Media Center EPG: Rovi Guide Data Quality

[thumperyz69]

I have "no data available" on most (not all) of my OTA channels again this week...I have reloaded from scratch 4x since August. Will this ever end??? I dont mind reloading to be honest but I still get about 15 cable channels unencrypted and remapping these everytime is starting to be a real PITA.

Any magic out there other than reloading WMC again????

[adam1991]

ESI = episode specific information

[Mike88]

In the Chicago market I lost program descriptions again for MeTV channel 26.3. I forget the exact date but they disappear from the guide about a week from now. MeToo channel 26.4 has been missing descriptions for some time. I was hoping since MeTV was holding steady for a while that perhaps MeToo would be brought up to snuff soon. But instead they're both missing data - again.

What the heck are the people at Rovi & MS doing?. Incompetent people like that would be fired where I worked.

[Mike_TV]

I'm starting to see better episode descriptions this week, especially for the late night talk shows, where they had generic show info before.

[webminster]

Looks no better to me, particularly on evening primetime. Missing info on Big Bang Theory, Grey's Anatomy, etc.

[SilverRubicon]

Was excited when I saw actual team names for tonights college football games but this Saturday is back to being all "TBA". I hear a Tivo calling my name.

[foose]

I'm starting to see per-episode descriptions return for things like the late night shows.

Agreeing with this post: http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =96&t=9369

[Mike88]

I've been contacting MR and Rovi regarding intermittent missing tiles & descriptions on a couple of channels. Also the lack of guests listing on the late night talk shows.

Yesterday I got this response from Rovi:
"We don't always get the schedules from the networks in time to log full descriptions out as far as you are mentioning. The issue with generic descriptions on talk shows was fixed by Microsoft on 10/9. However, if you are trying to look at descriptions for more than the current week they may still be generic because they are not logged yet."

The one problem channel has descriptions to 10-26-2015 then they disappear. The other channel has descriptions to 10-19-2015 then they disappear.
I'll have to see if the data gets updated the closer the actual broadcast dates gets to those "drop off" dates. Previously that has not happened because I've recorded programs without titles & descriptions.

The late night talk shows did list guests for last might (10-15) and tonight (Friday 10-16).
Next week (10-19 to 10-23) the only ones to show guests are on CBS, The Late Show & The Late Late Show. I noticed these are all repeats. Maybe Rovi has the guest data for those because the data is old & finally made it into their system.
The week after that (10-26 & 10-27, the extent of my guide) none of the talk shows list guests.

I'll have to keep track of this & see if/when the data gets updated as the actual broadcast dates get closer.

[Space]

I'm starting to see per-episode descriptions return for things like the late night shows.

Agreeing with this post: http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =96&t=9369

That post really doesn't make it clear that they have done anything about the data quality issues (not sure what "working on them" really means), just that they have been making changes to the servers to fix the problem of not getting the guide data at all.

But I do agree that it looks like the nightly talk shows are looking better (and when I last looked the daytime talk shows didn't look that bad either).

I am still seeing episodes here and there that are for some reason not being assigned the correct series ID, and therefore are not being scheduled to record by the Series. One is the 10/21 episode of "Dual Survival" on Discovery channel. The latest one is the 11/27 @ 10pm ET airing of "Storage Wars: Miami". Most of the time these are corrected before airing, but it scares me that this problem still exists (and when the problem still persists less than 7 days before airing, this usually means it will not be fixed).

There is a similar issue with "Face Off" on SyFy where a few times an episode was marked as a sports program with the wrong series ID. Each time it was "corrected" before airing (the series ID was changed to the correct one) so they got recorded by the Series, however they were only partially corrected, as they still had the "Sports" flag set. By being marked as sports programming, the episodes were grouped separately from the rest of the episodes when listed by "title" in WMC. So I saw something like this:

Face Off (8)
Face Off (2)

So the two episodes with the "sports" flag were grouped together separately from the others.
This is a relatively minor problem, but it can be disconcerting when you are looking at what you think are all the episodes you have recorded for a series and notice some are missing, until you realize they are grouped elsewhere.

This also makes me think that each instance of these problems are being handled on a case-by-case basis and being fixed manually, rather than looking at the source of the problem and fixing it so that it does not reoccur.

[cycletourist]

... Agreeing with this post: http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =96&t=9369 [JonFincherMSFT's latest post = 10/15]

That post really doesn't make it clear that they have done anything about the data quality issues (not sure what "working on them" really means), just that they have been making changes to the servers to fix the problem of not getting the guide data at all.

Yes. Same as it ever was. He encourages US to spend time reporting individual issues (keep those cards and letters coming) with not a word about addressing a single one of them. Every issue I've had has already been reported and corroborated many times at the msn connect site. What more do they need?

I am still seeing episodes here and there that are for some reason not being assigned the correct series ID

Where do you go to find the series ID?

This also makes me think that each instance of these problems are being handled on a case-by-case basis and being fixed manually, rather than looking at the source of the problem and fixing it so that it does not reoccur.

My thoughts exactly.

Based on Jon Fincher's comment about losing one member, 33% of his team, it sounds like Microsoft has allocated funds for a three person team to handle this entire issue. And they are not even dedicated to the WMC issue.

Most of what my team does is not WMC ...

Gee, ... thanks.

I am recording the series Manhattan on WGNA HD, set to only record New. I recorded, watched and kept the Premiere episode early this week. For some reason WMC is going to record the third airing of that episode this week (it correctly skipped over the second airing). Some bit of metadata is either missing or incorrect. (As are movie star ratings - parental guidance notice, release date, and additional review).

I still have incorrect thumbnails on movies I've recorded (can those be reset somehow?)

And Rovi/MS still assign made-up episodes with generic descriptions during blocks of time at the Science Channel that are empty, to be announced (TBA). I happen to have Series recordings set for the titles that Rovi/MS conjure out of thin air and my recording schedule is full of hours and hours of them.

Hey Jon. Address some of these issues. >>> Participate in this forum.
--

[deihmos]

Ever since the big update I am seeing incorrect meta data on CNN and many other channels. It will show Teen Wolf poster for CNN tonight. This happens on a newly installed box but on the other boxes it has the correct posters on all of the channels. I did a complete reinstall and it is the same thing.

Anyone know of a solution?

[Moderator note: topic merged; search before posting]

[Space]

...

I am still seeing episodes here and there that are for some reason not being assigned the correct series ID

Where do you go to find the series ID?

I am not aware of a place you can see it in the guide directly, but you can see it in the metadata of an already recorded show.
You can also tell when a given airing of an episode has a different series ID than your existing Series by bringing up the detail of that episode. If it has the "Record Series" option available, then it has been assigned a different series ID then your existing Series.
You can also see if there is more than one series ID for a given show in the guide by doing a title search for the show (in this case you don't need to have an already existing Series). If you do the search and it returns more than one entry for the show, then the guide has more than one series ID for that show. You can look at each one and it will only list the episodes that are associated with the corresponding series ID.

Based on Jon Fincher's comment about losing one member, 33% of his team, it sounds like Microsoft has allocated funds for a three person team to handle this entire issue. And they are not even dedicated to the WMC issue.

Most of what my team does is not WMC ...

Gee, ... thanks.

Yes, I also noticed that, but the fact that he is communicating with us at all is a good thing. Most (big) companies don't allow this because they don't want public criticism of their statements (especially statements not carefully crafted by the PR department). So I would just be thankful for the honesty even if Microsoft is not putting as many resources on this as they should be.

I am recording the series Manhattan on WGNA HD, set to only record New. I recorded, watched and kept the Premiere episode early this week. For some reason WMC is going to record the third airing of that episode this week (it correctly skipped over the second airing). Some bit of metadata is either missing or incorrect. (As are movie star ratings - parental guidance notice, release date, and additional review).

Other than having an incorrect series ID, I have also seen this happen when some of the episodes did not have the "HD" identifier. WMC seems to prefer to record high-definition episodes over standard-definition ones (or it prefers to record shows that are the same definition as the one you used to set up the recording) even if you don't use the "prefer HD" option. Sometimes they forget to mark shows as "HD" in the guide, so this can happen (this has also happened with zap2it, so it is not a Rovi specific issue).

[Space]

Seems like the MSG Network show "Knick" (about the NY Knicks sports team, airing on 10/27 & 10/28 at various times) has been assigned to the same series ID as "The Knick", a show on Cinemax about a hospital in the early 1900s. A Series record for "The Nick" will also want to record these sports shows.

[cubbie_blu]

All of the thumbnails for the guide are now 100% correct. Since the cutover, my thumbnails on the tv guide were showing the wrong image for about 50% of the tv programs. As of last night, the same 50/50 was happening, but as of 10am CST Oct 23, they all of the sudden appear to be 100% correct. I haven't made any changes, so perhaps they pushed the correct mapping with last nights guide update?

Now I am just hoping to get the correct description and teams for all of the football games tomorrow.

[Embiggens]

That would be coold and a great sign. Using My Media Center, I'm still seeing some wrong images but we'll see when I update later at home.

Many of my problems have been addressed, major outstanding ones are images, Nickelodeon channels and football/sports as you note. I was definitely nervous at the beginning of the changeover but in the end I think having the same provider as xbone will make this a net positive...right?

[STC]

All of the thumbnails for the guide are now 100% correct.

How are the movie covers looking?

[RyC]

It looks like thumbnails are looking correct on my test machine too, including movie posters. Before they were all over the place, and I just ran a normal mcupdate and it looks like everything's corrected now. Awesome!

[glorp]

I'm starting to see missing EPG data after the upcoming daylight savings time change particularly for cable channels. Missing in the guide starting around Nov. 2 althogh the guide runs up to Nov. 4. The update task is throwing errors in the text of the Windows Event and rescheduling itself to run again although the Event entry itself in Windows isn't flagged as an error. Anyone else?

Code: Select all

8:04:05 AM - The Directory package is already up to date.
8:04:05 AM - The ClientUpdate package is already up to date.
8:04:05 AM - The Broadband package is already up to date.
8:04:05 AM - The MCEClientUX package is already up to date.
8:04:05 AM - The EpgListings package is already up to date.
8:04:05 AM - The MCEClientMaintenance package is already up to date.
8:04:05 AM - The NetworkMetadata package is not available.
8:04:05 AM - Testing internet connection.
8:04:05 AM - Connection established.
8:04:05 AM - Retrieving EpgListings.
8:04:06 AM - Processing EpgListings.
8:04:06 AM - Retrieving EpgListing-3.enc.
8:04:10 AM - Extracting 38617325_ListingData.mxf.
8:04:13 AM - Processing 38617325_ListingData.mxf. 
8:06:34 AM - Errors during the last update.   <----------
8:06:34 AM - Will retry at 10/23/2015 9:06:34 AM.

[RyC]

I've starting seeing that with the accompanying error entry "nettv package invalid". It shouldn't be an issue, it's still processing the EPG.

Also the thumbnails fix seems to just have been implemented today, I re-ran TV setup on my production machine (was on the auto-migrated lineup from zap2it which caused some issues but had correct thumbnails), got jumbled thumbnails at first, manually ran mcupdate, and the thumbnails were magically corrected!

[glorp]

The failure in this case is with guide headend 38617325 processing. I have multiple task runs from last night due to the error causing it to reschedule and the first one is clear where the trouble lies. "nettv package invalid" is just an old package that's no longer available and not the cause of this. This is EPG trouble. Most likely a formatting problem would be my guess.