Floppy DTV/SKY EPG Setup Issues - assistance needed!

[Petepie]

Hi all

Based on feedback from othe forum members, I decided to take the plunge this week and purchased a FloppyDTV & Dragon/TREX CAM from the guys at firedtv.com - great service and great guys if anyone want to use them!

Ive done all my homework through the other threads, so know what to expect, but for some reason, Ive currently got myself in a bit of a pickle regarding the setup, and Im looking for some advice as to how to get it all setup. My end goal is to have Sky UK running through MCE with the EPG working for the Channels I would like to use – probably around 150 in total Id say, including all the Movie Channels, Sky One, and pretty much all the premium content from Sky.

Im currently running MCE2005 with all the updates required for FloppyTV to work correctly.

So, heres the setup process I went through last night;

Floppy TV & CAM setup;
Installed Floppy TV to PC – fine
Installed Floppy TV drivers – fine
Installed CI programmer – fine
Updated TRex firmware with Sky Box serial number – fine

Initial Scan setup;
Scanned for channels – fine – 100s of channels were thrown out including the Sky premium channels – perfect I thought

Then I decided to tackle the EPG – which is where it all went wrong….! Heres the process I went through as per posts in Sky/MCE thread;

Initiated TV Guide – fine
Entered home postcode – fine
Selected closest transmitter – Sutton Coldfield – fine
Scanned – during the scanning there were initially around 160 channels found, but when the searched reached about 80% it reverted to 0 channels found and then prompted that nothing had changed.
Entered registry and updated EPG Headend with a known Sky one - fine
Then went into Guide and downloaded latest guide info - fine

I then went into edit channels, and MCE hung for a while, then threw out over 7500 channels! Looking closer it seemed like there were multiple entries for the same channel, ie, 20xMTV and 25xUK Gold.

There were also some channels now missing, including all variations of Sky One.

Furthermore, when I save the channels, the premium ones are not available during live TV. Its also not possible to remove multiple entries of the same channel via the restore channel defaults option.

It all seems to have gone pear shaped when I tried to use the EPG, so I think Im at the point now where Ill be happy to start from scratch with the channel setup.

To do this, I was hoping anyone could offer some guidance regarding the process I went through above – was anything missing or incorrect? Am I making any mistakes along the way?

Here are the key questions I think I need to answer;

Firstly, putting it all back to square one;
Is there an XML file somewhere that details all the found channels?
If so, can I modify this or delete it and start from scratch?
Is there something like a master reset action that can be performed on TV settings to start from scratch?

Floppy TV & CAM setup;
I think all of the above process I did last night is correct – can anyone confirm? Im assuming its correct as I had it all working before I started playing around with the guide!

EPG setup;
Can anyone give a quick overview of the hierarchy of the Guide within MCE? Does the edit channel list only provide details of channels MCE thinks would be there from the guide?
Am I correct in performing the headend change last in the whole process?
Am I correct in the process I was doing earlier, ie, turn on guide, scan for channels, update headend, update channels, edit channels, then add listings to channels?

Apologies for the long post, Ive tried searching through the Sky/MCE thread, but it’s a bit of a nightmare to put everything together in a cohesive picture – I suppose that’s the only downside of having a thread over 70 pages long!

Anyway, if anyone could offer some guidance or advice, that would be great!

Thanks

Pete

 

[Petepie]

Hi all,

OK, just found app to reset all MCE Tuner settings back to standard - can anyone confirm that the process I went through last night was correct?

If not, can anyone tell me where I went wrong?

Thanks!

Pete

 

[Perky]

Hi all,

OK, just found app to reset all MCE Tuner settings back to standard - can anyone confirm that the process I went through last night was correct?

If not, can anyone tell me where I went wrong?

Thanks!

Pete

Hi pete

Got your PM - Initial thoughts so far:

1. You need an exclusion list set up in the registry to clear out the dross that you don't want during the channel scan - this will get the no. of channels found down considerably. You can write this in notpead etc. then cut and paste into the entry in the registry. Make sure what you enter matches exactly what is found during the scan or it wont exclude it. Once entered, reboot and rescan, the number of found channels will then be reduced. An alternative / addition to this is to build a custom transponder file (see the FireDTV support site for details as to how to do this). This will allow you to select to scan just the transponders that have the channels you want. The exclusion list can then be used to exclude the unwanted channels in the transponders you need.

2. Secondly, EPG is the trickiest bit to get working. I use the Headend ID for Sky West Midlands (210103 I think it is off the top of my head). You will need to enter this after you set up the channel scan - accept the Sutton Coldfield DVB-T initially, scan, then enter the headend ID in the registry and reboot.

Once rebooted, go into the MCE wizard and do a manual EPG update. This will pull the EPG for Sky West Midlands from Micro$oft for you. (some of the guys do use the DVB-T EPG, depends on your preference)

3. Finally, you will need to sort the channels, add the missing ones you want (all the encrypted premium stuff), and then apply the EPG to each channel. This will take a while and will probably give you RSI

Hope this helps a little - if you search the sticky for exclusion list etc. it should give you the locations in the registry for this.


Cheers

Ceri

 

[nigelbb]

Make sure that you have the latest beta firmware for FloppyDTV & latest MCE drivers.

As you have got in a bit of a mess it would be better to use Use Mark Salloway's MCE Configuration Reset Tool & then do a complete reconfiguration of MCE from scratch http://www.salloway.org.uk/mediacenter/util/index.htm It's amazing how many odd MCE problems get fixed by doing this.

Follow the instructions in solomalee's guide for scanning for channels http://www.solomalee.com/stuff/vista_dvbs_setup.pdf

Don't worry about changing the headend ID for the Sky EPG until you have the channel lineup that you require. Use the Exclusion list to cut down on the number of channels that are found. Don't forget to use Edit Channels to enable all the encrypted channels that you want. When you have the channel lineup that you require then worry about adding listings to channels.

You may want to look at julianmaclean's description of using XMLTV & Bladerunner Pro for an alternative more stable EPG for MCE 2005. http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=499892

 

[Petepie]

Thanks guys,

Ill have another go tonight, I think Im about 95% of the way there with my current understanding - its not the setting up of the channels/DVTS card or CAM thats the confusing bit for me, its how MCE handles the Guide and then the channels off the back of it.

Thanks for the like to Mark Solloways tool, I found this earlier and was well chuffed I can put it all back to normal thank god!

Anyway, thanks for the response, nice to know Im not going too wrong - thanks!

Pete

 

[nigelbb]

The EPG in MCE was never meant to deal with the hundreds or indeed thousands of channels that you find when scanning a satellite. The user interface is all designed to be used on a TV from your armchair with a remote control which is a big problem with 100s or 1000s of channels. It would be much better to edit a text file on a normal computer monitor.

 

[Petepie]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to say thatnks for the info yesterday - managed to get it all up and running fine last night, I think I got up to sorting about channel 80 before I had enough and decided to finish it off today!

I see what you guys mean about the EPG - I think Im going to attempt using Bladerunner this weekend, so fingers crossed itll all go smoothly.

Thanks again,

Pete