Incorrect guide data

[Space]

Lineup: USA-NJ65968-X

I've checked this on zap2it, and it has the correct schedule which is:

3/31 9pm ET - channel 504 - New Amsterdam - Righteous Right Hand (Repeat)
3/31 10pm ET - channel 504 - NBC News Special Report: Coronavirus Pandemic (New)

WMC (EPG123 with SD) has some very strange data:

3/31 9pm ET - channel 504 - New Amsterdam - s02e06 Righteous Right Hand (Repeat) (OAD: 10/29/2019)
3/31 10pm ET - channel 504 - New Amsterdam - s02e18 Righteous Right Hand (New) (OAD: 3/31/2020)

The description for the 9pm episode matches the one from zap2it. The description for the 10pm episode is the generic series description.

It appears that the data in the 9pm airing is correct, the episode number and OAD for the 10pm airing is incorrect.

Any idea what may have caused this?

I found the following in the MXF file related to the NBC News Special (which appears to be a new weekly series):

SeriesInfo id="si2207" uid="!Series!03474338"
Program id="20579" uid="!Program!SH03474338_0000"
Program id="12045" uid="!Program!EP03474338_0001" (s01e01)
Program id="12138" uid="!Program!EP03474338_0002" (s01e02)
Program id="12206" uid="!Program!EP03474338_0003" (s01e03)

But when I search in WMC it only find one airing (s01e03) on 4/14 at 10pm. Supposedly s01e02 is supposed to air on 4/7 and s01e03 on 4/14.

It appears that 4/7 seems to have a similar issue, with 9pm being a repeat of New Amsterdam and 10pm being a "new" episode of New Amsterdam "#47 Our Doors Are Always Open" (OAD: 4/7/2020) (note that this was an upcoming new episode originally called "Pandemic" which was shelved due to the current world situation).

I'm just wondering if the way schedules are changing lately, maybe there is a bug in how things are handled in EPG123. Like why does that episode have the wrong (s02e18) episode number?

It looks like it may be related to WMC not importing the MXF file correctly (since the MXF file seems correct, or at least does not appear to have the incorrect s02e18 episode in it anymore based on my search, but I don't understand where it got that incorrect episode info from in the first place).

Is there a way to fix this without out messing up any settings? I assume that starting with a cleared guide DB and importing the MXF will fix it, but I don't want to mess up any thing else. Will "Rebuild WMC Database" fix it? Will this wipe out anything else other than "Favorites" (which I think it does remove, correct me if I am wrong)?

[garyan2]

This is all about WMC. It has some complicated logic when replacing existing guide listings with new listings so when NBC changed the schedule to replace New Amsterdam with the special, it looks like WMC decided it wasn't going to do it. Like you said, the MXF appears fine.

The [Rebuild WMC Database] is the way to quickly fix this. The only thing you lose is your recording history. Everything else will be maintained (favorites, custom channel names and numbers, etc.).

[Space]

How would it get the incorrect season/episode data (s02e18)? Was there a previous update that had that incorrect information? This was an old episode from 2019, it should have had the correct information.

It's good that only history of Series will get removed with a rebuild, I thought it removed more than just that. Since I use "New" for most of my Series (since Gracenote has relatively reliable OAD's), this should have minimal impact.


I'm wondering if there is any way to proactively avoid this issue. I understand that this is an issue with the LoadMXF.exe and not much can be done to fix it, maybe there is a way to give it data that forces it to update correctly if we can understand under what specific conditions it happens.

For instance maybe it has a problem changing from one program to another in a specific situation, so maybe if it can be detected when that type of change is happening, it creates a smaller MXF file that does something to "delete" or change those programs to something else (perhaps deleting the entire days schedule for that channel or changing the programs to some generic program), load that small MXF, then load the real MXF file.

Or even if it can't fix it that way, at least detect the problem and log it or even initiate a rebuild (this could be dangerous, so probably not something that should be enabled by default).

I wonder why it fails to make this change. Does it not notice that it has changed so does not try to update the DB, or does it see the change, tries to update the DB, and (silently?) fails? I wonder how often this happens, is it relatively rare, or is it pretty much happening all the time and you only notice it when it is for shows that you record or otherwise notice?

[Space]

Well I did "[Rebuild WMC Database]" and it fixed the issue, as expected.

I did notice a couple minor side-effects.

One is that I had a one-off (single red dot) recording scheduled before the rebuild and afterwards it was not scheduled to record due to conflict with other Series recordings. So it looks like the priority of (at least) one-off recordings is not maintained.

The second thing I noticed is that all existing recordings now display the channel number in the info screen with a ".0" at the end (e.g. "502" became "502.0").

The third thing I noticed is very strange. Some of the existing recordings were still linked to the Series that recorded them (they have the "cancel series" option, etc.), however most of them were not still linked (no "cancel series" option). Even for shows from the same Series, some were linked and others were not. In one case, the most recent episode recorded was not linked the next 4 WERE linked, and then the last one was not.
These were all recordings made after the EPG123 switchover (ones made before the switchover were already not linked).

None of these are real issues (except maybe the second one if you don't check the schedule after rebuilding) but I thought I'd post it so some of the side-effects are documented.

[karina]

Hello,
I am new to this. I have tried to load my tv channels through Schedules Direct and EPG123 but all I get is HDHOMERUN Premium East and West for zip code 98908. I press on add lineup and that is all I see. Thanks

[garyan2]

Hello,
I am new to this. I have tried to load my tv channels through Schedules Direct and EPG123 but all I get is HDHOMERUN Premium East and West for zip code 98908. I press on add lineup and that is all I see. Thanks

Looks like that is all anyone is getting. Schedules Direct must be having a problem right now. Are you OTA? We might be able to bypass the search if we know the lineup title.

[garyan2]

In the 'Lineup Search' window, scroll all the way down in the country drop-down list and select 'Manual lineup input...' to enter it manually.

Use USA-OTA-98908 for OTA.
Use USA-WA46564-X for Charter Spectrum - Digital

Click the [Fetch] button and then double-click the lineup in the results window.

This will skip the search and add the lineup to your account directly.

[garyan2]

I submitted a ticket about 10 minutes after the last post. Schedules Direct restarted the service that handles the headend requests and it looks like everything is back to normal.