Loosing Channels / Guide disappearing – IceTV and Vista (Possibly also MCE2005)

[impact]

Yep - SBS still plays up for me...

I'll give you guys an update - I'd hoped to have had it resolved by now, but its still so far from being perfect....

I am talking (email) with Microsoft guys back and forth about the issue, from this I am told that;
-MCUPDATE only runs as per the scheduled task, and when you first setup Media Center - you know go through the setup tuners etc... It should not run at any other time...
-Media Center DOES do a sort of retuning exercise everyday behind the scenes, included probably as part of the European stuff where channels can move more frequently than what happens here...
-Belief over in Redmond is that bad data from our EPG solutions was causing the issue.

However - this is what I have found, and we are still discussing things....
- Channels muck up independant to EPG. I can set my EPG to download daily at 1AM, the guide looks good before the download, the guide looks good after the download. The following day - the guide mucks up at 8am. Verified with logfiles supplied by IceTV that my machine does not make contact with icetv at any other time except 1AM. Therefore the guide is mucking up independant to the EPG data. Bad EPG data is not causing the issue.
- Other contributing things can cause the guide to muck up - such as creating a new user.... Applying the concurrent remote user hack, and creating a new user - mucks up the guide... Installing Transcode360 for Xbox360 (which creates a new user) - mucks up the guide...
- Removing the network cable from the Media Center, so network connectivity occurs to that machine means the Guide remains good... You dont get any EPG though, but plugging in the cable, performing a manual update, then pullng the cable -means no guide update problem.... Annoying though.

So whatever the reason, its not EPG, but it is related to network connectivity - but its not network connectivity to the EPG....

I have spent days in trying different combinations of keepkey / mcupdate / network - just trying to isolate it and giving the info to some 'friends' in Redmond - who have been very good in their help, and unofficially talking with coders etc - but still cant isolate the exact cause.

I thought it might be related to differing manufacturers of tuner cards - having multiple tuners by differing companies, maybe because its more than 2 tuners... but nope I have tested it under those scenarious too... I know how to forceably make it happen, but dont know how to stop it from happening.

Having said all this, I would still recommend just turning of mcupdate from the scheduled task, my event log does not show it running, but will be interested in your test of renaming it !!!

Using this method - I have gone for 2 weeks without a problem, but its still annoying when it occurs, because once it occurs on the first day, a simple edit of channels, assigning guide fixes it, but your almost guaranteed a continual occurance of it daily then. The only cure I have found is to Scan for More services / delete all channels / scan for channels / re-initialise your EPG / associate the EPG channels / edit channels...

(Ever noticed that if you Edit channels, then associate the channel lineup, you need to edit channels again - arrrghhhh !!!)

Doing this, and not touching multiple users, installing other things - gives me a couple of weeks without a problem...


Of course if I learn more - I shall let you all know in this thread (hold your breath... 1 .2.. 3 Woooaaahhhhh !)

[benneh]

Cheers mate, i will keep you posted on the rename test, I figured that's one way to prove if mcupdate is or isn't the cause of the problem, but as we know, it can take weeks before the problem rears its ugly head.

I am surprised the good folks in Redmond can't even tell what's going on, but good to hear at least some of them are listening to our whining

I am also studying my event logs to try find a correlation with guide stuff ups and certain log errors.

[impact]

We will get this bugger licked one way or the other, sooner or later.

The only thing I found that was in the event log - occuring round when the guide mucked up was this as follows (but again there was no contact made with icetv - so I am assuming contact was being made to MS);


Log Name: Media Center
Source: Media Center Guide
Date: 23/02/2007 11:02:22 PM
Event ID: 21
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Media-PC
Description:
Event Info: Unable to link service to lineup File validation error - mismatched guide package. The Guide listings service is not currently available. Please try again later.
Process: DefaultDomain
Object Name: Microsoft.Ehome.Epg.Loader.Xml.PresetLoader

Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Media Center Guide" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">21</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2007-02-23T12:02:22.000Z" />
<EventRecordID>1921</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Media Center</Channel>
<Computer>Media-PC</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>Event Info: Unable to link service to lineup File validation error - mismatched guide package. The Guide listings service is not currently available. Please try again later.
Process: DefaultDomain
Object Name: Microsoft.Ehome.Epg.Loader.Xml.PresetLoader
</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>


Yet to have this deciphered.....

[timble]

Impact,

I'm getting t same error message and it's at the same time.

-Media Center DOES do a sort of retuning exercise everyday behind the scenes, included probably as part of the European stuff where channels can move more frequently than what happens here...

I think this is the clue and suspect it's related to PID. Have just read briefly on the subject and still kinda hazy, so if anyone can shed more light - great!


Cheers,

Tim

[Auldar]

I haven't had a chance to look into this deeper, however last night while implementing Wixkidder's tuner/epg registry hack to get Foxtel and DTV working together on Vista I noticed an entry in the EPG section of the registry.

Even though I have MCUpdate disabled, I noticed there was a long hex string in the key "Next MC Update" (or something like it).

I wonder if you turned that Hex string into Decimal if it would read a date/time that this problem is occuring for you guys?

I wonder what would happen if you set it do 0..

[impact]

Timble - Great to know you have the same error and the same problem... I certainly believe its related to re-scanning PID etc... We will lick it soon hopefully... I hope to have some more news next week....

[Auldar]

Impact - do you think that error could be as simple as "I tried to download the latest EPG, but couldn't connect to the server. Oh, by the way, I deleted your EPG before I updated it.. sorry".

ie could EPG server downtime potentially blow away people's EPG if it occurs at a time when they're MC is trying to update their EPG?

[impact]

Who knows ... But it does not delete the EPG... The EPG is still there, even recordings set up on channels not visible will continue to record as per schedule ??? Strange one...
But it realigns the channel setup - making some visible and others not....

I strongly believe that the issue is totally unrelated to EPG and more about dvb-t and scanning (or re-scanning for PID changes)

[Auldar]

Originally Posted by impact

Who knows ... But it does not delete the EPG... The EPG is still there, even recordings set up on channels not visible will continue to record as per schedule ??? Strange one...
But it realigns the channel setup - making some visible and others not....

I strongly believe that the issue is totally unrelated to EPG and more about dvb-t and scanning (or re-scanning for PID changes)

Ah - I think I understand the issue better.. I thought it was trashing your EPG rather than trashing your channel configuration..

[benneh]

well I haven't had a problem yet since renaming MCUpdate.exe, but if this is related to some kind of automated PID rescan, that probably won't help.

I found the current channel configuration is stored in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\EPG\prefs\prefs.xml

Has anyone tried setting this to readonly or removing all NTFS rights except read? it would be good if anyone who has just experienced a channel dissappearance to check this file and see if there channel has been removed from here also.

[ozbear]

I had a weird one happen to me just yesterday.

My regular Ice download got the dreaded "Your country or region is not supported" (even though I have keepkey running for a long time without a problem) and notice that I had guide data for all channels except Channel 10.

So I did forced a manual download (get latest guide listing from the Guide) and all Channel 10 data was back, except all shows that were scheduled from Channel 10 were now unscheduled. They still appeared in the Series list but selecting any individual series out of the list says "No upcoming episodes", or words to that effect. Changing the Series setting from Channel 10 to Any Channel caused it to be reselected. Putting it back to Channel 10 only says no shows, even though they appear in the Guide.

What gives?

Oz

[benneh]

I just tried removing all but read permissions from prefs.xml, and tested editing my channels, no errors appeared but none of my changes were saved either.

I will leave the prefs.xml readonly and mcupdate.exe renamed and see if I get anymore problems.