Media Center Guide incorrect

[wesleyhey]

I am having problems with the media center guide. the big problem is show like Merlin, Continuum, Lost Girl show as repeats but they have never been shown in the US yet they have a date of something like 2012 but in the US they have not been shown before which means the guide is giving us incorrect times but i can not set to record all as there are repeats of sometime 10 a week and i do not want all 10 of the same ones recording.

I think i see what the problem may be

if you go to zap2it and into tv listings the default says national grid and you look for syfy on monday the 28th continuum and lost girl show as repeats from original air date of last year but if you go into your regional local guide the show as new, Media center is downloading the national grid instead of the regional guide. this looks to be the whole problem as the zap2it national grid guide does not show items correctly. maybe media center should download the local/regional guide instead of the national Grid

The way to see this reproduced on zap2it is clear your cookies and cache and restart you internet browser, go to zap2it.com then select tv listings and the select date of Monday 1/28/2013 the top of the grid will say

National Grid Eastern Eastern Change My Location View My Calendar

now in the search box look at syfy it show continuum and lost girl as repeats, now enter your zip code of your local TV cable and the do the same date and syfyhdp and now it show your local grid and now the shows will show as new.

For some reason Media Center is not correctly showing the air dates and times that match zap2it. zap2it for my time zone PST show it as new at 8:00pm but on Media center it shows repeat with different air date of last year which matches what zap2it show on the re-air of that same showing at 11:00pm which does show repeat but also an air date of last year.

[richard1980]

[wesleyhey]

thanks for the pictures. here you can see the original air dates do not match up for continuum it should be the 28th in the us but that date listed was the date in another country. Also at 8:00pm on zap2it it shows new but on my media center set to PST time with Ceton infitv card and my comcast cable plugged in it shows a repeat, somehow these are not matching up. My comcast box show these as new and works just fine and also the comcast box does not show last years air date for continuum.

[richard1980]

I posted the pictures so you could see that the national grid shows the episodes as new on January 28, which is not consistent with your claim that Zap2it is listing them as reruns. I was hoping you would see that your theory about the national vs regional grid is incorrect.

Here is what is actually happening: WMC uses multiple pieces of data to determine if an episode is a rerun. One of the pieces of data that is used is the original air date. If the original air date is earlier than the air date, the episode is marked as a rerun. This is not the fault of Zap2it, but is a bug in WMC (and one that has been known for quite some time).

Also, the original air date is the date the episode aired for the very first time, regardless of where it originally aired. This is standard practice for all TV shows and movies.

[wesleyhey]

ok. i sure hope microsoft will fix this seems like a major bug that microsoft should fix. is there a workaround? I keep missing my shows becuase media center will not record ay of these shows and if i try to record all new and reruns then it will record every single episode even if it is the same show title.

[richard1980]

Don't count on this (or any other WMC bug) ever getting fixed. The only workaround is to schedule the recordings without using new/rerun as a condition for recording episodes. There are a few different ways to do this, but the one that is probably going to be easiest is to schedule a recording for a specific block of time on a specific channel. To do this, go to Recorded TV > add recording > Channel and Time.

[wesleyhey]

to bad microsoft does not care about media center, or customers, hopefully someone comes up with an exact replacement that works. media center looks good but with these major bugs it is not that useful.