deny this and that the resolution of the images is the same as "the good old days"?

I roll over into a new month tonight. I did the hosts redirect so as to not get any images, which is fine enough, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings to have those images back. Of course, I DO NOT want to have to turn off my internet for 2 weeks out of the month AGAIN...

Thanks,
Andy

aeblank wrote:Did I see/hear that the guide "lagginess" has been fixed?

Can anyone confirm/deny this and that the resolution of the images is the same as "the good old days"?

I roll over into a new month tonight. I did the hosts redirect so as to not get any images, which is fine enough, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings to have those images back. Of course, I DO NOT want to have to turn off my internet for 2 weeks out of the month AGAIN...

Thanks,
Andy

Yes it's fine now. I got a massive amount of mismatched images though, almost all of them. Others report all their images are fine. Just a heads up.

aeblank wrote:Did I see/hear that the guide "lagginess" has been fixed?

Can anyone confirm/deny this and that the resolution of the images is the same as "the good old days"?

I roll over into a new month tonight. I did the hosts redirect so as to not get any images, which is fine enough, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings to have those images back. Of course, I DO NOT want to have to turn off my internet for 2 weeks out of the month AGAIN...

Thanks,
Andy

It does seem to be better today - I noticed an improvement after it was reported in this thread...

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=8&t=8920

That thread will also show you how to block the images with your hosts file to really save your bandwidth.

Just looking at the images in the "Movie Guide" I can visually see a greatly reduced image quality. I think they went a little too far as they don't look very good when viewed with the "View large" setting.

I can also confirm that the image sizes have been reduced. I agree that the quality is just a bit too low in Movie Guide, but I'll take that over the large bandwidth utilization and download delays that I was seeing a couple of days ago.

Ed  wrote:...I got a massive amount of mismatched images though, almost all of them.....

Same my end. Nothing matches, basically. It's quite fun to see what pops up although I'm sure that'll wear off. My wife currently calls it Messy Center

It causes my OCD to go haywire

If I re-ran TV setup to change from the auto-migrated lineup, I would get horribly mismatched guide images everywhere. But the guide images from the auto-migrated lineup have remained completely correct.

When your brain sees the correct image and places it to the same show, reason and logic prevail.
If Tom and Jerry appear for Breaking Bad, there is a certain disconnect.

This definitely isn't the time to show someone Media Center that hasn't seen it before.

STC wrote:When your brain sees the correct image and places it to the same show, reason and logic prevail.
If Tom and Jerry appear for Breaking Bad, there is a certain disconnect.

This definitely isn't the time to show someone Media Center that hasn't seen it before.

I can totally picture Tom and Jerry as meth cooks.

Are you sure this is the wrong image?

aeblank wrote:Hi all,

I live in the boonies, and am stuck with AT&T data for my primary internet. I'm capped at 10GB (though I've fought hard to retain unlimited Verizon data on my phone).

Anyway, this month my usage has skyrocketed and I'm at 90+% of my allotment and only 1/2 way through the "month". I've certainly done some remoting in to home for troubleshooting and the like through this Rovi crap, but this has never happened before. My brother (who cannot remote in) is at about 80% of his cap, on the same plan, and he also has WMC.

We suspect the high resolution guide images. Has anyone quantified the difference in data usage? I have NO idea the old vs. the new, but I now know I download the OTA, Cable, and I assume Dish/Directv guides every day. Is that spiking my data usage?

I could apply the "fix" to eliminate the images, but I do rather like them. Of course, I'm not going to upgrade my data plan for them.

Thoughts?

You can block the images altogether by adding the following to your hosts file (C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts). I added them because my extenders were terribly laggy in the guide.

127.0.0.1 images-eds.xboxlive.com
::1 images-eds.xboxlive.com
127.0.0.1 images.windowsmedia.com
::1 images.windowsmedia.com

^i doubt IP6 blocking is necessary.