UK - BBC2 EPG suddenly has several programs daily with 'No information' (1 Viewer)

[Anthony Vaughan]

Hi Owlsroost and JJDoherty

Okay, taking tonight, here is what MP is displaying:

In the Radio Times, the programs at 21:00 and 21:30, respectively, are 'Warren' and 'This Time with Alan Partridge'. At 15:50, MP shows 'No Information'.

Yesterday, at 21:00, MP was displaying Les Miserable when the Radio Times was showing Baptiste.

There are several other examples, over this weekend, of variations between what MP is picking up and the Radio Times (and the Broadcast EPG).

Hope this helps.

Tony

P.S. I'm using the Crystal Palace transmitter.

 

[CyberSimian]

In the Radio Times, the programs at 21:00 and 21:30, respectively, are 'Warren' and 'This Time with Alan Partridge' ... Yesterday, at 21:00, MP was displaying Les Miserable when the Radio Times was showing Baptiste.

My MP EPG shows the correct information:



The programme info that you mention is for programmes from a week or more ago. The MP client shows the contents of the SQL database. So it looks as though your SQL database contains out of date information. Is it possible that your editing of the SQL databse has not updated the database correctly? You may have made a change that has caused "TV Server" not to update the database with the current programme info.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[Anthony Vaughan]

Hi CyberSimian

Ah, I was thinking the same about the programs being from a week before but hadn't looked into it yet.

It is reassuring to know that you are seeing the correct information. I'm going the set 'Always try to update existing entries' ON to see if the inconsistencies are corrected.

I'll check to see whether anything I am doing is effecting the start time; good call from you

Thanks for the help.

Tony

 

[JJDoherty]

...I'm going the set 'Always try to update existing entries' ON to see if the inconsistencies are corrected...

That was it! Thanks for that. I just have to update my EPG more regularly that I was as I am pulling from a couple of different sources including the Freesat EPG.

 

[CyberSimian]

I'm going the set 'Always try to update existing entries' ON to see if the inconsistencies are corrected.

I just have to update my EPG more regularly than I was, as I am pulling from a couple of different sources including the Freesat EPG.

A couple of points:

(1) If it looks at though the EPG in the SQL database has become mixed-up, remember that you can use the "Reload DVB EPG" action in "TV Server Config" to clear-out your EPG and start again. (This will reload the DVB-T and/or DVB-S EPGs, but I don't think that it will run an EPG-import from an internet EPG -- you would need to initiate that yourself.)

(2) I am not a "TV Server" expert, but I was under the impression that "TV Server" tries to act intelligently(!) when acquiring the EPG. In particular, I think that it won't update an entry in the database if it thinks that the entry in the database is newer than the entry about to be added. This can happen when you are using multiple EPG sources. What this implies is that there are some dependencies on timestamps, which may or may not be stored where you think they are. (Of course, I may have imagined all of this. )

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[Owlsroost]

It is reassuring to know that you are seeing the correct information. I'm going the set 'Always try to update existing entries' ON to see if the inconsistencies are corrected.

I had the same incorrect entries as you had (for this evening) - doing a complete refresh (via the TV Server config app) fixed it, so the broadcast EPG data has changed since a week ago - as CyberSimian suggests.

AFAIK with off-air DVB EPG data, unless you have 'Always try to update existing entries' enabled, once an EPG entry is created in the database it's not replaced even if the data is different to the existing entry.

 

[Anthony Vaughan]

Hi CyberSimian

I have gone through all of my code and nothing anywhere updates the start time and end time fields in the program table. Furthermore, my software clears down all programs with a start time of more than two days ago. Therefore, I can only assume that an EPG download got 'muxed ip' and placed programs scheduled for a week ago in this week's schedule. I don't know if that has been noticed by anyone else.

Setting 'Always try to update existing entries' to ON did rectify the EPG. I am going to do some testing to see whether 'Always try to update' does update every entry.

Tony

 

[Anthony Vaughan]

Hi Owlsroost

Thank you for that. It confirms that it is unlikely to be my software that has caused to issue - phew...had me worried there.

My app updates the MP database every hour and, so far (5 hours), even though I have 'Always try to update' switched ON, the EPG has not removed my apps' changes. I'll keep reviewing this and report back.

Tony

 

[Anthony Vaughan]

Okay, done some testing and can confirm that, as Owlsroost said, 'Always try to update' does overwrite all entries, though it may be several hours before it does so. As this overwrites my changes I will need to consider a workaround. Perhaps I should set 'Always try to update' manually once a week. If I could predict exactly when the EPG would be updated I could schedule my code to process some time after the EPG update, but I suspect MP executes the EPG gathering as when expeditious.

I am now beginning to suspect that this EPG issue happens irrespective of whether the source is WebEPG or broadcast media, since I have had erroneous program listing occur when sourcing the EPG from both sources.

CyberSimian: you said that you need to use the gather the EPG when idle setting. Is that because your PC struggled for resources when gathering the EPG while streaming video, or some other reason? I think the TVService is quite resource intensive so I try to minimize the number of processes I allow to run on that machine. Do you find that only collecting EPG when idle is sufficient to keep your EPG up-to-date, because the help text suggests we start with the gather the EPG when streaming and add the other option when satisfied that the first option is satisfactory. It seems to me that it would be better to collect the EPG when the system is idle. What do you think?

Tony

 

[CyberSimian]

you said that you need to use the gather the EPG when idle setting. Is that because your PC struggled for resources when gathering the EPG while streaming video, or some other reason?

I originally used both ways of collecting the EPG. But I found on several occasions that the system got into a state where all of the tuners appeared to be in use, with the result that scheduled recordings (or attempts to watch live TV) failed. This happened when some tuners should have been idle (I have 8 tuners!). So I changed to use only "grab when idle".

Since then, I have revised my view, and I think that the problem may have been caused by some defective motherboard BIOS (one of the tuner cards goes missing on wake from sleep), and/or having two identical tuner cards in the system (two TBS 6284). I now run one TBS 6284 card (DVB-T2) plus two Pinnacle 2000i cards (DVB-T). (I already had the Pinnacles, from the time before DVB-T2 arrived at my location.)

My system is a 4-core Intel Q6600 (Dell XPS 420), so I don't think that system load is a problem, and I probably could try grabbing the EPG both ways.

In your case, you could disable "grab EPG while time-shifting", and enable "grab EPG while idle", with a grabbing timeout of (say) 15 minutes, and a refresh interval of 24 hours. If you then schedule your HTPC to wake overnight, it would grab the EPG, and you could run your EPG-edit tool. The UK EPG appears to be 7 full days plus the remainder of the current day, with the EPG for the 8th day being added shortly after midnight. So if you scheduled the HTPC to wake at (say) 03:00 hours, you would get all of the changes to the existing EPG, plus the EPG for the 8th day that was added at midnight. It may be possible to use "PowerScheduler" to trigger this wake (and maybe even to run your EPG-edit tool).

Although "grabbing while timeshifting" can receive last-minute schedule changes, in the UK it is perhaps only a minor advantage, because the schedules don't change at the last minute that often. When I was using Vista WMC, the Microsoft internet EPG was 14 days, but I used to download it only once per week , so definitely no chance of getting last-minute updates there.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK