Media Center EPG: Rovi Guide Data Quality

Global guide related discussion. All Windows versions.
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Windom

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#81

Post by Windom » Fri Aug 14, 2015 4:58 am

I got excited tonight when I saw guests listed for tonight's (and tomorrow's) Jimmy Kimmel Live. But then I saw that Corden, Fallon and Myers still had generic descriptions for their shows. The Kimmel shows are repeats so maybe that's why they're showing good descriptions? How come Conan always has the guests listed though?

Also, the Dr. Phil show on my CBS station doesn't have any episode titles and just the generic descriptions. Episode titles are there for Dr. Phil episodes that are in second run syndication on other channels though!

RyC

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#82

Post by RyC » Fri Aug 14, 2015 6:33 am

Same thing here exactly, it's not just you!

Space

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#83

Post by Space » Fri Aug 14, 2015 6:51 am

I'm seeing some periodic issues with grouping of episodes in to a series.

For instance, right now in the guide there is a single episode of "Little People, BIg World" (TLC) that is in a separate series than the rest of them.
It is similar to when I first got converted to Rovi and you had to create a new Series for some of the series, but it has been a month since then and this Series has been working fine up until this discrepancy.

There is a new episode of the show ("Gone With the Windmill") airing on 8/18 at 9pm EDT. Then on the same day, there is a re-airing of that episode at 11:01pm EDT.

The first episode, and all other episodes of this show in the guide, are in the Series that I have scheduled to record (if I select them, the "cancel series" option is available), however if I select that second airing of the episode (the one at 11:01pm), it is not considered part of the same series ("record series" is available).

I also saw this same problem last week with "Dog and Beth: On the Hunt" (CMT), but a subsequent guide update corrected the problem fairly quickly. But this one has not yet been corrected and there is only 4 days remaining before it airs.

Does anyone else see this same problem? I want to make sure it is not just a glitch on my system.

ronaldo47

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#84

Post by ronaldo47 » Fri Aug 14, 2015 3:39 pm

I have seen something very similar with the series recording of Monday to Friday news shows. After the Rovi conversion I made new series for most of my shows and they all have worked flawlessly since then. However two days ago the guide update did not add any of the news shows for Monday 8/24, which was the last day of data for my guide. Last night's update did pick up one of the shows but not others. Before deleting any series I made new duplicate ones and compared the two series. In every case the new series picked up all shows so I then deleted the original series. I assume Rovi (or Microsoft) changed something to fix series recordings and somehow broke some of my series recordings. I'll keep watching to see if my "new" series recordings continue to operate properly.

tectjr

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#85

Post by tectjr » Fri Aug 14, 2015 4:04 pm

BigSacAttack wrote:I am in Sacramento, Comcast Digital cable, and my WMC guide has about 10 channels or so that are reporting (East) so my recordings on those channels have been messed up for the past couple weeks. I've reset the TV Signal a few times, download guide listings, nothing works except copying the guide info from the SD channel.
Same issue here, Comcast Sacramento. Cable channels such as Discovery, Animal Planet, A&E, etc. are all three hours off. Local channels seem to be OK.

hansolo89

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#86

Post by hansolo89 » Sat Aug 15, 2015 1:49 am

i sent another email to Rovi today complaining about bad descriptions of talk shows and airdates and sent them a bunch of links from MS connect site too

n4mwd

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#87

Post by n4mwd » Sat Aug 15, 2015 1:55 am

Has anybody who has used GuideTool has an issue with the provider reverting back to Zap2It? The system was hanging every time I went to the guide and the disk would thrash for no reason. Just looking at the ABOUT section took about a minute to come up. When it finally came up, it said Zap2It and not Rovi. It was Rovi before I used Guide Tool.

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#88

Post by Space » Sat Aug 15, 2015 2:23 am

8/20 episode of "Alone" on HISTORY is showing as from 10:03-10:30, when it should be 10:03-11:03, the re-airing 4 hours later is the correct length.

Data is also incorrect on msn.com, and roviguide.com, but is correct on tvguide.com.

This type of error is hard to spot because you still see the show listed as recording, but you have to look closer to see that it will only record half the show.

Hopefully this will be fixed before airing, but whenever problems continue to exist in the guide with less than 7 days before airing it makes me nervous about the quality of future data.

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#89

Post by Bob.Blockerlundt » Sat Aug 15, 2015 2:44 am

Has Microsoft provided a timeline? I was initially hoping and expecting everything to return to "normal" within a few days. But I realize that was just my own assumption, and not promised by Microsoft directly. Thinking about that, I am now wondering if the projected timeline is on the order of 6 days, 6 weeks, 6 months, or what.

Also, has Microsoft provided a list of known issues they are going to fix? Are they planning to fix everything, or just a subset?

I assume the project team has internal discussions about scope and estimated release dates. It would be nice to have more transparency on this. Even ball park figures. That would help us decide if we might be okay waiting it out with the current brokenness, or if we should just start transitioning to alternatives now (something I wasn't planning on doing until Windows 7 support officially ended in 2020).

cycletourist

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#90

Post by cycletourist » Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:21 am

I have been suffering through this since July with everyone else. I did not know what the problem was for days, until I looked here. I had never heard of Rovi (renaming of Macrovision) and did not know there was a change in EPG provider. I guess I was lucky (?) that my system downloaded from the new data server without any assistance.

I had the series recording problem, which seems (to me) to be fixed. My only problem was recording the Evening News. I had to manually enter them for a couple of weeks. Now they record properly as a series.

I too have generic listings for the late night talk shows. Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers and Cordron have had generic descriptions for over a month now.

All movies have NO star rating, parental guidance or year. I have also noticed that some shows that are repeats do not have (Repeat) in their listing.

I am also having trouble with the Science channel, but it may specific to their own data. I record "How The universe Was Made" and "Through the Wormhole" and there are many repeat showings at odd hours with only generic descriptions. WMC assumes they are new and schedules them to record. I have to manually delete them.

I have contacted Rovi directly about the first three problems and heard back twice.

The first reply was Aug 4.
Case #1994040
Subject: "CLU Update - Windows Media Center - series record, generic desc"

Hi,
We will look into the issues of generic descriptions with no listing of guests on the late night shows.

Regarding the series record problems, We believe we have identified the problem and Microsoft and Rovi are working towards the best solution. At this time we don’t have an estimate on when this will be fixed.

I'll get back to you about generic info.
Suzy
Odd that they keep saying they are looking into the series problem. It seems to me that it is already fixed.

Second reply was Aug 12:
We are still working with Microsoft on a solution to the series record and generic description issue. Star rating will no longer work with Rovi data as Microsoft isn't taking a feed that provides that info. Release year is being looked into by MS as Rovi is providing that data in the feed.
Suzy
So, star ratings are never going to be provided (WTH?) I mean, just how difficult can this be? I am beginning to wonder if Microsoft, Rovi and perhaps even other silent partners (Comcast, Dish, .... ?) would just as soon all of us WMC people go away (not playing the game by their "rules"). They have been at this for over six weeks and are making very little headway. It's as though they are not really trying to fix anything.

I have stopped bothering to see who is on the late night shows. I wish we had the numbers to make a noticeable ratings drop. That could perhaps get action. I wonder what the big three (in the US CBS, NBC and ABC) would think of this issue. They *are* losing viewers.

Anyway, I just thought I'd pass along the replies I have gotten from Rovi. I am pleased that they are sending me updates - although there is actually nothing new or definite in the "updates." Like Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) said in his last show; Bull sh*t ... "if you smell something, say something."
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#91

Post by n4mwd » Sat Aug 15, 2015 11:07 am

My media center has gone back to "No Data Available" on nearly all channels.

dmagerl

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#92

Post by dmagerl » Sat Aug 15, 2015 11:16 am

n4mwd wrote:My media center has gone back to "No Data Available" on nearly all channels.
When that happened to me, I had to re-run TV setup because Rovi had changed the name of the guide listing.

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#93

Post by n4mwd » Sat Aug 15, 2015 1:53 pm

dmagerl wrote:When that happened to me, I had to re-run TV setup because Rovi had changed the name of the guide listing.
I did that several times, no luck. I tried using LoadMXF (which is a real pain to use) and it said that the latest guide listings had an invalid character in the MXF file.

I'm really pissed at rovi right now. I think rovi has totally hosed my Media Center. I'm going to look for a way to reset it back to defaults and re-install. Hopefully I can get it back without having to reformat and reinstall win7 from scratch.

Windows Media Center used to be the best media center program out there period. First rate. Now, thanks to rovi, it can't hold second banana to an 8 track tape player.

n4mwd

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#94

Post by n4mwd » Sat Aug 15, 2015 3:13 pm

UPDATE: I went into programdata\ehome and deleted everything that looked remotely affiliated with the EPG. Then I was able to go into media center and reinitialize everything from scratch. The guide came down, the more recent programs have accurate descriptions, and the more future programs have generic descriptions. Its still not fixed, but at least I can record shows again.

Mike88

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#95

Post by Mike88 » Sat Aug 15, 2015 6:23 pm

As mentioned above - how difficult can it be? We put a man on the moon 45 years ago using a computer that has less processing power than a smartphone. And we got video from the moon. Now we can't get data, star ratings or original release dates from earth. It's obvious that MS and Rovi don't give a hoot. They're just like a lot of other companies that don't really care about a customer's satisfaction, all they care about is getting a customer's money.

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STC

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#96

Post by STC » Sat Aug 15, 2015 6:45 pm

^ Well, it really does seem like a poor reactive response from MS rather than a properly planned proactive one prior to Rovi change over.

That said, I believe the whole MC guide systems' design, structure and process from provider to end user to be very archaic and held together with lots of band aids.
If you tweak or break just one piece along the chain, all sorts of repercussions ensue.

I'd also comment that the only real reason they are 'helping' Media Center users is to sweeten the experience for xBox TV users in the future.
If there was no xBox TV, we'd probably be SOL and rolling our own right now.

/My own 2c
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Space

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#97

Post by Space » Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:26 pm

The fact that Microsoft did not negotiate to get the star ratings from Rovi and then also made no mention of this as being one of the things that would be missing from the new guide data in their initial announcement tells me that they put minimal effort in to making the decision to switch to Rovi. I'm surprised that it is not even more of a disaster.

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#98

Post by fritzilla » Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:48 pm

tectjr wrote:
BigSacAttack wrote:I am in Sacramento, Comcast Digital cable, and my WMC guide has about 10 channels or so that are reporting (East) so my recordings on those channels have been messed up for the past couple weeks. I've reset the TV Signal a few times, download guide listings, nothing works except copying the guide info from the SD channel.
Same issue here, Comcast Sacramento. Cable channels such as Discovery, Animal Planet, A&E, etc. are all three hours off. Local channels seem to be OK.

The problem with Comcast Sacramento or Comcast Roseville is that there are about 8 shows (I only have the economy package so there may be ore) that are listed as the "EAST" feed. If you review the guide listings for the channels, Discovery, Food, Animal Planet, etc... are all 3 hours off.

What I did to fix this was to select the standard def guide listing for those channels. The standard def channel listings will show "WEST" correctly so you will know you are getting the right ones. YOu will still get the high def feed because your channel is still 7xx something. But the guide will think it's SD. There's no hard except for one caveat. Make sure your recordings do not say HD only or "HD Preferred" etc... It will not record the show if you have that set.

I have sent two emails to ROVI with no response at all.

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#99

Post by fritzilla » Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:49 pm

What email are you guys using to sent a request to rovi?

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STC

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#100

Post by STC » Sat Aug 15, 2015 9:08 pm

Microsoft have asked that guide issues are posted on the connect site and not directly to Rovi. I think Rovi have probably been overwhelmed plus I bet they don't have a direct support deal with MS for MediaCenter users.
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