EPG123 Bug Reports

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Paint

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#1381

Post by Paint » Thu Nov 05, 2020 9:40 pm

I have stuttering and buffering sometimes with ServerWMC on Windows 7 x64 with two InfiniTV 6 Ceton cards. I am using epg123 to populate my guide.

Recently, I noticed that WMC had 9999 channels loaded (channels 1-9999). I am only using around 200 channels in the 500-900 and 1799-1850 range. I deleted the other channel blocks that I don't use and wont ever use. This has sped up my WMC and ServerWMC streams significantly! I suggest people trying this if they have similar issues.

mogulman

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#1382

Post by mogulman » Tue Nov 10, 2020 11:46 pm

I updated to 1.5.1.0 on 11/7. Everything seemed to work fine. Now I have no Guide info in WMC. If I go into the client it looks like none of the channels are mapped. Hmm..Wondering if I should fix it manually or send you something.

update: went into the client gui and manually mapped each channel

coyote24

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#1383

Post by coyote24 » Tue Dec 22, 2020 10:21 am

I've been experiencing an issue with epg123 since the last "garbage cleanup" update at the beginning of December. Recordings never report as "finished," so the EPG never updates (a recording is in progress or is scheduled within 10 minutes...) after a recording, and the computer never goes to sleep after a recording. Also, in this state, the client software will not open. Updates are fine if no recording is made beforehand. I tried clearing the cache and rebuilding to no avail, but this morning I went back to the prior version of epg123 and scheduled a recording, and it worked. So, something in the new version is causing recordings not to report as "finished" for me. This is Windows 7. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Space

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#1384

Post by Space » Tue Dec 22, 2020 12:46 pm

Sounds like a problem with your registry.

The method that EPG123 uses to determine if there is a recording in progress (or upcoming) changed from the older versions. It now uses entries in the registry to determine this.

Gary will have to chime in here as to what registry entries are being touched, but it may be a permission issue, either WMC cannot write to the registry, or EPG123 cannot read from it.

Does EPG123 complain about not being able to read anything? (Not sure if any error would be logged if it cannot read the registry).

You can view the log by running EPG123 and pressing the "View Log" button. Gary may ask you to send him the log if there are any lines with [WARNG] or [ERROR] in it.

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garyan2

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#1385

Post by garyan2 » Tue Dec 22, 2020 3:02 pm

Well, it was a nice try. This is the second report of this problem and the other is on a Win10 machine so I can't pin it on the OS. The problem is the Microsoft\Windows\Media Center\RecordingRestart task is not being disabled after recordings complete. EPG123 uses that task in v1.6.0.x to determine whether a recording is in progress so for whatever reason, WMC is not disabling the task and epg123 thinks there is always a recording in progress.

Looks like I am going to have to return to the old method of determining the recording state. I'll release a new version as soon as I can, but in the mean time reverting back to v1.5.1.0 is suggested.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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Gripweed

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#1386

Post by Gripweed » Tue Dec 22, 2020 4:32 pm

Gary,
Are you sure you want to give up so soon after just 2 reports? I've never seen this problem and I'm a heavy recorder (some nights 5 shows at a time for all of primetime). I'm sure that there are hundreds of others like me.
It brings up one of my pet peeves. Coyote24 mentioned that his computer wouldn't go into sleep after this problem. I'm a firm believer that sleep and other power reduction methods cause more trouble than they are worth and that goes double when it comes to WMC and other programs that use a lot of scheduled tasking. I don't know what the situation was with the Win10 user but I would look into it before throwing it all away.

Space

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#1387

Post by Space » Tue Dec 22, 2020 5:36 pm

The computer wouldn't go to sleep most likely because the EPG123 client was telling it to not go to sleep while it ran in the background waiting for the recording to end.

Also, while I had some trouble with sleep in the beginning, I resolved it, and haven't had any problems with it and WMC for years. It wakes up 5 minutes before any recording is about to start and goes to sleep 2 minutes after it is done recording and commercial detection has completed.

Although I do still have one small problem with it that I have been unable to solve. If I watch a recording, and WMC is recording another show in the background, and then I finish watching and press the power button on the remote, the system goes in to "Away mode" (as it should). Away mode just means that the power to the graphics card goes off (the monitor sleeps), but otherwise it continues recording in the background.

The problem is that when the recording is completed the system does not go to sleep again. It stays awake (in Away mode) until manual intervention. Note that this only happens when the machine is manually put in to Away mode. If the machine wakes up on it's own to do a recording (in Away mode), and then finishes the recording, etc. it will go to sleep again 2 minutes later.

My solution is to just not push the power button if there are any recordings in progress. I just turn off the TV and leave the machine in it's regular mode. After the recording is completed, the machine goes to sleep (although I think if the inactivity timer has not expired yet, it will wait for that to happen, which I have set to 60 minutes).

Sorry for that tangent...

Anyway, I forgot that EPG123 looks at the task manager to determine if there is an upcoming recording... I wonder why that is not being managed appropriately on some systems. I haven't had any problems on my Win7 system... To be honest, disabling and enabling that task wasn't really necessary, as running the recovery when it didn't need too only added a little overhead on a reboot, so maybe they removed that feature somehow on some systems (although I have no idea how they could have done that).

As for reverting back to the old method, wasn't the reason for moving to this method because some people's systems were having issues with that method (or at least having issues that MAY have been related to it)?

SoNic67

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#1388

Post by SoNic67 » Tue Dec 22, 2020 5:43 pm

The epg client shuts down immediately after launch (stays open a fraction of second) and I am getting this import guide error... any ideas?
https://justpaste.it/5u75v

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garyan2

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#1389

Post by garyan2 » Tue Dec 22, 2020 5:51 pm

Gripweed wrote: Tue Dec 22, 2020 4:32 pm Gary,
Are you sure you want to give up so soon after just 2 reports? I've never seen this problem and I'm a heavy recorder (some nights 5 shows at a time for all of primetime). I'm sure that there are hundreds of others like me.
It brings up one of my pet peeves. Coyote24 mentioned that his computer wouldn't go into sleep after this problem. I'm a firm believer that sleep and other power reduction methods cause more trouble than they are worth and that goes double when it comes to WMC and other programs that use a lot of scheduled tasking. I don't know what the situation was with the Win10 user but I would look into it before throwing it all away.
I'm not throwing anything away, I'm just reverting back to how epg123 checked if a recording was in progress prior to v1.6.0.x. I haven't been able to reproduce this issue so can't attempt to determine why WMC is failing to disable the task. So my main goal with v1.6 was to not touch the WMC database prior to any garbage cleanup or import thinking it may reduce the risk of a database crash, but it appears relying on the scheduled task to make that determination isn't as reliable as I had hoped. Accessing the database to make that determination has proven highly reliable for quite a few years, so reverting back to that method will be fine. As far as reducing risk of a database crash, v1.6 also changed the way it opens and accesses the database which should also reduce the risk and that will stay in place for next release.

As for Coyote24 mentioning the machine won't go to sleep, that is because epg123 will disable sleep while it is downloading and importing guide listings. The machine won't go to sleep because epg123 is still running and waiting for this ghost recording to end.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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garyan2

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#1390

Post by garyan2 » Tue Dec 22, 2020 6:04 pm

SoNic67 wrote: Tue Dec 22, 2020 5:43 pm The epg client shuts down immediately after launch (stays open a fraction of second) and I am getting this import guide error... any ideas?
https://justpaste.it/5u75v
Could you install v1.5.1.0 and see if the client opens. If it does, please click the [Backup] button and send the created zip file to support@garyan2.net. It appears I am missing a null check somewhere when populating the listviewitems.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

SoNic67

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#1391

Post by SoNic67 » Tue Dec 22, 2020 7:49 pm

Yep, that version doesn't close anymore. Email sent.

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garyan2

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#1392

Post by garyan2 » Tue Dec 22, 2020 8:09 pm

SoNic67 wrote: Tue Dec 22, 2020 7:49 pm Yep, that version doesn't close anymore. Email sent.
Unfortunately, the backup works fine here so I can't see where the problem was. Either the [Backup] or v1.5.1 fixed the problem. You could try to install v1.6.0.5 again to see if it works now to verify if you want to. I'm going to go ahead and put precautionary null checks in the code... I suspect that the Primary channel of the merged channel is null which I did check for in 1.5.x but no longer do in v1.6.0 thinking I didn't need to anymore.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

SoNic67

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#1393

Post by SoNic67 » Tue Dec 22, 2020 8:47 pm

Yep, that fixed the closing of client!

coyote24

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#1394

Post by coyote24 » Wed Dec 23, 2020 2:15 am

Gripweed: I get what you are saying about sleep/power reduction, but I haven't had an issue with any previous version. With some initial tweaking of power management settings, WMC has not had an issue with sleep/wake since I installed epg123.

Space: Thanks for the input and suggestions for Gary. I have never "forced" sleep with the button as you stated, but rather let the sleep timer run out (10 minutes) as you now do, so I wouldn't have experienced your issue.

Gary: Thanks for your continual monitoring of the forum for issues, and for a fantastic program. I've no problem reverting to the prior version. Odd that a few of us seem to have the same unforeseen task glitch, which certainly seems to be a Windows issue, not yours! Out of curiosity, I wonder if the Win10 user upgraded from Win8/8.1. I think my 7 was upgraded from Vista. In my experience, Windows upgrades never quite work as well as clean installs.

stuartm

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#1395

Post by stuartm » Wed Dec 23, 2020 4:35 am

I have to totally disagree with gripweed. Power savings is very important to me and having 3 HTPC's that when on consume 50 Watts each and when sleeping 1 watt each is big especially when they are typically sleeping for at least 20 hours a day. I have had no problems with sleep/wakeup and WMC and/or EPG123. In fact it's one of the main reasons I went to WMC rather than use a Cable Co. box.

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Gripweed

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#1396

Post by Gripweed » Wed Dec 23, 2020 7:38 pm

All I can say is that my own experience with sleep/hibernation/whatever was less than pleasant especially when I tried it with WMC. Also, reading over the years all the problems caused by sleep on the various forums for different programs. As I said, it has become a bit of a pet peeves for me. When I see the word Sleep I automatically think trouble.
I've run this current WMC machine for more than 10 years non-stop (except for a yearly cleaning of approximately 2 pounds of cat hair that has accumulated on the fans and stuff. :lol: ) It also runs my BitTorrent client which I need to run constantly. The only thing that sleeps is the monitor. According to my UPS the power consumption is well under a pre-CFL/LED light bulb. Electricity is cheap. I'd rather pay that than have to deal with sleep problems. I'm happy for those of you that don't have any problems but I'm not interested after all this time to go back and try to solve all the problems of the past to save a few pennies worth of energy.

stuartm

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#1397

Post by stuartm » Wed Dec 23, 2020 8:51 pm

I don't want this to devolve into a environmental argument but for me it's not the cost. In my case 3 HTPC's saving ~50 watts per hour for 20 hours a day is 3000 watt/hours a day. Over the course of a year that is 1095 kilowatt hours. Which translates to 3/4 ton of CO2 not going into the atmosphere. Everybody makes their own choices about what is important and this is important to me.

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Gripweed

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#1398

Post by Gripweed » Thu Dec 24, 2020 12:22 am

I can understand your environmental concerns with Colorado using 44% coal-fired electricity plants. That's followed by 30% natural gas and 19% wind (yeah! wind.) My state, Pennsylvania, has gotten it's coal use down to 17%. The main source of fuel is natural gas at 42% via local fracking and nuclear at 36%. Nuclear had a larger percentage until recently when they shut down the remaining reactor at Three Mile Island (I'm sure you've heard of that place.)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... ction.html


I think we've gotten far enough off course with this discussion so I think I'm going to bow out of this (my) speculative talk about sleep causing problems.

Space

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#1399

Post by Space » Wed Dec 30, 2020 12:59 am

Interesting error during today's update. AFTER the client seemed to finish, it gets an unhandled exception. There were no other errors prior to this... Still running 1.6.0.2 (test version):

Code: Select all

[12/29/2020 7:51:29 PM] [ INFO] EPG123 client execution time was 00:07:36.5806301.
[12/29/2020 7:51:29 PM] [ERROR] Unhandled exception caught from epg123Client.exe. message: MediaCenterStore: Assert. LockedObjectBlock dtor when still locked
   at Microsoft.MediaCenter.Store.StoreDebug.Assert(Boolean f, String msg)
   at Microsoft.MediaCenter.Store.LockedObjectBlock.Finalize()
Also, two days ago had an error with loadMXF, the subsequent days did not have an error...

Code: Select all

[12/27/2020 7:43:48 PM] Entering ImportMxfFile() for file "c:\programdata\garyan2\epg123\output\epg123.mxf".
[12/27/2020 7:45:15 PM] [ INFO] Error: The following error was encountered while processing the file. Aborting.
[12/27/2020 7:45:15 PM] [ INFO] GuestActorRole GuestActorRoleI_ProgramPersonCharacterKey: InsertRow() failed (attempt 0 of 10) for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x80004005, minor = 28574, 1471, 0, 0, "", "", ""
[12/27/2020 7:45:26 PM] [ERROR] Error using loadmxf.exe to import new guide information. Exit code: -1
[12/27/2020 7:45:26 PM] Exiting ImportMxfFile(). FAILURE.
[12/27/2020 7:45:26 PM] [ERROR] Failed to import .mxf file. Exiting.

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garyan2

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#1400

Post by garyan2 » Wed Dec 30, 2020 1:02 am

It must have occurred when epg123 was closing/disposing the database. Everything working okay?

EDIT: RE: loadmxf, I've seen this a few times and typically another attempt to import is successful. I really don't have control on how loadmxf runs, but I may look at automatically attempting an import again prior to declaring the error.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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