Re: Strategy for scanning mixed antenna & fios channels with common channel numbers

[jwk]

Trying to figure out how EPG123 works. I went into the EPG123 Config program v1.3.4. My 'Lineup 1' had previously been populated with 'Local Broadcast Listings- Antenna' Lineup, and I was trying to populate 'Lineup 2' with the 'Verizon FiOS --- Digital' Lineup. When I activated the 'Apply & Exit' button, the Lineup was transferred to 'Lineup 1' and the 'Local Broadcast Listings- Antenna' Lineup that had been in Lineup 1 was moved to Lineup 2, and the 'Verizon FiOS --- Digital' lineup was deposited in 'Lineup 2'. I tried this process again, instead loading the FiOS lineup into 'Lineup 1' and the 'Local Broadcast Listings' next, but the final results were the same... the 'Verizon FiOS' lineup again ended up in 'Lineup 1' and 'Local Broadcast Listings' ended up in 'Lineup 2'... is this normal??? It might not make any difference which is loaded where, it just seems kind of strange. Also, what is a problem is that when the 'Local Broadcast Listings --- Antenna' where moved from 'Lineup 1' to 'Lineup 2' as I loaded the 'Verizon FiOS' Lineup to 'Lineup 1', the channel enable checkboxes for the Broadcast Listings were scramble in no particular order. While trying to troubleshoot this, I lost the ability to add any lineups at all...
Not having a good day.

[garyan2]

The lineup tabs are populated as they are presented by Schedules Direct in the response for your account. There is no 1st or 2nd lineup... just lineups.

I'll study your other observations if I can, but remember, stations that are common between lineups are linked, so enabling in one lineup will enable it in the other lineup as well.

[jwk]

When I click on 'Lineups' the 'Subscribed Lineups' dialog box opens with no lineups in it. When I close and re-open the EPG123 Configuration program, I get a dialog box that says 'There are no lineups in your SD-JSON account. You must add at least one lineup to proceed.' When I look at my Schedules Direct account it lists my 2 lineups, but when I go to 'Lineup Support', there is an error message that says 'Warning- unable to fetch SD-JSON lineups'... any idea what's going on here? Is this a problem with Schedules Direct, or did I do something wrong?

[jwk]

"but remember, stations that are common between lineups are linked, so enabling in one lineup will enable it in the other lineup as well."
Are you saying that if I enable Ch 4.1 WRC in the 'OTA Antenna' Lineup, it will enable Ch 4 WRC in the 'FiOS Cable Card' Lineup?

[jwk]

"The lineup tabs are populated as they are presented by Schedules Direct in the response for your account." And so, it doesn't matter what order they appear in my account on Schedules Direct or in EGP123, or if I add them one at a time, they'll always appear in the same order in the EPG123 configuration program every time?

[jwk]

Reported error messages to Schedules Direct and got this response:
"Once you submit your request, we will triage your ticket, confirm the issue, and send you status via email. Typically, issues take 5 business days to be resolved."

[garyan2]

When I click on 'Lineups' the 'Subscribed Lineups' dialog box opens with no lineups in it. When I close and re-open the EPG123 Configuration program, I get a dialog box that says 'There are no lineups in your SD-JSON account. You must add at least one lineup to proceed.' When I look at my Schedules Direct account it lists my 2 lineups, but when I go to 'Lineup Support', there is an error message that says 'Warning- unable to fetch SD-JSON lineups'... any idea what's going on here? Is this a problem with Schedules Direct, or did I do something wrong?

Schedules Direct has 2 servers. The legacy server is the SD-DD server which you add/remove lineups and channels through the website. EPG123 uses the SD-JSON server which you add/remove lineups through EPG123. The website couldn't get your SD-JSON lineups because you haven't added any.

[garyan2]

"but remember, stations that are common between lineups are linked, so enabling in one lineup will enable it in the other lineup as well."
Are you saying that if I enable Ch 4.1 WRC in the 'OTA Antenna' Lineup, it will enable Ch 4 WRC in the 'FiOS Cable Card' Lineup?

Correct, if they are truly the same station (same station ID).

[garyan2]

"The lineup tabs are populated as they are presented by Schedules Direct in the response for your account." And so, it doesn't matter what order they appear in my account on Schedules Direct or in EGP123, or if I add them one at a time, they'll always appear in the same order in the EPG123 configuration program every time?

The first lineup listed in the response from Schedules Direct is populated in the first tab. Second in the second. If the response from Schedules Direct keeps the same order of those lineups, then yes, they will always populate in the same tabs. It doesn't matter what the order is though, and the tab will tell you which lineup is being shown.

[jwk]

" The website couldn't get your SD-JSON lineups because you haven't added any."

I must have had one, I've been receiving daily updates every day at the time I elected since last week, if I didn't have one, I wouldn't have any guide info or station logos, so something must have gotten corrupted or deleted.

Sucks about having duplicate channels... didn't expect that. I'm going to have 44 useless guide listings.

[Space]

...
Sucks about having duplicate channels... didn't expect that. I'm going to have 44 useless guide listings.

You are downloading only one listing that is associated with multiple channels.

[jwk]

Hi Space,
Clearly I'm missing something here... what I thought Gary was telling me is that if there is a channel 4.1 WRC in the Antenna Lineup and a channel 4 WRC in the FiOS Lineup that they will both be in my Guide "because they are the same station (share the same ID)"

That's what I understood what he said. Did he mean something else???

[jwk]

Okay, so I think there must have been an issue with their server, because now I'm able to reach the lineups for my zip code again, and I downloaded my Lineups for OTA and FiOS channels, and now the enabled OTA channels are back to where I originally set them, not randomly screwed up, and the green indicator for both lineups being enabled came on by itself when I 'appliied' my new settings, which wasn't happening before, I had to manually turn them on, and Schedules Direct is not showing any errors in my account anymore. I didn't do anything except drive to post office and back, and I'm reasonably certain that had nothing to do with making things work again.

[garyan2]

If you add a lineup using EPG123, it will automatically be INCLUDED (green indicator) initially. If the lineup already exists in your account and your configuration file doesn't have it listed as an INCLUDED lineup, it will be EXCLUDED (red indicator).

If you take a look at your lineups, you will see
WRCDT - 4.1 - 19578 - WRCDT (WRC-DT) for OTA
WRCDT - xxx - 19578 - WRCDT (WRC-DT) for FiOS

It is the same station in both lineups.

This requires a different way of thinking, but the lineup and channel numbers actually don't mean anything here. Adding the lineup to your account gives you access to the guide listings of all the stations that are a part of that lineup. The channel numbers are just nice to have visually because that is how we think a lineup should look, and we can easily understand and correlate to the guide. If you have multiple lineups, there is sure to be overlap on the stations you have access to, but they are the same station. CNN in Boston, MA is the same CNN in Portland, OR... same station ID.

So, for WRCDT, we download that station because you indicated you want that station's guide listings. You can assign those guide listings to any channel you want, but to be correct, it should be assigned to your OTA channel 4.1 and whatever channel(s) in your FiOS lineup that has the same station ID.

[Space]

Hi Space,
Clearly I'm missing something here... what I thought Gary was telling me is that if there is a channel 4.1 WRC in the Antenna Lineup and a channel 4 WRC in the FiOS Lineup that they will both be in my Guide "because they are the same station (share the same ID)"

That's what I understood what he said. Did he mean something else???

If you use the EPG123.exe (server) tool and tell it to download WRC (by selecting either channel 4.1 (OTA) or channel 4 (FiOS)) you are actually telling EPG123 to download the TV guide listings for WRC. I want to stress that you are not really choosing channels here, those are just there to make it easy for you. You are actually telling EPG123 to download listings for WRC.

So, hopefully from that explanation you can tell that you are only downloading the listings for WRC ONCE, not twice. The channels 4.1 and 4 are just assigned the same listings (for WRC), so when you view either one in the guide, you will see the WRC listings (they point to the same listings, not to two separate listings).

If you want only one of these channels to appear in your WMC guide, then you can "disable" one of the channels within WMC and only have the other one displayed. You may choose to keep both if you want the ability to watch/record specifically from the FiOS or OTA version at different times, but I believe most people just disable one of them, keeping the more reliable or better quality channel. You can also "disable" channels within the EPG123 CLIENT (not server) tool by removing the check mark next to the channel, it disables them just like doing it within WMC.

[jwk]

Thanks to both of you, I'm going to have to read this tomorrow morning when I'm not so sleep deprived. My goal is this- There are OTA channels and FiOS channels. My OTA reception is much better than FiOS' recompressed ATSC versions of the same channels. However when the weather is bad my signal does have some DCT errors, and while I normally would like to watch the OTA versions, I want the option to watch the FiOS versions when the weather dictates. There are a lot of FiOS channels I can't get OTA, and can only access by FiOS (or some by the internet, but that's sometimes a PITA because of having to validate my FiOS account every month for every channel I watch. FiOS is good enough for a lot of day to day programming like CNBC, and News, and there are entertainment channels on FiOS that I can't get any other way, being able to record and timeshift in WMC will also be a great option to have available.
So ultimately, it would be nice to have the OTA channels segregated from the FiOS channels to cut down on confusion between the two, instead of having them side-by-side. Having the appropriate channel number for each kind of service (Ch 4 for WRC OTA, and Ch 504 for WRC FiOS ) in the guide listing would be my preference, if that's possible. There will be a lot of channels that are FiOS only, I spent a lot of the evening disabling those FiOS channels I'll never use, the kids channels, shopping channels, pay per views and subscriptions, religious channels, sports channels, music channels and I'm sure there will be a lot more that I'll realize that I'll never use. I only have a limited amount of time I can watch tv so I don't need a thousand channels.
Thats the goal. Hopefully I'll finish editing my channel lineups tomorrow and get to see what they look like. Thanks for all your support guys, I totally appreciate you answer the multitude of questions I've had.
jk

[hockeyjod]

Back in the Guide Tool days, I was doing something similar to you, only with the SD and HD versions of channels. Guide Tool allowed me to give the two versions of the channel (I have FiOS) the same channel number. While this may sound confusing, I didn't find it so because I just set up an SD and an HD Favorites list in WMC. For any channel that only had an SD or HD version, I would add it to both Favorites List. Assuming epg123 lets you do the same thing -- assign duplicate channel numbers -- I plan to do the same thing (I just converted over to epg123 at the end of January and haven't gotten to the "renumber all the channel numbers to put them in a more logical order than Verizon's mess" stage). If I were in your situation, I would assign the OTA and the FiOS versions of each channel to the same channel number and then in WMC put together an OTA and a FiOS Favorites list.