Tools and other software EPG-Buddy a new EPG Tool with easy usage. (3 Viewers)

[rtkeen]

Hi, I just discovered EPG Buddy and installed it today. I am in the US, and I have a TV Guide account with my location, source, and favorites identified, so I attempted to use that. When I have it get EPG data, it comes back blank. Attached are the log files that get generated, if that helps. Any idea why it might not be working?

Update: when I have it try to get the EPG data, a command window appears and I can briefly see "Unhandled exception ....", but then it disappears to quickly for me to get all of the information. Is there a way to capture the exception information?

Further update: I have been able to capture the exception information:
Log Name: Application
Source: .NET Runtime
Date: 8/17/2020 5:18:33 PM
Event ID: 1026
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Study-HBPC
Description:
Application: EPG-Grabber.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.NullReferenceException
at EPG_Grabber.cTVGuide_com.GetLineUpID(Boolean)
at EPG_Grabber.cTVGuide_com.GrabEPG(Boolean, Int32)
at EPG_Grabber.cTVGuide_com.LeseSenderliste()
at EPG_Grabber.mMain.Main()


Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name=".NET Runtime" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">1026</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2020-08-17T21:18:33.1608900Z" />
<EventRecordID>9361</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="0" ThreadID="0" />
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>Study-HBPC</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>Application: EPG-Grabber.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.NullReferenceException
at EPG_Grabber.cTVGuide_com.GetLineUpID(Boolean)
at EPG_Grabber.cTVGuide_com.GrabEPG(Boolean, Int32)
at EPG_Grabber.cTVGuide_com.LeseSenderliste()
at EPG_Grabber.mMain.Main()

</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
You are not using the most recent version of EPG-Buddy. You can find it in the first post as usual and I'll add the link here too.

https://modellbahnblog.de/buddy-tools/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/EPG-Buddy_0.6.0.14.zip

The reason why you need the most recent version is, tvguide.com has changed their minimum needed TLS version to V1.2. This is included in the version 0.6.0.14 (or up) of EPG-Buddy.
Aside this it can be necessary (if you are still using Windows 7) to activate TLS1.2 at first:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3140245

 

[rtkeen]

I did download the ZIP file from the first post, and the file is marked EPG-Buddy_0.6.0.14.zip. I am also running Windows 10. In going through these posts, I also found that you had posted 320495_320491_EPG-Grabber_0.121.18.zip as a fix for TV guide, so I have downloaded and installed that as well. So I should be using the right version.

 

[Lehmden]

Hi. In your log I could see the version number of the file EPG-Grabber.exe and it is not the most recent one.

[2020-08-17 16:53:19,237] [INFO ] [START ] [0 ] ApplicationCore: Version : 0.121.18 (1/19/2020)

You see it's from January, 19th The recent version I'm using is:

[2020-08-18 09:14:39,945] [INFO ] [START ] [0 ] ApplicationCore: Version : 0.150.185 (04.07.2020)

is from 4th of July (it's German date format...).
With the old version 0.121.18 you are still using it's impossible that tvguide.com is working. You definitely need to replace the old version with the recent one. I've attached it here again especially for you.
Replace the file in the EPG-Buddy installation folder with the one attached here and you should be good to go.

 

[rtkeen]

OK, that worked ... I must have overthought it too much.

Now I see that when I have it go get guide data that it seems to go in a continuous loop. After it writes EPG-Grabber.TVGuide.TVGUIDE_1, it starts all over again. I let it go for a couple of hours and it just kept going. I finally stopped it manually and got MediaPortal to read the data. Did I misconfigure something to cause it to continuously get and parse the data? I had done a manual guide update.

By the way, thank you very much for being patient with me. I really do appreciate your help!

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
The grabbing is a two pass thing. The first pass is to download the raw data from tvguide.com. This is normally really fast (only a few minutes). The second pass is to compare the EPG data with TVDB to add missing season and episodes numbers and also missing descriptions to TV shows in the resulting EPG. This takes it's time as there are thousands and thousands of episodes to compare... EPG-Buddy caches the information downloaded so on the second, third,... run this time decreases a lot. The very first time may last several hours depending on your internet speed and the amount of channels/days you have... You can disable the whole comparing, if you are not interested in those extras. Then it will take only some minutes to grab the data. And you also can (and should) disable this for some channels, eg news or sports channels who don't air TV shows...
Personally I have about 60 channels I grab EPG for and about 35 channels to compare with TVDB. . The first run lasts about 7-8 hours. Next day this lasts only 45 minutes. If you have several hundreds of channels it will probably last many hours on first run. There is no way to avoid this excerpt with skipping the compare completely...

Once all is settled and running invisible in the background, the needed time is not that important any more. Especially if the system where EPG-Buddy is installed on is running 24/7...

 

[TheMeltz]

As a longtime Media Center user (Windows 8.1), I knew the time would come that I'd have to find an alternative, especially needing to move to Windows 10. I have been trying to get MediaPortal 2 and EPG Buddy to work. I think I had finally figured out all the issues (mainly time shifting), but then left it alone for a few months. Now that Media Center EPG data is finally done, I came back to try getting this to work again.

I had been using an older version of this tool (0.5.0.4) with TVGuide.com for quite some time, but something made it stop working. I uninstalled, then found and installed the newest version (0.6.0.14). I've reconfigured and try grabbing data, but the log is showing my e-mail address and password are incorrect.

I went to reset the password (successfully) and login to TVGuide.com. So far, so good. I logout of TVGuide.com then login again to make sure everything is still okay, and it is.

Then I set the password in EPG Buddy and try to grab data. It fails with the same message:

[2020-09-02 23:05:21,094] [INFO ] [TVGUIDE ] [4 ] result: {"status":"failed","message":"<ul class=\"user-form-messages\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<li class=\"user-form-messages-message user-form-messages-message-info\">Are you sure you have an account? If not, click <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvguide.com\/user\/register\/\">here<\/a> to create one.<\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/ul>\n"}

When I try to login to TVGuide.com, it tells me my username and password are incorrect.

Any ideas?

 

[Lehmden]

Any ideas?

There is something wrong with your tvguide.com credentials. Nothing I can do about, sorry...

 

[TheMeltz]

There is something wrong with your tvguide.com credentials. Nothing I can do about, sorry...

I'm guessing it must be something with Windows 8.1. I just tried from a Windows 10 machine and it seems to be working fine. The plan is to use Windows 10 anyway, so I guess this is a good thing. I just wanted to test on my existing setup before wiping out and starting over.

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
Ok, now I probably got a clue what's happend. Tvguide.com requests TLS V1.2 as a minimum since some month. We had to patch EPG-Buddy to use TLS 1.2, that's why we released the latest version. I don't know much about Win 8.1 (went straight from Win 7 to Win 10) but at least in Win 7 TLS V1.2 is not activated by default. If you want to use tvguide.com you need to fiddle around getting TLS 1.2 activated. It's independent of using EPG-Buddy or other tools...
Probably this is the same for Win 8.1. This would explain your issue...