Change frequency of guide data download?

[Cyterio]

Is there a registry key I can edit to change how often Media Center downloads guide data, or how long out the guide downloads data?

It seems like mine normally runs between 9-14 days out. If the data is available, I would love to download up to 30+days out if its available. Does anyone know if guide data is downloaded, and programming changes, does it update the data already previously downloaded? Or, does it just see that its already been downloaded and only update the new guide data not downloaded yet?

[smcmillan2]

Is there a registry key I can edit to change how often Media Center downloads guide data, or how long out the guide downloads data?

It seems like mine normally runs between 9-14 days out. If the data is available, I would love to download up to 30+days out if its available. Does anyone know if guide data is downloaded, and programming changes, does it update the data already previously downloaded? Or, does it just see that its already been downloaded and only update the new guide data not downloaded yet?

AFAIK you'll only get to 14 days out as that is all Zap2It provides. I don't know specifically what updating the guide data does, but I would be surprised if doing so didn't overwrite the current data vs. trying to determine what is new/different within the current data.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... dia-center

[Cyterio]

Thanks, that's what I thought. Im sure they limit it to 14 days for accuracy.

[CyberSimian]

Does anyone know if guide data is downloaded, and programming changes, does it update the data already previously downloaded?

I download the EPG manually once per week. After the download, if I go to the "History" panel (from "View Schedule"), it sometimes says something like:

"Programme XXX has been pre-empted by the broadcaster; programme YYY is broadcast instead."

The XXX programme is one that I had scheduled to record, and the time of its broadcast has changed since the previous download of the EPG. It might be postponed for a week (i.e. not occur at all on the scheduled day), or it might simply be broadcast earlier or later on the scheduled day.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[Space]

While I have seen WMC update the guide data of individual broadcasts with new information, I have also seen where data for a show airing 12 days out was downloaded and then the next day that show data was updated in zap2it, but that update never got reflected in WMC, even though it had 11 days in which to do it (in this case the episode was marked as a "repeat" and was changed to "new" in zap2it, but the "repeat" flag was never removed from WMC).

Also, if you have a series record set to record "new" episodes and there are any episodes of this show that have "generic" data (no episode-specific data) in the guide, they will all be marked to record (which is good).

If those episode are later updated with episode specific data, any that are marked as repeat will no longer be marked to record (again, good), however if one of those episodes is now marked as "new", it will continue to record that episode (good) but it will also record all repeats of that specific episode that are in the guide (I believe only the ones that were marked to record because they originally had "generic" data).
Example:
Lets say there are 5 generic episodes in the guide for your series recording (new only). All 5 of those will be marked to record.
An update comes in that gives all 5 of those episodes episode-specific information, like this:

6pm Episode A (Repeat)
7pm Episode B (Repeat)
8pm Episode C (New)
9pm Episode C (Repeat of new episode from 8pm)
10pm Episode C (Repeat of new episode from 8pm)

WMC will remove the red dot from the 6pm and 7pm airing, because they are repeats, however it will not remove the red dot from the 8pm airing because it is a new episode. So far so good... The problem comes with the repeats of the new episode, the 9pm and 10pm airing will also have a red dot and will also be recorded.
There must be some bug in WMC that does not properly "turn off" the recording of the repeats if those repeats are a repeat of a new episode.

Note that under normal circumstances, WMC behaves properly, in that it will only record one airing of a new episode, but under these specific conditions, it for some reason will record all occurrences of that new episode.