EPG doesn't download automatically when MCE is off for a while

[felixmarks]

Hi,

Please could you let me know how to get around the following problem?

I don't use my MCE for watching live TV - it's too unreliable. Instead I'm using a $200 TEAC set top box and that works just fine. However, I am using my MCE to record stuff and I have an ICETV guide subscription. So far this is all fine.

However, if I haven't turned the MCE on for a few days, and even though MCE is set to automatically download the EPG when it's connected to the internet, the guide is never downloaded.

I'm looking for a way to get MCE to turn the machine on to download the guide and then switch itself off again. I asked ICETV and they suggested I could set up a regular recording of some show which would give MCE a chance to download the EPG. Not a bad suggestion but I'd like something that doesn't use any disk space!

Any ideas?

Thanks, Felix.

[ExtremePC]

Originally Posted by felixmarks

Hi,

Please could you let me know how to get around the following problem?

I don't use my MCE for watching live TV - it's too unreliable. Instead I'm using a $200 TEAC set top box and that works just fine. However, I am using my MCE to record stuff and I have an ICETV guide subscription. So far this is all fine.

However, if I haven't turned the MCE on for a few days, and even though MCE is set to automatically download the EPG when it's connected to the internet, the guide is never downloaded.

I'm looking for a way to get MCE to turn the machine on to download the guide and then switch itself off again. I asked ICETV and they suggested I could set up a regular recording of some show which would give MCE a chance to download the EPG. Not a bad suggestion but I'd like something that doesn't use any disk space!

Any ideas?

Thanks, Felix.

I use BladerunnerPro, It sets up a scheduled task that silently downloads the guide for MCE to use next time it does the update. If you go into the task properties and put a tick in the box to "wake up" the PC, and then put the PC into Standby mode. It will wake up the PC download the guide then put the PC back to sleep at the scheduled time.

In your situation, when you started MCE next, MCE would then download the guide data bladerunner has cached to the hard disk.

PS. What do you mean by unreliable?

[felixmarks]

Hi and thanks for the reply. I'll take a look at BladerunnerPro.

MCE is unreliable in quite a number of ways:

- MCE crashes every other day
- Wi-fi adapter freezes every few days
- Channels change really slowly
- Scanning backwards and forwards introduces weird out-of-sync problems
- I travel a lot but my girlfriend doesn't. I can't leave her with MCE since she can't fix all the problems each time they happen. It's just easier for her to use something that's reliable
- I'm sick and tired of my girlfriend laughing at the unreliability of MCE - she paid for half of it
- She refers to MCE as Merdey Centre (that's an unflattering French joke in case you didn't know)

Hopefully the next version of MCE will be more robust. I also hope it supports my hardware! In the meantime, it works well as a recorder with the ICETV integration.

Cheers, Felix.

[ExtremePC]

Originally Posted by felixmarks

Hi and thanks for the reply. I'll take a look at BladerunnerPro.

MCE is unreliable in quite a number of ways:

- MCE crashes every other day
- Wi-fi adapter freezes every few days
- Channels change really slowly
- Scanning backwards and forwards introduces weird out-of-sync problems
- I travel a lot but my girlfriend doesn't. I can't leave her with MCE since she can't fix all the problems each time they happen. It's just easier for her to use something that's reliable
- I'm sick and tired of my girlfriend laughing at the unreliability of MCE - she paid for half of it
- She refers to MCE as Merdey Centre (that's an unflattering French joke in case you didn't know)

Hopefully the next version of MCE will be more robust. I also hope it supports my hardware! In the meantime, it works well as a recorder with the ICETV integration.

Cheers, Felix.

I can understand you gf's nickname for MCE, but it sounds like you have a badly set up PC. Give some details if you please, and we could probably tame the beast.

[felixmarks]

It's a Shuttle XPC, 512MB RAM, 250 GB Disk. It came with a Dvico DVB-T PCI card and has a Netgear USB WiFi adapter.

I have reinstalled the OS twice on recommendation from xpmediacentre.com.au threads which have solved problems, e.g. buttons on the remote not fully working.

I've ensured that all updates from Microsoft, ATI and Netgear are installed.

Windows XP seems pretty stable; it hasn't crashed or become unusable. It's usually the MCE software that crashes.

There are no partially installed / conflicting devices and there's no other software installed, i.e. just MCE.

I'm reasonably savvy about computing (Microsoft, Unix, apps, networks etc.) so I don't think I've done anything particularly silly. This particular problem looks very much like an application problem, i.e. MCE.

When we're not using MCE, we put the machine into standby to stop wasting electricity. Perhaps this is related to our problems ...

Anyway, any help gratefully received!

[impact]

felixmarks - there is no reason to put up with all that... many users here have wonderful MCE setups that perform well...

Maybe with some more info and help here we can improve your experience!

[ExtremePC]

OKay, I can see a few issues straight off, If you permit me to be a bit brutal I'll elaborate.

Shuttle systems can be summed up in one word "compromise" as I suspected and confirmed (I searched your earlier posts) you have an onboard video card probably running on an intel chipset.

To use an analogy, how well do you think your system would run Doom3 in 1600 x 1400 with all the filtering turned on. Not good I suspect, well thats about as stressful a load as MCE places on a system. Its one thing to say XP runs okay on the system but again, so? I've installed XP on a 486 machine and it was okayish untill you actually started using it.

The tuner card you have is definately not a quick channel changer, Personal Recomendations go to Avermedia a16a (not the version with the analog tuner as well).

512Mb on a system with onboard video really only gives you whatever is left over after you set the Video Ram in the BIOS, looking at one of your earlier post you have set the BIOS to 128Mb for video so that leaves you with 384Mb system ram. On top of that its probably not even very well spec'd ram (generic DDR 400 would be my guess).

You have a 250Gb hard disk, this is very good, BUT since XP and MCE's Recording / Bufferning is using the same physical drive (same heads) your going to get a significant performance hit. But you may not be able to do anything about this because space inside a shuttle PC is limited.

The Netgear USB wifi is a nice unit but you may have read of interference issues with tuners and Wifi, you could probably improve things by using a usb extension cable and moving the wifi as far away from the system as possible.
Have you tweaked XP to get the most out of your system? Too many things to list here but some are:
Turning off all the "fancy" interface ****e (shadowing, tooltips, Fade effects etc)
Removed unecessary service
Disabled unecessary startup items and TSR's (how many items do you have nextto the system clock?)

[felixmarks]

Goodness me. Looks like I've bought a lemon. My MCE came as a package, i.e. hardware and software pre-installed - turnkey, if you will.

I won't mention what company it came from since I haven't passed your comments onto them yet for their response. I will post their response here though.

To answer your other questions, I do have the USB adapter positioned well away from the MCE using the extension cable Netgear supplied.

I haven't installed any other apps but I will turn everything off that's not needed. Sounds like it’s not going to be enough though …

Cheers, Felix.

[felixmarks]

ExtremePC,

I downloaded BladerunnerPro and it's clearly a very brilliant piece of software - all credit to the author.

I have a follow-on question for you. Do you know if it's possible to run a script or program to tell MCE that the new EPG needs to be updated? I'm looking for something I can run from a batch script that does the equivalent of using the remote control to tell MCE to download the most recent guide. That would enable me to tie the whole process of download and update whilst keeping the machine off for most of the time.

Thanks, Felix.

[ExtremePC]

Originally Posted by felixmarks

ExtremePC,

I downloaded BladerunnerPro and it's clearly a very brilliant piece of software - all credit to the author.

I have a follow-on question for you. Do you know if it's possible to run a script or program to tell MCE that the new EPG needs to be updated? I'm looking for something I can run from a batch script that does the equivalent of using the remote control to tell MCE to download the most recent guide. That would enable me to tie the whole process of download and update whilst keeping the machine off for most of the time.

Thanks, Felix.

heh heh, I'm looking for the same thing. I use a keyboard and mouse so I didn't know there was a single remote key that did that? tell me more and maybe I can emulate it or do you just mean using the menu's.

PS. MCE automatically updates its guide data every few days so its not really an issue. If it wakes up and it has missed an update its usually the first thing it does.

[felixmarks]

I only meant that you can initiate a download from the menus - no black magic there I'm afraid!

I'd be more comfortable if I could manually set off a process to ensure MCE had taken the most recent guide, though I appreciate your point that if the auto-update has failed previously, it's one of the first things MCE will do after it wakes up.

Ideally, I'd like to have control over the beginning and end of the process so I know (automatically) when to shut the machine down again.

For everyone else's benefit, I'm looking for a script that I can execute that forces MCE to re-load its EPG.

[aswigon]

Originally Posted by felixmarks

For everyone else's benefit, I'm looking for a script that I can execute that forces MCE to re-load its EPG.

I don't have an answer for this but I do have a suggestion. The latest version of Webguide has an option in the settings screen to initiate an EPG update. The author may be able to knock something up that would do this or advise of a way to do it. Why not send him an email?