Duplicate Channels

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Duplicate Channels

#1

Post by IT Troll » Thu Oct 18, 2018 6:13 pm

I think this may have been discussed previously with regards to US cable channels, but I am seeing something similar with UK DVB-T (Freeview).

I've had to do a few rescans recently following channel frequency changes. For some reason certain channels now have duplicates. The name and channel numbers are identical but only one will actually work as the others do not include the correct frequency. This is something that Media Center is doing as the duplicates appear after running the add channels scan and before EPG123 has done anything.

It is not a problem as such because once unticked in the Client Guide Tool they remain disabled for subsequent runs (even with Automatch enabled).

Is there a safe way to clean these up without starting over?
Duplicates.PNG
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#2

Post by garyan2 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 6:58 pm

Does DVB-T have the same option as ATSC does in the US to delete all channels before scanning for more channels? It is a separate button for us. After this, you would need to perform a station mapping between the "new" channels and the guide listings, but you will keep all your recording histories and not have to go through a full blown setup again.

Another thing to think about, this may clean itself up eventually... it still does a background scan correct? You weren't able to completely shut that off, if I recall.
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#3

Post by IT Troll » Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:54 pm

Sorry for delay replying. Yes there is indeed a Delete All button to the right of the Scan Now. So doing this will retain recording history and series recordings? But I would need to perhaps redo my Guide > Lineup mappings?

Background/periodic/opportunistic scanning is disabled. But what cannot be disabled is the in-band channel announcement/discovery. This only kicks in if you watch live TV (not if you record) but it only adds new and deselected channels and won't clean up these duplicates.
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#4

Post by garyan2 » Sat Oct 20, 2018 6:08 pm

IT Troll wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:54 pm Sorry for delay replying. Yes there is indeed a Delete All button to the right of the Scan Now. So doing this will retain recording history and series recordings? But I would need to perhaps redo my Guide > Lineup mappings?
Correct.
IT Troll wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:54 pm Background/periodic/opportunistic scanning is disabled. But what cannot be disabled is the in-band channel announcement/discovery. This only kicks in if you watch live TV (not if you record) but it only adds new and deselected channels and won't clean up these duplicates.
If you want to manually clean up, you can highlight all the "dead" channels and click the 'X' button to the right of the Scanned Sources pulldown.
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#5

Post by IT Troll » Sat Oct 20, 2018 6:12 pm

garyan2 wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 6:08 pmIf you want to manually clean up, you can highlight all the "dead" channels and click the 'X' button to the right of the Scanned Sources pulldown.
Thanks for the tip, I'll give that a try, assuming I can tell which is which.

Any chance the Client Guide Tool could have a delete option in future?
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#6

Post by garyan2 » Sat Oct 20, 2018 6:16 pm

IT Troll wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 6:12 pmAny chance the Client Guide Tool could have a delete option in future?
That's what the 'X' button is... to delete individual channels.
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#7

Post by IT Troll » Sun Oct 21, 2018 6:34 pm

Ah, sorry for being dim. I thought you were talking about something within Media Center. If you notice on my screenshot of the Client Guide Tool, my window size has hidden the toolbar icons under a rather subtle dropdown menu. I had completely missed that these functions even existed! :oops:

All tidied up now. Many thanks.
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#8

Post by garyan2 » Sun Oct 21, 2018 7:09 pm

Yah, and I would say that it was intentional to "hide" the other buttons. I would consider the 'Delete' and 'Add' buttons to be advanced while the 'Store Explorer' and 'MXF Export' are considered expert. I don't advertise them, but they are there for the inquisitive minds to find.
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#9

Post by IT Troll » Sat Oct 03, 2020 4:12 pm

Recently I've had a duplicate channel which keeps coming. I've unticked it in the Client Guide Tool which normally means such channels remain disabled for subsequent runs (even with Automatch enabled). However this one keeps getting re-enabled. I'll probably try deleting it next, but I thought it wasn't possible for these to get re-enabled once disabled in the tool. Autoadd is disabled BTW.

BBCScotland2.PNG
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#10

Post by garyan2 » Sat Oct 03, 2020 5:01 pm

Could you make a backup of your WMC database in the client and send me the zip file to support@garyan2.net? I'll try to find out why this is happening.
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#11

Post by IT Troll » Sun Oct 04, 2020 9:37 am

Thanks for offering to take a look. I've sent that through.

I disabled 114 yesterday and it stayed disabled after this morning's EPG123 update run. So it is probably not EPG123 which is enabling it and so probably not much you can do. I am not sure what causes it. I will just notice after some time that it is back.
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#12

Post by IT Troll » Sat Oct 10, 2020 8:22 am

So at some point in the last couple of days channel 114 got re-enabled. I've sent over another backup with it in that state and also the log of the period between the two. I can't spot anything in the log.

Looking further back in the log I noticed that the last PerformGarbageCleanup() entry was back in 08/07/2020 (July) with v1.3.8.20. I've not had one since through any subsequent versions. I doubt there is a link with above but still nonetheless strange. Do we still have a date parsing issue by any chance? Worth noting that I've not had a database recovery event since 05/07/2020.
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#13

Post by garyan2 » Sat Oct 10, 2020 3:31 pm

I don't see anything with channel 114 that would explain it being re-enabled, but I do have some questions about it.

How did it get assigned listings for BBCSEHD in the first place? Is it really BBC Scotland HD? The tuner says it is QUEST HD.
Have you tried unsubscribing it and seeing if it comes back?

RE: garbage cleanup
Could you look at the registry key and post the value?
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\EPG]
"dbgc:next run time":

It should be in a universal format yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.

Did you add the "-nogc" switch to the scheduled task action for epg123Client? This will also bypass garbage collection.
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#14

Post by IT Troll » Sun Oct 11, 2020 9:18 am

I am not sure how 114 got that subscription. However, channel 115 is called “BBC Scotland HD has moved”. I suspect they shuffled channels/frequencies at some point and the old frequency got reused for Quest HD. I’ve unsubscribed and it looks correct now. :thumbup:

My reg entry is in regional format; 07/12/2020 18:15:08. Looks to me like it got written in US format (last run was 8th July), but is being read as UK (December) or just being ignored because not UTC.

Did this get written by v1.3.8.20? If so other non-US users may also be affected.
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#15

Post by garyan2 » Sun Oct 11, 2020 3:43 pm

There is certainly the possibility that other users are having the same problem. Timeline is below, and yes... v1.3.8.20 broke it, v1.3.9.30 fixed it. The field gets smaller to those that installed and ran v1.3.8.20-v1.3.9.20 between 04 July and 12 July, and ran a garbage cleanup, since any date after 12 July would be "invalid" in the non-US format.

20 June - v1.3.8.0 introduced garbage cleanup and the registry entry was fine for this version. EPG123 would write and read from the registry in the same format.
04 July - v1.3.8.20 the format it wrote the date/time was changed to write in CultureInfo.InvariantCulture which is MM/dd/yyyy, but uses the systems culture settings for readback. This broke it.
20 July - v1.3.9.30 fixed it to write to the registry in the UTC format so that it would be guaranteed to read correctly.
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#16

Post by IT Troll » Sun Oct 11, 2020 9:51 pm

I just got “lucky” then. I guess the answer is to delete the current registry entry. Hopefully it won’t cause a database recovery.
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#17

Post by garyan2 » Sun Oct 11, 2020 11:57 pm

Yes, just delete the value and it will run garbage collection on the next run. For the next release, I'm going to put in a sanity check. If it thinks the next run of GC is greater than 5 days, then run it now and write the next time in the proper format.
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#18

Post by IT Troll » Tue Oct 13, 2020 3:44 pm

So I deleted the value and checked on it today. The fact that it couldn't determine the last run date generated a log error. However, garbage collection did run and succeed and the guide was updated. I then quit and relaunched Media Center and of course had a database recovery :thumbdown:

I allowed the recovery to complete and then executed a guide update. Channels and guide restored including the weird duplicate channel 114. :crazy:

It is a concern that database recovery happened again. The previous theory was that it was linked to the MS maintenance package but that part has now been disabled. I still feel there is an undiagnosed issue (perhaps regional) going on between EPG123 and garbage collection. Anyway, I am now starting from a fresh database and should be running weekly maintenance from now on. This is garbage collection's final chance.
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#19

Post by garyan2 » Tue Oct 13, 2020 6:29 pm

Unfortunately, based on your history with garbage cleanup, I'm not too surprised. I don't see any path that EPG123 can influence the success/failure of mcupdate.exe running garbage cleanup. Not saying it is impossible, just can't think of any way as to how.

I'll change the error for reading the registry to information only. No reason I can think of that it should be an error.

Channel 114 is weird. I see no reason WMC would match and enable that channel... it isn't EPG123 doing it or you would have a log entry if it did. It may have shown back up due to the backup lineup file not being "current" when the database recovery occurred. You can check the old c:\programdata\microsoft\ehome\mcepgX-Y\backup\lineup folder and look at the datetime of the latest file.
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#20

Post by IT Troll » Tue Oct 13, 2020 8:00 pm

garyan2 wrote: Tue Oct 13, 2020 6:29 pm Unfortunately, based on your history with garbage cleanup, I'm not too surprised. I don't see any path that EPG123 can influence the success/failure of mcupdate.exe running garbage cleanup. Not saying it is impossible, just can't think of any way as to how.
Couldn’t it be that EPG123 is importing something that garbage cleanup doesn’t recognise/understand and then flags a (probably unnecessary) recovery? I ran Media Center for many years on Vista, 7 & 8 with MS EPG without a single recovery. I only started getting them when I started using EPG123.

Do you happen to know where the recovery flag is set? I am wondering if this could be overridden after mcupdate has successfully run garbage collection to prevent the recovery process on next launch.

My backup lineup was dated 10/10 so that explains how 114 was resurrected.
Last edited by IT Troll on Tue Oct 13, 2020 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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