Schedules Direct EPG (integrated BETA)

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by rickgode

I'm curious about this too... I'm running Sage Version 7 on a Windows 7 machine and have for over a decade! I'm still in the initial research phase, but will I have to upgrade to Version 9? Is Version 9 that much 'better'

Thanks!

Ricky

You definitely should move to v9.
As far as "better" it depends what you mean. Most of the changes from v7 are under the hood, so you may not notice them. There are only a few changes that affect the UI and they are so small you really have to pay attention to spot them. For example:

No longer have to go to System Info screen and type secret code 5309 to unlock the hidden "extras" like Malore menus and disk space bar. They are now unlocked by default - just go to the setup menu to configure them.

The parallel recording schedule screen can now be configured to show the tuner names on the left and time slots at top (instead of the default with names at top and times at left).

There is now on option to see and edit the encoder merit values in the video sources screen (in v7 you had to edit Sage and edit properties file to do this).

When you setup a capture device there is now an option to use Schedules Direct as an EPG source.

There are some others, but as you can see, these are all pretty subtle - just small incremental improvements over v7. If you like v7, you should feel very at home in v9.

[rickgode]

12:08 - Thank you guys. I'm downloading the v9 installer now...

12:15 - That seemed to go pretty easy. But none of my previous settings are there. My tuners or my video directories. I'm still researching, but do I reset them up or copy my backed up wiz.bin in the directory?

12:48 - I copied my backups of the sage.properties, sageclient.properties, and wiz.bin into the sagetv folder and it "looks" like all my stuff is there, but when I click on a video or tried to view liveTV I just get the spinning arrow... Trying a Restart.

12:54 - The restart seems to have fixed the playback issue. I have verified that pre-recorded shows work fine, and live TV works fine with both the HD-PVR blaster and the HDHR tuners working. I have also verified that the SageTV webserver seems to work. I have not configured for Schedules Direct yet. All the buttons on my remote don't seem to work. I may have to copy/paste my remote.ini file over. Which is weird, because it was working fine before the restart.

Ricky

[graywolf]

never mind

Missed your 12:54 note

[rickgode]

2:26 - I spent the last hour re-configuring my EPG Lineup to use Schedules Direct. That was actually pretty easy. My HDHR and my HDPVR tuners were all there and all I had to do was change the EPG to SD. The long part was going through each channel and enabling/disabling them.

After that my Program Guide went from this:



To this!



Notice that I have no shows for the next 48 hours... I thought I had lost all my favorites and my remote still doesn't work correctly. The play and stop buttons work, but not anything else. So I thought that a restart might fix the remote thing. (it didn't...) but it did fix my Favorites as they are all there now!

I'm pretty sure that my remote thing is related to a remote.ini file... I'll try that next. So far this hasn't been all that bad...

Thanks!

Ricky

[graywolf]

Compare your old backup of the commons folder to now. Probably missing some.ini file like you said

[rickgode]

3:08 - switching out the remote.ini with a backup I had seems to have fixed my remote issues. I have one more hangup, but I think it is better suited in the windows installer thread here: https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...&postcount=227

I appreciate all the help! After a decade of using SageTV I don't know how I can use anything else...

A total of 3 hours wasn't that bad at all...

Thanks!

Ricky

[Tahoe Girl]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

What you see online is from the old service. SageTV is using the "new" JSON service which doesn't use the lineups populated through the website.

Hi,

I seem to have a similar problem to the O/P. I am running the STV V9.1.5.683 server on Win XP SP3 and am not able to get schedules Direct to work. At one point it looked good when at 12:00 PM it seems to have loaded the EPG, but only as far as 5:00 PM; everything after that showed "No Data".

Everything I have read in the forum seems to indicate that this version of STV should be using JSON; however I seem to be getting messages that indicate otherwise (see attachments), specifically that STV wants me to specify an SD lineup. Just for grins I did that, but it made no difference.

I tried to attach the zipped sd_epg.log, but it's size far exceeds the forum's limits. Let me know if it's needed and how to get it uploaded.

Thanks for any assistance,
Shelby

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Tahoe Girl

Hi,

I seem to have a similar problem to the O/P. I am running the STV V9.1.5.683 server on Win XP SP3 and am not able to get schedules Direct to work. At one point it looked good when at 12:00 PM it seems to have loaded the EPG, but only as far as 5:00 PM; everything after that showed "No Data".

Everything I have read in the forum seems to indicate that this version of STV should be using JSON; however I seem to be getting messages that indicate otherwise (see attachments), specifically that STV wants me to specify an SD lineup. Just for grins I did that, but it made no difference.

I tried to attach the zipped sd_epg.log, but it's size far exceeds the forum's limits. Let me know if it's needed and how to get it uploaded.

Thanks for any assistance,
Shelby

That's interesting. I need the sagetv_0.txt log file to confirm it, but you should only be seeing that message if you get the corresponding error from Schedules Direct itself.

[Tahoe Girl]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

That's interesting. I need the sagetv_0.txt log file to confirm it, but you should only be seeing that message if you get the corresponding error from Schedules Direct itself.

Hi EnterNoEscape,

I've attached sagetv_0.txt (zipped).

Thanks,
Shelby

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Tahoe Girl

Hi EnterNoEscape,

I've attached sagetv_0.txt (zipped).

Thanks,
Shelby

I am seeing this which implies someone/something is deleting the lineup:

Tue 7/18 17:38:53.601 [ReProcessHook@c45753] SDEPG Returning account lineups: [Comcast - Digital - Sacramento]
Tue 7/18 17:38:58.655 [EventRouter-24be05e1139d@1a0d759] SDEPG Setting the property 'DeleteLineup' with the value 'Comcast - Digital - Sacramento'
Tue 7/18 17:38:59.989 [EventRouter-24be05e1139d@1a0d759] SDEPG Deleted lineup 'Comcast - Digital - Sacramento' with 6 changes remaining.
Tue 7/18 17:39:04.702 [EventRouter-24be05e1139d@1a0d759] SDEPG Getting the property 'AccountLineups' with the parameter 'null'
Tue 7/18 17:39:05.287 [EventRouter-24be05e1139d@1a0d759] sage.epg.sd.SDException: NO_LINEUPS

Edit: This is a little more complete (it shows the delete menu being opened and delete being selected):

Tue 7/18 17:38:56.400 [EventRouter-24be05e1139d@1a0d759] processUserEvent-UserEvent[anything] evtTime=Tue 7/18 17:38:56.306
Tue 7/18 17:38:56.401 [EventRouter-24be05e1139d@1a0d759] processOptionsMenu optionsMenu=default:XHDFU-2381|OptionsMenu:UseOrRemoveLineup
Tue 7/18 17:38:58.622 [EventRouter-24be05e1139d@1a0d759] processUserEvent-UserEvent[anything] evtTime=Tue 7/18 17:38:58.528
Tue 7/18 17:38:58.655 [EventRouter-24be05e1139d@1a0d759] SDEPG Setting the property 'DeleteLineup' with the value 'Comcast - Digital - Sacramento'
Tue 7/18 17:38:59.780 [AWTThreadWatcher-24be05e1139d@68ea84] EventThread-24be05e1139d Hang Detected - hang time = 750 UILocker=Thread[EventRouter-24be05e1139d,5,main]
Tue 7/18 17:38:59.895 [FinalRender-24be05e1139d@1c35676] Allocated image-6 for images/tvicon_anim3.png width=36 height=36 ptr=2064488292
Tue 7/18 17:38:59.896 [FinalRender-24be05e1139d@1c35676] Loading RawImage of size 36x36 for images/tvicon_anim3.png fileSize=13426
Tue 7/18 17:38:59.896 [FinalRender-24be05e1139d@1c35676] Loading 36x36 image from file C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\stv4931304231387272908.img
Tue 7/18 17:38:59.989 [EventRouter-24be05e1139d@1a0d759] SDEPG Deleted lineup 'Comcast - Digital - Sacramento' with 6 changes remaining.

[Tahoe Girl]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I am seeing this which implies someone/something is deleting the lineup:

In that case it was me trying to see if I could force it to update the EPG as referenced here in the SD EPG (BETA) web pageL

sdmd5prog

Contains all of the MD5 hashes for all programs downloaded from Schedules Direct.
The MD5 hashes are compared against the program hashes from Schedules Direct and if they are different, the program information is downloaded again.
Programs are removed from this file when SageTV removes them from the Wizard, so this file will not grow without any limit.
If you want all of the programs to be downloaded again, you can delete this file and sdmd5sched.

sdmd5sched

Contains all of the MD5 hashes for every day on every station downloaded from Schedules Direct.
The MD5 hashes are compared against the schedules for each day and if they are different, all of the changes are downloaded and updated in the Wizard.
The Schedules are removed from this file when the date is the previous day or older.
If you want all of the airings to be downloaded again, you can delete this file. Deleting sdmd5prog is not needed if this is your goal.

Interestingly, the EPG has now updated a bit. It now covers through Thursday at 5:00PM. Also, sdmd5prog has been recreated as also has sdmd5sched (although it is empty).

There is one other strange thing happening. None of my favorites are being recognized. I can go into "Manage favorites" and they are all there, but they are not being scheduled. In fact, if I manually schedule one of my programs to record, the "Add as a favorite" option is displayed.

Any ideas ?

[Tahoe Girl]

Originally Posted by Tahoe Girl

There is one other strange thing happening. None of my favorites are being recognized. I can go into "Manage favorites" and they are all there, but they are not being scheduled. In fact, if I manually schedule one of my programs to record, the "Add as a favorite" option is displayed.

Any ideas ?

Well I just looked again, and it now seems to have scheduled at least some of my favorites. Very strange. This thing seems to update slower than my old Motorola STB !

[davidk21770]

Originally Posted by Tahoe Girl

Well I just looked again, and it now seems to have scheduled at least some of my favorites. Very strange. This thing seems to update slower than my old Motorola STB !

When i first upgraded to sagetv 9, my sd epg did the same thing. Took forever the 1st time to get going. Maybe a day or more! But it settled down and is running great now.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Tahoe Girl

In that case it was me trying to see if I could force it to update the EPG as referenced here in the SD EPG (BETA) web page
Interestingly, the EPG has now updated a bit. It now covers through Thursday at 5:00PM. Also, sdmd5prog has been recreated as also has sdmd5sched (although it is empty).

There is one other strange thing happening. None of my favorites are being recognized. I can go into "Manage favorites" and they are all there, but they are not being scheduled. In fact, if I manually schedule one of my programs to record, the "Add as a favorite" option is displayed.

Any ideas ?

It's still unclear to me what text inspired you to remove the lineup from your Schedules Direct account. Removing the lineup from your account doesn't delete the those files or their content. They are regulated based on the current day and what's still inside of the Wizard database. In the future, so you don't cause yourself grief, the easiest way to trigger an update is to disable, then re-enable a channel.

The favorites thing is expected namely because one of the triggers to get that data from the available airings is the EPG update finishing. Since it's still downloading, the trigger didn't happen yet. However just by doing other things that also trigger the search for favorites (marking a show watched, adding a favorite, etc), within about 5 minutes, you will see partial favorites based on the guide data currently downloaded. Because this processing didn't happen before you selected an airing of a known favorite, it had no way to know that airing fell under a favorite at the moment and that's why you saw the option to add it. I believe if you had tried to add it, you wouldn't have been able to. This is all very normal.

Edit: Depending on just how many channels you're working with, it can take a while for it to completely finish. If you keep fiddling with things, it will only take longer because instead of resuming from where it left off, it will keep restarting from the last time it ran a full update which in this case is never.

[jimcgreen]

I signed up for Schedules Direct and installed SageTVSetup_9.1.5.683.exe over the version 7 that I had been running. I updated my video sources with the Schedules Direct EPG lineup. I see that EPG data is showing now and my scheduled recordings look like they are scheduled.
I am now getting a system error that says "No EPG license key specified".
The message details say to go to Setup Video Sources > (select source) >EPG Lineup which will ask you for your license key.
So I do that but it doesn't ask for a license key. It just wants to do a channel scan.
How can I get this system message to go away?

[Shaw]

What time of day does this Schedules Direct plugin download new information?

I ask, because I have the machine sleeping, and if this happens at a specific time, maybe I can adjust it, or the machines sleep cycle, to jive? I didn't see it in the lineup settings, or under Advanced, or Customize... so I'm guessing its in a config file somewhere.

Hopefully its not just willy-nilly downloading at random intervals

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Shaw

What time of day does this Schedules Direct plugin download new information?

I ask, because I have the machine sleeping, and if this happens at a specific time, maybe I can adjust it, or the machines sleep cycle, to jive? I didn't see it in the lineup settings, or under Advanced, or Customize... so I'm guessing its in a config file somewhere.

Hopefully its not just willy-nilly downloading at random intervals

It's not random, but it might feel like it. It always runs again 24 hours after the last update finished. That means it moves a little forward with each run.

[Tahoe Girl]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

It's still unclear to me what text inspired you to remove the lineup from your Schedules Direct account. Removing the lineup from your account doesn't delete the those files or their content. They are regulated based on the current day and what's still inside of the Wizard database. In the future, so you don't cause yourself grief, the easiest way to trigger an update is to disable, then re-enable a channel.

Hi,

Seems to be some confusion here. I never removed my lineup from SD, it's still there. The questions I still have are:

1. Elsewhere in this forum I have seen postings stating that specifying the lineup in SD is no longer required now that STV is using JSON. So does it need to be there or not ?

2. If the lineup does not need to be specified on the SD web page, why then is STV complaining that it is not there ? (Ignoring the fact that it actually is there !)

BTW, it has now been about 14 hours since I last posted re. the update status of my EPG. It still goes out no further than Thursday at 5:00PM (slightly more than 24 hrs). Is this thing really that slow compared to the way it used to be ? Will I ever see an EPG that extends out for two weeks like it used to ?

Thanks,
Shelby

[graywolf]

You can make it so that it starts same time each day.
Need the sagetv web ui installed
Then Windows task scheduler to run a bat file
Bat file does a wget to the sagetv web ui with the command to force epg update
Not at home so can't give the exact command

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Tahoe Girl

Hi,

Seems to be some confusion here. I never removed my lineup from SD, it's still there. The questions I still have are:

1. Elsewhere in this forum I have seen postings stating that specifying the lineup in SD is no longer required now that STV is using JSON. So does it need to be there or not ?

2. If the lineup does not need to be specified on the SD web page, why then is STV complaining that it is not there ? (Ignoring the fact that it actually is there !)

BTW, it has now been about 14 hours since I last posted re. the update status of my EPG. It still goes out no further than Thursday at 5:00PM (slightly more than 24 hrs). Is this thing really that slow compared to the way it used to be ? Will I ever see an EPG that extends out for two weeks like it used to ?

Thanks,
Shelby

1. The Schedules Direct lineup does not need to be selected via the Schedules Direct website; in fact nothing you select on the website will show up in SageTV. It does however need to be selected via the JSON interface which is what you're using when you use the SageTV UI. You have to add lineups to your Schedules Direct account in order to be able to use them.

2. Your log clearly showed that someone using the UI deleted the lineup via the JSON interface. You must have any lineups you are using added to your account via the JSON interface. Your account page on the web site and the JSON interface are two different things. The one you can't see through your account page is the JSON lineups and those are all we use or care about in SageTV in regards to Schedules Direct. The JSON lineups are the ones you see in SageTV and if the lineup isn't on that screen you will get an error when the update is attempted and the update will continue to fail. The log showed that someone deleted the lineup in the middle of an update which is likely why you have partial data. Add it back and the problem should fix itself.


I know everyone has different setups and ISP's, but I just ran a full sync on my test server with an empty wiz.bin and it took about 23 minutes on a typical cable lineup.