[Bug] Not retrieving EPG for some channels (4 Viewers)

[doveman]

Shouldn't it get these OTA the same as all the other channels?

sorry, didn't get your question.
I need TSID, ONID and SID for those channels that have no EPG. And combination of these 3 parameters is unique (applied to one frequency).

Sure, I guessed that's what you probably meant and added this data to my previous post.

Sorry about the epg.log, I must have attached it before I did the second scan. Here's a better one[DOUBLEPOST=1363029513][/DOUBLEPOST]

Are you guys sure these channels do provide EPG? Have you got some other chance to check if they have EPG (via settop box or tv card software)?

As Owlsroost says, UK Freeview carries the entire EPG data on each Mux (and yes, all Freeview channels have EPG data and I had it in MP until I did a scan recently), so in my case I just have MediaPortal set to grab the EPG on BBC One. If you tick more than one channel, it repeats the entire grab making it take twice as long (i.e. about 14mins instead of 7min). Before I realised this was how it worked, I used to have all the channels ticked and MediaPortal would go into an endless loop of grabbing the EPG on each of the channels, because by the time it had finished it was time to start all over again!

 

[doveman]

I did a complete uninstall of TV Server and database and reinstalled 1.3beta to see if it was any different. It's now got the following on CH.10000
BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, BBC News, BBC Parliament, 301, 302, Red Button, CBBC, CBeebies.

Strangely I can't get it to update the EPG at all now and it's stuck in the "allow grabbing for x seconds loop", even if I stop and restart the grabber, start timeshifting then stop it and start the grabber, try grabbing on Ch.4 instead of BBC One.

EDIT: Ah, it seems I just needed to leave it longer. I was going by the previous log where it only took 90s

2013-03-11 16:24:31.810156 [DVB EPG timer(4)]: EpgCard: card: 6 starting to grab DVBT:tv: BBC ONE Freq:490000 ONID:9018 TSID:4164 SID:4164 PMT:0x64 FTA:True LCN:1 BandWidth:8
2013-03-11 16:25:01.830390 [(13)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 30.0202345 seconds on card 6
2013-03-11 16:25:31.843151 [(21)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 60.0329956 seconds on card 6
2013-03-11 16:26:01.865879 [(13)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 90.0557236 seconds on card 6
2013-03-11 16:26:25.001049 [(4)]: dvb:mhw ready MHW 0 titles found
2013-03-11 16:26:25.001049 [(4)]: dvb:dvb ready.EPG 130 channels

but this one needed 330s

2013-03-12 14:19:54.334270 [DVB EPG timer(17)]: EpgCard: card: 2 starting to grab DVBT:tv: BBC ONE Freq:490000 ONID:9018 TSID:4164 SID:4164 PMT:0x64 FTA:True LCN:1 BandWidth:8
2013-03-12 14:20:24.353987 [(17)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 30.018717 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:20:54.364704 [(4)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 60.0294335 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:21:24.369420 [(4)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 90.0351497 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:21:54.393137 [(16)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 120.0578669 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:22:24.399854 [(4)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 150.0655833 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:22:54.422571 [(4)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 180.0873004 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:23:24.437288 [(4)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 210.1020172 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:23:54.452004 [(4)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 240.1167339 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:24:24.467721 [(16)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 270.1314507 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:24:54.482438 [(4)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 300.1471675 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:25:24.495155 [(16)]: EpgCard: allow grabbing for 330.1598841 seconds on card 2
2013-03-12 14:25:25.155192 [(18)]: dvb:mhw ready MHW 0 titles found
2013-03-12 14:25:25.157192 [(18)]: dvb:dvb ready.EPG 130 channels

Anyway, it's still not grabbing EPG data for the channels listed currently on Ch.10000. It's weird because on some scans I end up with Ch4, etc not getting EPG data and then another time it's BBC2, etc that doesn't and Ch.4, etc is fine. It looks like this time it also failed to get any of the BBC radio channels either.

 

[elliottmc]

Why not tick one of the channels that isn't generating EPG data to grab from?

 

[doveman]

Why not tick one of the channels that isn't generating EPG data to grab from?

As Owlsroost has said "UK Freeview carries EPG data for all of the muxes on each mux, so you can get EPG data for all channels from just tuning one channel". BBC One, Two, Three and Four and the other channels that I'm not getting EPG data for are all on the same Mux (presently anyway. As I say, it seems to randomly change between these channels and Ch4, etc whenever I do a new scan) so grabbing from BBC Two would be getting the data from the same source as grabbing from BBC One, as I am currently. http://www.ukfree.tv/txdetail.php?a=TQ339712

I've tried it anyway and have attached the log showing it doesn't help.

Unless something is seriously wrong with Freeview at the moment, in which case you'd think it would be widely known by now as it would be affecting loads of people, then it shouldn't matter which channel is used to grab the EPG data because every mux carries the entire set of data.

 

[elliottmc]

I really can't imagine that anything is wrong with freeview, since it will affect people with digital TV's, etc.

A screenshot of the EPG configuration screens (general settings and EPG by channel) might help. I really am inclined to suspect that there is some aspect of this configuration that you are not understanding. It isn't the clearest part of configuration, so that is in no way intended as a criticism.

 

[doveman]

You're right that the EPG config is confusing but since I learnt (from DJBlu) that MP requires me to only select one channel to grab the EPG from, it's been working fine until now and I haven't changed the settings. https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...-preventing-standby.104613/page-5#post-894507

As SimondusMaximus and Owlsroost have confirmed, it's not just me and this has started happening recently for them too.

On the DVB EPG tab I have everything ticked except "grab EPG only for channels on same transponder" and the first timeout set to 2mins and the second set to 10mins/240mins. On the TV EPG grabber tab I have only BBC One and English ticked (I just noticed that ticking English ticks all the variants, such as English (United States), English (UK), as well as does ticking one of the variants, so there's no way to just tick English (UK) for example.

I know "Store data only for selected channels" doesn't apply to Freeview so I leave that unticked. Maybe it's been fixed since then but I don't think it's useful for Freeview, when the EPG is all grabbed from one channel anyway. https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/epg-grabber-not-grabbing-as-expected.106821/

The grabbing seems to be taking longer and longer, with it taking only 90s before, then 330s and now 570s. I don't think I had any languages ticked on this run though, so maybe that makes it take longer. I just re-did the scan with English (and all it's variants) ticked and it took 330s again, so perhaps if just a single variant could be ticked it would be even quicker?

 

[SimondusMaximus]

I've just installed 1.3 Final and created a fresh database, scanned for channels and same problem occurs as before, i.e. ITV2, Channel 4, More 4, E4, Channel 4+1 and Channel 5 are listed as 10000. Also got 2 x Dave Ja Vu's on channel 25 and 791.

The 10000 channels all playback fine and I didn't get any duplicates. Incidentally these are on the same transponder, yet the 2 other channels (ITV, ITV +1) have the correct numbers.

Anyway, I selected Channel 5 to grab the EPG (using the default DVB EPG settings) and this time it's collected everything fine. I also have the same 570 second delay at the start of the grab, as mentioned by doveman.

Out of interest I did a scan on my TV's built-in Freeview tuner (he he, old school!) and that's grabbed and ordered all channels and EPG successfully.

So, aside from having to renumber the 6 errant channels (which I've never had to do in the past) everything's OK.

As an aside....massive thanks to all involved with 1.3!

 

[elliottmc]

I see you have freeview and freesat. Perhaps this is why you get duplicates, although I have occasionally seen duplicate channels when tuning several different cards. I just combine the channels and see no problems.

Maybe the EPG data isn't all transmitted on each transponder. Maybe doveman also needs to try grabbing from a different channel/transponder.

 

[jameson_uk]

The channel 1000 issue is most likely a different issue (and I think a bug) to the EPG grabbing. It appears that got me a recent scan pointed out the the channel 4 channels and itv2 plus ITV +1 changed their TSID (think it was this one) so got picked up as new channels.

 

[doveman]

Tried grabbing with Ch5 instead of BBC One but it still hasn't grabbed any data for BBC2, etc.

I imagine STB are probably set to grab the EPG from BBC One as it's probably considered the most reliable (maybe they use a second mux as backup as well but each mux doubles the time required to update, so I'm not sure if they would), so if there was an issue with Freeview it would be affecting STB as well.

I don't have a STB to test with but I found DVBGuide which I was able to grab the EPG data with. It defaults to the 506Mhz mux, which carries ITV2+1, ITV3, etc. It's got the EPG for BBC Two, which you can check by searching the dvbepg.xml file for X10BF which is the ID it's assigned to BBC Two. All the other BBC channels appear to have data as well.

I'll do another run on 490Mhz which is the BBC Mux.