[HELP US] Getting those DVB EPG issues fixed (2 Viewers)

[Arn01805]

I'm going in some deeper in the EPG grabbing stuff and checked the logfiles. I see some odd behaviour.

epg grabbing when idle has a timeout of 10 min and refresh of 240 min (epg.bak.txt)
epg grabbing while timeshifting is enabled and has a timeout of 2 minutes (epg.log), I enabled this later to get better EPG

I see the regrabbing occurs on diferent intervals, sometimes 3 hours, sometime 3 minutes. What I also see is that before grabbing, the table with epg entries gets cleared and after getting the new epg data the logs sometimes say:

2008-01-02 07:21:33.930384 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:1 :3 NOS Politiek 24 not needed lastUpdate:2-1-2008 6:31:38

So, I think this will result in no EPG data at all, something I often see. There must be something wrong to first delete the epg entries in the table and later decide that no update is needed because epg is already up-to-date

When I enable EPG while timeshifting together with the EPG idle method , I've more chance that I see something in my EPG guide. EPG will continuisly switch between 3 days view and now/next view. It seems like with this enabled the behaviour is as folows:

1. when didn't view tv for a while, I have good epg view, filled with 3 days of data (must be epg from card 1 DVB-C); maybe i'm lucky everytime, but last 5 times I checked, the view is okay immediatly after switching tv on.
2. when I start watching TV (1st priority is card 6 DVB-S with now/next EPG), the full available epg data for the channels in this transponder will be replaced with now/next only, so I loose the 3 day epg view.
3. when turning TV off and restart in about 2 hours, epg guide is filled again with full 3 day data.

See the attached logs, if you need me to do some more testing, let me know what information you'll want.

SVN is 12-31-2007--01-07h--Rev16789

 

[Arn01805]

Just read on a dutch sat forum that my DVB-S provider (Canal Digitaal NL) also has 2,5 days MHW EPG, so I don't understand why I get now/next EPG. Are there extra settings to do to enable MHW? In the Log I just noticed that for all channels I get (they are available and configured to store EPG data):

2008-01-02 11:29:45.005636 [5]: Epg: card:6 start grab DVBS:tv:CANALDIGITAAL EPG Freq:12515000 ONID:53 TSID:1105 SID:7199 PMT:88E FTA:True LCN:3161 SymbolRate:22000 Modulation:ModNotSet Polarisation:LinearH InnerFecRate:Rate5_6 DisEqcimpleB band:Universal Pilot:NotSet RollOff:NotSet
2008-01-02 11:31:09.063294 [4]: dvb:mhw ready MHW 2462 titles found
2008-01-02 11:31:09.063294 [4]: dvb:dvb ready.EPG 36 channels
2008-01-02 11:31:09.235159 [4]: Epg: card:6 received epg for 54 channels
2008-01-02 11:31:09.235159 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:6 Remove old programs from database
2008-01-02 11:31:09.672634 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:6 Updating database with new programs
2008-01-02 11:31:09.672634 [EPG Update thread]: EPG: no channel found for TV Noord networkid:0x3 transportid:0xC8B serviceid:0x514A
2008-01-02 11:31:09.672634 [EPG Update thread]: EPG: no channel found for TV Oost networkid:0x3 transportid:0xC8B serviceid:0x514E
2008-01-02 11:31:09.672634 [EPG Update thread]: EPG: no channel found for Discovery Scienc networkid:0x3 transportid:0xC82 serviceid:0x1798
2008-01-02 11:31:09.672634 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:6 :4 Tel Sell not needed lastUpdate:2-1-2008 10:33:49
2008-01-02 11:31:09.688258 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:6 :5 Film1.3 not needed lastUpdate:2-1-2008 10:38:28
2008-01-02 11:31:09.688258 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:6 :6 NGC not needed. Channel not configured to grab/store epg
2008-01-02 11:31:09.703882 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:6 :7 Vitaya not needed. Channel not configured to grab/store epg
2008-01-02 11:31:09.703882 [EPG Update thread]: EPG: no channel found for TV Gelderland networkid:0x3 transportid:0xC8B serviceid:0x5150
2008-01-02 11:31:09.703882 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:6 :9 RNN7 not needed. Channel not configured to grab/store epg

.....
.....

2008-01-02 11:31:09.860123 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:6 :52 Sport1 not needed. Channel not configured to grab/store epg
2008-01-02 11:31:09.875747 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:6 :53 LCP not needed. Channel not configured to grab/store epg
2008-01-02 11:31:09.875747 [EPG Update thread]: Epg: card:6 :54 TV Oranje not needed. Channel not configured to grab/store epg
2008-01-02 11:31:09.891371 [EPG Update thread]: dvb:cancel epg->stop graph
2008-01-02 11:31:09.891371 [EPG Update thread]: epg grabber:epg cancelled
2008-01-02 11:31:09.891371 [EPG Update thread]: dvb:cancel epg->stop graph
2008-01-02 11:31:09.891371 [EPG Update thread]: epg grabber:epg cancelled

So, got a lot of ?????? at this moment. What's going on.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

MHW EPG

Wondering if this may be related to this support plugin https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...mhegplugin-t12856.html?t=12856&highlight=mheg

 

[dalmer]

arn01805,

If you have ANY channel set to grab that only carries a 2hour (now/next) epg, it may be overwriting the longer epg. Right now that is the behaviour of the grabbers. If dell would get me my hard drive for my HTPC, I would be able to take a look at fixing this as this issue really bothers me as well. I was hoping to get to it over the holidays but Christmas Eve my BRAND NEW hard drive died.

At any rate, this is causing a lot of users pain, but it has to be done right or their may be perfomance issues. Hopefully I will get the drive by Fri. In the meantime, there is always a possibility that Gemx may have time to fix it, but he is a busy guy and I think he is one of the few that knows the filters in detail. So he has a lot of ground to cover.

In the mean time, check that only the channels with the long epg are set to grab...

 

[Arn01805]

dalmer,

thanks for your exlaination. I hope Dell can fix your HD ASAP.. :-P I just wait for now, I read the entire thread again and I'm in the progress to beginning to understand the issue now. I see that my testing was wrong too, I should only use EPG while timeshifting.. Ohh.. I should read more careful.. LOL

I have still one burning question to go. Do you know if in the 'roadmap' for DVB-EPG there will be support for turning on/off dvbcards for epg grabbing or at least combining(updating each other) them in stead of overwriting.

What I mean is the following:

For dutch TV I have about 15 channels wich I receive by DVB-C and DVB-S. The quality of DVB-S is better as DVB-C so I combine the channels for both cards and use the priority settings to prefer DVB-S over DVB-C. For watching/recording, this is exactly the way I want it to be and this works perfect. If I don't combine the channels, I don't have a fail-over for schedueled recordings.

I'm only afraid that this will still be problematic with the EPG as it is now, because both sources send the EPG on the channels, and both sources with different lenght of EPG will replace eachother.

If you're in the process of looking at this issue, can you have my concern in mind too, it would be nice if this could be fixed in any way?

If I can test something for you, just let me know what I can do and what data I can provide to help.

Thanks again.

 

[gemx]

Hi,
just finished work on the epg grabber:
- completely reworked the db update routines
- epg infos are no longer cleared before inserting
- heavy code cleanups (both grabbers now use the same class to insert the epg infos)
- gap detection (added a new db column to table "Channel" called epgHasGaps). This will be used to fill gaps in the guide for certain channels
- The idle grabber should now be more stable.

So, let's see how the changes work

The changes are in svn since rev 16856

 

[The_Stig]

great news! Will test and report!

 

[dalmer]

Lets all give Gemx a big round of applause for a much anticipated feature. I haven't tested yet, but the details sound great.

Arn01805,
I'm not an official Deveoper (maybe someday ), so I don't have access to any roadmaps as such. But you can certainlly control if a dvb card updates the epg or not. Just turn off the Epg grabber for all the channels on that card and then it will update nothing...

Gemx,
I've been curious about the gaps in the epg. In MT there is epg info where gaps appear in MediaPortals guide. Is this because during periodic epg updates eventually the gaps get filled in? If that is so, then I'm guessing the stream must have gaps in the guide?

 

[Cybertex]

Hi,
just finished work on the epg grabber

Hi, gemx. The "TV Guide disappearing" problem is solved, for me. Your fix works great. Now I have the webepg guide, and DVB-T EPG where needed, without deletions.

I'll try also the idle epg grabber to see if problems about tvservice not responding are gone too.

Thanks!

 

[gemx]

I'll try also the idle epg grabber to see if problems about tvservice not responding are gone too.

Thanks, that would be nice, because that's another thing i try to fix atm