Missing OTA guide data

[hackzaw]

I'm a brand new Sage user. I live near Hamilton, and thus can pull in Toronto stations and Buffalo OTA.

I'm also having difficulty with the EPG in sage. In the Sage "source" setup, I had read to select "Cable", despite the fact that I'm 100% OTA (well still have Cogeco, but not for much longer). I guess this is trying to trick the system, in that you put in a postal code that Zap2it has accurate OTA listings for, and it pulls in that guide?

This didn't work for me, but it was a few nights ago, so I can't remember what went wrong.

So then, I figured I've only got a handful of Canadian channel ID's I would have to remap, so I tried them manually.

I wanted to get guide data for Channel 11 CHCH, so I went to Zap2it, and was able to look at CH11 details. In the web URL, it said stnNum: (Can't remember the exact number). The number was around 10000. So anyways, I took that number, went to Sage, rRemapped the number, iIt didn't work.

Oddly, now today, when I go to Zap2it website, it shows 60123 as CH 11.1 channel id. I'm sure the number was different on the weekend.

In Sage, do you simply go to the channel list in the Sources section, find the channel you want to change, and click Remap? When doing on the weekend, the channel actually moved to the end of the list (the remap number being 10000 or so). With the correct number in the lineup, does the channel still show 11.1 even though it's been remapped to 60123?

[wayner]

If I were you I would redo your Source setup and tell Sage that you have Cogeco Digital cable, assuming that you have an analog tuner that would be suitable for a cable lineup. Who knows - perhaps you can even give it a cable lineup with an OTA tuner? This should give you a lineup that includes pretty much all of the OTA channels with a couple of exceptions like Thinkbright (17-3 or the third PBS channel from Buffalo) and ion and its subchannels (like qubo).

You can then go and see what channel IDs are used for your OTA channels. If the channel IDs are really low numbers then that is generally bad as those are not the Zap2it numbers. Sometimes it is able to pull some data over the OTA feed but that is not always consistent and it may not go as far out into the future. I would then remap these to the channels coming from the Cogeco feed.

If you are unhappy with your current OTA lineup you could try running the setup again and telling it that you live in Buffalo - that is what I do and I am much further than you from Buffalo as I live in Scarborough. But I then generally also do a channel scan so I am not sure how relevant it is that you give it a city when it does a scan and finds additional channels and/or doesn't find some channels that it should have.

However I don't know what happens if you then delete the tuning device that was using that source - I don't know if it is smart enough to keep pulling the data for those channels even though the original source no longer exists. I will never find that out as I doubt that I will ever get rid of cable since 95%+ of what we watch is not available OTA. My three OTA tuners are not exactly overburdened recording 30 Rock, Hockey Night in Canada's Leafs game on Saturdays and the odd golf tournament on Sat & Sun afternoons.

[hackzaw]

Is this ever frustrating (or maybe it's my lack of knowledge in use of Sage).

I'm still trying to get the guide to work properly. I've tried a variety of different techniques in the Video Source setup, from telling Sage I live in Buffalo, to telling it I use Cable, etc.

All options so far end up with no info for Canadian channels. And sure enough, if I look at the Channel ID's, I see low numbers (like 23 for instance).

Help me with an example. CHCH channel 11.1 (channel 18). Zap2it station id is 60123. In the channel setup and review section of Sage, I see where I can Remap the channel. Nowhere do I see where I can enter the station ID of 60123. (I'm at work, so I'm going from memory). At one point, I saw a list of channel call letters on the right hand side. Am I supposed to find the channel in that list that already has the channel ID mapped?

One other thing. How do I force the EPG to update? On the Home page, hitting Info said the EPG would update in 3.5 hours (approx.). I wanted to forst an EPG update to see if my change was any good.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by hackzaw

Is this ever frustrating (or maybe it's my lack of knowledge in use of Sage).

I'm still trying to get the guide to work properly. I've tried a variety of different techniques in the Video Source setup, from telling Sage I live in Buffalo, to telling it I use Cable, etc.

All options so far end up with no info for Canadian channels. And sure enough, if I look at the Channel ID's, I see low numbers (like 23 for instance).

Help me with an example. CHCH channel 11.1 (channel 18). Zap2it station id is 60123. In the channel setup and review section of Sage, I see where I can Remap the channel. Nowhere do I see where I can enter the station ID of 60123. (I'm at work, so I'm going from memory). At one point, I saw a list of channel call letters on the right hand side. Am I supposed to find the channel in that list that already has the channel ID mapped?

One other thing. How do I force the EPG to update? On the Home page, hitting Info said the EPG would update in 3.5 hours (approx.). I wanted to forst an EPG update to see if my change was any good.

You'll need to add a new channel, with the 60123 ID. Then, remap the scanned channel to that new channel.

[hackzaw]

Fuzzy - you are the man. That makes perfect sense. I'll give it try tonight.

[view836]

Hey guys, sorry to chime in here but I'm having the same problems (OTA in Ottawa, ON, not a cable subscriber). I've tried adding new stations but there are usually a bunch for the same station (e.g. 68285, 10125, and 34200 for CITY) and SageTV doesn't appear to allow you to delete or change a channel once you've manually entered it. So for instance I tried manually creating CITYDTR 68285 17-1 17-17-1 and that doesn't work to pull in guide data, so I wanted to try changing it to 10125 and there's no way to do that.

This shouldn't be THIS hard. All we need is to be able to add a single number to any given channel in the channel setup, and that number is simply the channel ID for guide purposes only. Full stop. And if it doesn't work we should be able to edit that and change it to any other number we like. The way this is set up to work is about a billion times more complicated than it should be.

[view836]

Originally Posted by view836

Hey guys, sorry to chime in here but I'm having the same problems (OTA in Ottawa, ON, not a cable subscriber). I've tried adding new stations but there are usually a bunch for the same station (e.g. 68285, 10125, and 34200 for CITY) and SageTV doesn't appear to allow you to delete or change a channel once you've manually entered it. So for instance I tried manually creating CITYDTR 68285 17-1 17-17-1 and that doesn't work to pull in guide data, so I wanted to try changing it to 10125 and there's no way to do that.

This shouldn't be THIS hard. All we need is to be able to add a single number to any given channel in the channel setup, and that number is simply the channel ID for guide purposes only. Full stop. And if it doesn't work we should be able to edit that and change it to any other number we like. The way this is set up to work is about a billion times more complicated than it should be.

I figured out how to delete entries, very inintuitive but you need to select the channel to be removed fromt he lineup, go to remap it, then press the delete key when on either the logical of physical channel entries. When you return to the lineup the channel will still be there but that's just a bug in SageTV; if you back out further then go back in to the channel lineup, the channel will be removed.

Unfortunately I was not able to get program data to work for any of the manually added channels for my test case (which is CITY TV). None of the three variants (68285, 34200, or 10125 (which is the std def channel number on cable)) resulted in getting any program data.

[view836]

Originally Posted by view836

I figured out how to delete entries, very inintuitive but you need to select the channel to be removed fromt he lineup, go to remap it, then press the delete key when on either the logical of physical channel entries. When you return to the lineup the channel will still be there but that's just a bug in SageTV; if you back out further then go back in to the channel lineup, the channel will be removed.

Unfortunately I was not able to get program data to work for any of the manually added channels for my test case (which is CITY TV). None of the three variants (68285, 34200, or 10125 (which is the std def channel number on cable)) resulted in getting any program data.

I found a workaround to get OTA EPG data for Ottawa, I'll post a summary in another thread. Basically the critical thing is to tell the s/w that you are not running OTA but are instead on Cable.