Cannot get a fully populated UK Freesat EPG (DVB-S) (1 Viewer)

Digsy

Portal Pro
August 29, 2018
206
21
53
Home Country
Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
I know this has been covered before (particularly in this thread) but I cannot get a compete EPG population for all the free-to-air satellite channels in the UK (Freesat).

I am using BBC1 HD as my TV EPG grab channel and "Freesat info" as the radio EPG grab channel. All other settings are as per the thread in the link above.

This works fine apart from the following channels:
5spike+1 (5spike is OK)
5star_1 (5star is OK)
BEN
Challenge (Challenge+1 is OK)
Channel4
Channel4 HD
Channel4+1
Craft Extra
E4+1 (E4 is OK)
Film4+1 (Film4 is OK)
Food Network
Food Network+1
Home & Health
Horse & Country
More 4 (More4+1 is OK)
MotorsportTV
Movies4Men (not sure if this is still broadcasting)
Movies4Men+1 (not sure if this is still broadcasting)
MyTV
Retro Movies (not sure if this is still broadcasting)
Travel Channel
Travel Channel+1
TruTV
TruTV+1

I have tried also selecting some of the missing channels as EPG grab channels in the TV EPG dialogue, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Logs attached.
 

Attachments

  • MediaPortal2-Logs-2019-06-24-21.37.59.zip
    6.2 MB

Jasmeet_181

Portal Pro
September 5, 2007
421
344
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
5Spike+1, 5Star+1, Ben, Channel 4 HD, Craft Extra, Home & Health (pay-tv, maybe you confused it with Home), Horse & Country, Movies4Men+1, MyTV, Retro Movies, Travel Channel and Travel Channel+1 aren't on Freesat. You can check their website or TVCL for a full list. There are options to use Sky's EPG or scrape their web guide e.g. EPG Collector or EPG-Buddy/WebGrab+Plus.

Motorsport.tv went online-only in October.
TruTV became True Crime in February and is closing at the end of the month.

[2019-06-24 08:00:04,561] [672837929] [EPG Update thread] [DEBUG] - IdleEpgGrabber: Challenge lastUpdate:06/24/2019 03:55:57
[2019-06-24 08:00:05,162] [672838531] [EPG Update thread] [DEBUG] - - Inserted 284 epg entries for channel Challenge

[2019-06-24 12:03:55,533] [687468901] [EPG Update thread] [DEBUG] - IdleEpgGrabber: Challenge lastUpdate:06/24/2019 08:00:05
[2019-06-24 12:03:56,136] [687469504] [EPG Update thread] [DEBUG] - - Inserted 284 epg entries for channel Challenge
Challenge should be working, there is another version under the same name, with Irish ads and no Freesat EPG, you may have added that to your channel groups.

Channel 4 moved a lot of their channels in November/December, Food Network and Movies4Men channels in January, Retro Movies this month, have you rescanned recently?
 

Mr Whippy

Portal Member
June 18, 2019
21
0
44
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Pretty sure I was watching C4 HD via MP2 the other night... which I was pretty chuffed with.

The channel was under the ‘sky’ umbrella, not ‘freesat’... only a handful of the hundreds scanned were using the freesat umbrella.

Sorry I don’t know the technical terms, I’m new to all this.

It seems C4 HD is still transmitted via that satellite, and is free to air on Sky?, but ‘freesat’ doesn’t support it.


I have a humax freesat box here, and MP2 seems to detect a lot of stuff the humax one doesn’t, especially the odd non-BBC HD channel.
 

Digsy

Portal Pro
August 29, 2018
206
21
53
Home Country
Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
Thanks for the replies, all.

Maybe I'm getting my terminology in a twist. I should say "free to air" rather than "Freesat". I definitely could in the not too distant past receive all those channels. I did used to use EPG collector and yes I did have to run two separate collections, one using "Freesat" settings and one using Sky free-to-air settings, but gradually I started to notice drop-outs in the data. I never managed to get the MP2 internal grabber to work at all until recently.

Just to be clear, I can still receive these channels, or most of them, or at least something is being broadcast (maybe the frequency has been re-purposed). But I can definitely still receive Channel 4, its just that I get no EPG for it. Also its really odd that in a lot of cases I can get an EPG for the "+1) channel, but not the non-timeshifted channel.

Maybe I will go back to EPG grabber and try again, then compare the list of channels with no EPG data to the channels that have moved or ceased broadcasting.
 

Mr Whippy

Portal Member
June 18, 2019
21
0
44
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
I think you can finely manage EPG data per channel, so use transmitted data where it works, and webepg etc where it’s missing.

I really struggled with epg data initially via the transmitted type.
MP2 doesn’t really tell you anything about why it’s not working, unless you debug, then it’s heavy reading.

I’ve had MP2 show EPG data when I’ve added just one transmitter (CbeebiesHD one), so I figure it’s not coming exclusively via a radio channel as sometimes stated.

Does freesat have those channels with missing epg data?


I’ve yet to get all channels I want fully working and tested.

It seems this is a bit of a black art.

Ie, media center misses loads of HD content and epg stuff on a scan, but you can add manually from the MP2 scan info.

But then the same channels MP2 can find miss epg data, but media center sees.

But maybe MP2 is just slower updating all epg info.
It took hours for a days worth of all my 400 ish channels to show up just for the coming hour or two!
 

Digsy

Portal Pro
August 29, 2018
206
21
53
Home Country
Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
OK, so I re-instated my two different EPG grabs with EPG Collector and made a "tvguide.lst" file to import them both. No changes to the EPG Collector config files since I used them for WMC back in the day.

Worked pretty well! I now have full EPG data for all my channels apart from:

Craft Extra (which I can't receive anymore)
Food Network (which I can't receive anymore)
Food Network+1 (which I can't...you can see where this is going)
Home & Health (as above)
Movies4Men (ditto)
Movies4Men+1 (you get the picture)
Retro Movies

I will try a re tune next to see if these channels come back, but for now: Problem 99% solved.
 

Jasmeet_181

Portal Pro
September 5, 2007
421
344
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
All of the FTA channels at 28.2°E are on Sky so there's not much point using Freesat too. Are the missing channels matched and saved in the XmlTv plugin's Mapping tab?

It seems C4 HD is still transmitted via that satellite, and is free to air on Sky?, but ‘freesat’ doesn’t support it.
Broadcasters have to pay to be on Freesat and Sky, last year Freesat changed how they charge broadcasters so that the fees are linked to the number of viewers. Channel 4's fees went up and they decided to withdraw All4 and Channel 4 HD. 4Music left Freesat a few weeks before them, which might also be related.

I’ve had MP2 show EPG data when I’ve added just one transmitter (CbeebiesHD one)
You'll only be able to get now and next data by ticking the individual channels on 28.2°E.

If you want to try EPG Collector, I posted a basic guide here. The next steps would have been to pick the correct ITVs for your region in EPG Collector and schedule EPG Collector to run by itself with Task Scheduler.
 

Brownard

Development Group
  • Team MediaPortal
  • March 21, 2007
    2,289
    1,872
    Home Country
    United Kingdom United Kingdom
    Hi, just to add to this
    I am using BBC1 HD as my TV EPG grab channel and "Freesat info" as the radio EPG grab channel. All other settings are as per the thread in the link above.
    The Freesat Info channel contains epg for both TV and radio, it's the only epg source I use and it seems to give me a complete freesat EPG. Make sure 'grab epg only for selected channel' is unchecked, and that the only channel that is checked is the freesat info channel. You should then be able to trigger an EPG grab from the manual control tab of TV Server Setup, a few minutes after it finishes you should have a full epg.
     

    Digsy

    Portal Pro
    August 29, 2018
    206
    21
    53
    Home Country
    Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
    Hi, just to add to this

    The Freesat Info channel contains epg for both TV and radio, it's the only epg source I use and it seems to give me a complete freesat EPG. Make sure 'grab epg only for selected channel' is unchecked, and that the only channel that is checked is the freesat info channel. You should then be able to trigger an EPG grab from the manual control tab of TV Server Setup, a few minutes after it finishes you should have a full epg.

    Using these settings do you get EPG data for all or some of the channels I listed in my first post? I'm guessing not, since some of them are free-to-air, but not on Freesat. I'd be interested to know which you do and dont get data for using the Freesat info channel.
     

    Digsy

    Portal Pro
    August 29, 2018
    206
    21
    53
    Home Country
    Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
    All of the FTA channels at 28.2°E are on Sky so there's not much point using Freesat too. Are the missing channels matched and saved in the XmlTv plugin's Mapping tab?

    Hmmmm. Yes and no. They looked as if they were mapped properly, but I re-ran the mapping with "partial match" ticked and even though the mapping did not appear to change, I now have EPG data for all the missing channels, even though I still cannot actually receive some of them.

    I am currently re-scanning to update any channels which might have moved to see if they come back.

    *EDIT* I managed to get a few more channels after the rescan but only after I went into the TV Channels list and made some changes manually, for example: After the rescan I had two "Food Networks". I had to delete the old one manually and add the new one. Shame MP2 couldn't recognise the change by itself.
     
    Last edited:

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom