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Keeping your ATSC guide data

After adding a second ATSC tuner a few weeks ago, I started having a problem where my guide data would disappear every day or two.  As you might guess the overall SAF went down in direct proportion to the number of shows not recorded.  After getting some help over at TGB the following approach has kept my guide updated, and the family happy.


steps:

  1. clear guide: delete prefs files, and epg xml files from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\EPG
  2. download guide, let it auto map all the atsc channels; it's very important to just let media center think it knows best at this point don't do any unnecessary mapping yourself, that will be addressed later
  3. manually add 1091 with proper physical channels and name (WGN); the atsc channel data is wrong when it comes down initially
  4. manually add sub channels 5-2, 7-2, 7-3, 11-2, 11-3, 11-4 and map guide data where available
  5. hide 1191
  6. manually add sub channel 11-5 as a placeholder in the atscprefs.xml file
  7. close mediacenter, shutdown mediacenter services
  8. edit atscprefs.xml changing channel 11-5 callsign to "WTTWDT", userAssignedName to "WTTWDT", and minor to 1; in Chicago 11-2 is the equivalent of 11, not 11-1
  9. edit atscprefs.xml change channel 11-2 callsign to "WTTW", and userAssignedName to "WTTW"
  10. restart mediacenter services

I did not have to hide the original 11-1 from atscchannels.xml; media center did that automatically, it also automatically assigned the correct guide data to 11-2 and 11-1 when it started back up.

Thanks to Richard A Miller and dmagerl for working this out with me.
 

Published Feb 14 2008, 06:44 PM by babgvant
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Comments

 

Pages tagged "equivalent" said:

February 14, 2008 9:06 PM
 

daled said:

Thanks for this posting.  Living in Chicago I've often wondered how to get the proper listings for 11-1.  However, I have a few questions about your posting:

1) In step 8 did you really mean WTTWDT and not WTTW-DT ?

2) In step 9, you stated twice to change the value of "userAssignedName".  Did you mean to say "callsign" the first time?

3) Can you please be a bit more specific about the files to delete in step 1?  Should all of the files in the EPG/prefs directory be deleted?  Should only the .xml files be deleted from the EPG directory, or should the associated .sdf files also be deleted?

Thanks.

February 16, 2008 5:13 PM
 

babgvant said:

1) yes

2) yes, I updated the post. thanks for catching that

3) everything in EPG and Prefs (sdf and xml files).  I didn't delete the folders or the contents of tracehelper.  there's probably a way to do this through the UI, but it was the clearest way I could find to remove all the mappings and guide data.

February 16, 2008 6:20 PM
 

daled said:

After following the [revised] directions carefully, it does not appear to work for me.  Even though WTTW-DT not longer appears in the prefs file anywhere(replaced by either WTTWDT or WTTW), the channel name when viewing 11-1 or viewing the listing is still WTTW-DT with the old WTTW listings.

Does this first require the installation of Vista SP1?  I've not yet installed SP1 on this machine as I was waiting for the official version of SP1.

February 17, 2008 12:29 PM
 

babgvant said:

sp1 isn't required.  what happens if you manually map 11-1 to the correct data, does it stay mapped?

February 17, 2008 5:36 PM
 

daled said:

I assume that you mean can I map the WTTWDT to listings via the Media Center GUI "Change Guide Listings" option.  When I go there, no Digital listings appear as choices.  Is there something that I should be doing in addition to your posting above, starting with the standard version of Vista Media Center?

February 18, 2008 5:12 PM
 

babgvant said:

Yes.  That's a limitation of WMC guide implementation.  On the PC that I have digital cable WTTWDT is available because Comcast carries it, on the other one which only has analog cable it's not.  I plan to see if the analog channels map directly to their digital counterparts, if they do I plan to reset the guide to the digital line up so sub channels (including WTTW DT) will show up.

February 18, 2008 5:54 PM
 

daled said:

Now I understand why it "worked" for you.  I'm using an antenna input, not cable.  If you get the mapping working, please post what you did.  Thanks.

February 19, 2008 3:43 PM
 

babgvant said:

If WTTW-DT (11.1) isn't in your EPG you can't map it.  Unfortunately, MS's implementation of ATSC guide data is kludgey (at best) because they don't get the data directly; instead relying on a [poor] heuristic about how data should line up.  There's a post on TGB where IanK talks about how this should be getting fixed in a future rev.

The problem I was having wasn't just that WTTW-DT wasn't lining up correctly, but that all my ATSC channels were losing their mappings daily, so I was missing shows.

February 20, 2008 2:29 PM
 

andy vt's blog said:

Due to some poor planning I ended up with an extra M780, instead of throwing it on e-Bay I decided to

February 28, 2008 6:40 PM
@2008 andy vt
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