Topic: EPG Auto Match (Read 6708 times)

ErikN · « **on:** August 26, 2015, 12:12:02 am »

During the EPG configuration (mcxml / xmltv) I wanted to use the auto-match saving having to spend 15 minutes manually assigning the scanned channels to xml EPG channels. However, the auto-match appears to be overly rigid.

All of my channels were named "2-1", "2-2", "3-1", etc.
All the xml listings were "2.1", "2.2", "3.1", etc.
Auto-match assigned 0 entries.

It would be extremely helpful if the match was more forgiving.

I ran into a MC21 bug reported elsewhere that required a complete wipe of TV settings to stop mcxml from continually re-prompting for setup details. Wiping the settings meant having to again hand-assign all of my channels.

CountryBumkin · « **Reply #1 on:** August 26, 2015, 04:55:56 am »

When your doing the first time setup with mc2xml, I find that the Automatch (matching channels to its epg station data) works much better if you select "-F" (channel name first) in the mc2xml setup window.

I don't know if I'm the inly one that has tried the setup with and without "-F", but it definitely makes a difference on my setup (which is OTA Broadcast stations).
If you try this and it also works better for you report back, perhaps JRiver could make this selection box "checked" as a default setting to help out the next installer/User.

DocLotus · « **Reply #2 on:** August 26, 2015, 03:13:10 pm »

The Automatch feature has been bugging me for some time...

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I ran into a MC21 bug reported elsewhere that required a complete wipe of TV settings to stop mcxml from continually re-prompting for setup details. Wiping the settings meant having to again hand-assign all of my channels.

Yes, that has happen to me on more times than I like to admit & is MOST frustrating indeed.

1: Why are the channels not in alphabetical order? It would certainly make manually matching up long lists of channels much easier.
2: Why is the matching up not done automatically in the background out of view of the user?
3: Why is matching up even needed in the first place? The user never sees them in WMC or other programs that I've used.

I've been using TV tuner cards & TV software since the mid 80's & MCTV is the first TV software I have encountered that requires matching up data like this.

Would really like to see the matching screen gone, gone, gone as it seems to me this function could very well be handled without the user intervention.

Yaobing · « **Reply #3 on:** August 26, 2015, 03:23:18 pm »

Auto match for ATSC channels does not work for current build, but it will work for an upcoming build.

Quote from: DocLotus on August 26, 2015, 03:13:10 pm

1: Why are the channels not in alphabetical order? It would certainly make manually matching up long lists of channels much easier.

You can order it in Tools > Options > Television > Manage Channels. The default is to order them by channel number/channel name combination.

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2: Why is the matching up not done automatically in the background out of view of the user?

A bug has been fixed. It will be in a new build.

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3: Why is matching up even needed in the first place? The user never sees them in WMC or other programs that I've used.

There are channels whose names do not agree with the names supplied by EPG source.

DocLotus · « **Reply #4 on:** August 26, 2015, 03:28:12 pm »

Thanks; Yaobing.

MOST useful information... I look forward to the next build. But the way, when will that happen?

As you can tell i'm getting a little excited with anticipation about the upcoming build as I know you guys are hard at work with some great new things to come.

DocLotus · « **Reply #5 on:** August 26, 2015, 03:32:44 pm »

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1: Why are the channels not in alphabetical order? It would certainly make manually matching up long lists of channels much easier.

You can order it in Tools > Options > Television > Manage Channels. The default is to order them by channel number/channel name combination.

I already do that to sort in alpha order for the channels. What I was referring to is the matching up screen has all the channels scrambled in non alpha order. It is the matching screen that needs to be ordered for easier use.

DocLotus · « **Reply #6 on:** August 26, 2015, 03:36:41 pm »

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3: Why is matching up even needed in the first place? The user never sees them in WMC or other programs that I've used.

There are channels whose names do not agree with the names supplied by EPG source.

Could this be handled out of view of the user UNLESS there are channels whose names do not agree with the names supplied by EPG source? This way the user would never see the matching screen unless there was a mismatch.

CountryBumkin · « **Reply #7 on:** August 26, 2015, 03:42:46 pm »

Probably, but why have the developers spend a bunch of time on one thing that is only a small annoyance "once" during TV setup. IMO, there are a bunch of things that (I hope) the Developers will spend their time on first. Then perhaps come back to this when everything else is finished.

Just look at the "Feature Request" list.

DocLotus · « **Reply #8 on:** August 26, 2015, 03:51:51 pm »

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Probably, but why have the developers spend a bunch of time on one thing that is only a small annoyance "once" during TV setup.

True. But as I mentioned...

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I ran into a MC21 bug reported elsewhere that required a complete wipe of TV settings to stop mcxml from continually re-prompting for setup details. Wiping the settings meant having to again hand-assign all of my channels.

Yes, that has happen to me on more times than I like to admit & is MOST frustrating indeed.

Because of the above I really hate having to do a reset of the TV data (for whatever reason) as it means having to match up all the channels once again.

For you is may be no big deal but for me it has been a real pain. As TV is now my main focus (since moving from WMC to MCTV) I'm playing "catch up" in the learning curve. My experience with MC is almost completely audio (going back to ver. 7) MCTV is relatively new to me & is fast becoming most important.

CountryBumkin · « **Reply #9 on:** August 26, 2015, 05:51:17 pm »

I didn't mean to belittle your issue/suggestion. I just meant that once the TV stuff is set up properly (and there are some TV setup issues currently being worked on now) you won't need to go through the setup again.

DocLotus · « **Reply #10 on:** August 26, 2015, 06:13:24 pm »

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I didn't mean to belittle your issue/suggestion.

Thanks for that.

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I just meant that once the TV stuff is set up properly (and there are some TV setup issues currently being worked on now) you won't need to go through the setup again.

Normally that's true but it seems that there is almost always something that comes up that needs a reset such as my test the other day trying to find why there are no TV Movie Ratings (1-5 stars).
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=99593.0
I think you saw that thread.

Castius · « **Reply #11 on:** August 27, 2015, 12:32:06 am »

If also like to add.
That once a channel is matched. It should be removed from the list. Or something to make it easier as you go through them all.

CountryBumkin · « **Reply #12 on:** August 27, 2015, 07:58:35 am »

That's a good idea.
The problem (just to restate) is that matching TV Stations to EPG Guide data is difficult when the Station ID and EPG station id don't match. I have a lot of these. I now keep a separate list (in Excel) with the various station numbers and the matches (station ID letters, names, etc.).

So in this example I have channels, 18.1, 18.2, and 18.3 - but only the first has a positive match. the other two require some guess work. Same for other channels (notice sub channels under "24").

DocLotus · « **Reply #13 on:** August 27, 2015, 09:39:57 am »

I see your dilemma. Fortunately in my case, all my OTA channels match so I really have no need to ever see the match up screens.

Wonder how MS did it in WMC? I never saw any matching screens, must be done automatically somehow or another. Would be nice if MC could do the same.

imeric · « **Reply #14 on:** August 27, 2015, 12:29:14 pm »

I agree with you all it's a pain to do these auto-match (and it happened to me a couple of times where I needed to reset everything...)

BUT: Taking customization away from the users may not be a good thing...For example if you have both a capture card/STB setup and OTA card(s) you may want to do some cross referencing of different EPG sources ie associate a Satellite Channel with an OTA one and vice versa...

IMHO MC team should fix what's broken first and not make drastic changes on the TV config setup...A pain but it's true that when it works it works...

AND...I'D rather see these 3 things in order of importance that currently are a showstopper for me to use JRiver for my TV playing/recording needs:

1. Improvements for recording rules related to sports (Glad to see other folks have posted similar issues of not being able to record games of a favorite team so I'm not the only one...)
2. Ability to have Multiple folders or hard drives for TV recording (Quick workaround could be to set it per profile ex one for OTA another one for STB..)
3. Commercial skipping visibility on the playing progress bar.

Having said that when can we expect 21.0.3?

@COuntryBumkin thx for your sorting suggestions!

kstuart · « **Reply #15 on:** August 27, 2015, 02:04:02 pm »

Sometimes the names will be entirely different, i.e. "KCET" vs "K16D" because the latter is the local translator ID.

So, manual override is important.

DocLotus · « **Reply #16 on:** August 27, 2015, 02:47:14 pm »

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Having said that when can we expect 21.0.3?

It just came out a few minutes ago... Unfortunately, I see no TV improvements in 21.0.3; maybe next build.

I'm actually surprised they went from 21.0.2 to 21.0.3; usually there are several internal beta builds before a general release so I don't really know what is going on with this build. Maybe as it has been over 3 weeks since 21.0.2 they just wanted to get something out there. Wish it had more fixes.

Yaobing · « **Reply #17 on:** August 27, 2015, 03:11:17 pm »

Quote from: DocLotus on August 27, 2015, 02:47:14 pm

It just came out a few minutes ago... Unfortunately, I see no TV improvements in 21.0.3; maybe next build.

I'm actually surprised they went from 21.0.2 to 21.0.3; usually there are several internal beta builds before a general release so I don't really know what is going on with this build. Maybe as it has been over 3 weeks since 21.0.2 they just wanted to get something out there. Wish it had more fixes.

Auto matching fix will be in build 4. The build that just went to public was initially built on August 17.

DocLotus · « **Reply #18 on:** August 27, 2015, 03:44:30 pm »

Ah, so. That explains it. Thanks.

DocLotus · « **Reply #19 on:** August 27, 2015, 04:16:08 pm »

I just did a reset & used the "-F" (channel name first) in the mc2xml setup window. It did not work for me. All the matching channels were missing the decimal numbers such as 2.1, 2.1, etc. All that showed up were full numbers such as 2, 8, 11, etc.

When I use the default switch ("-U" I think) I got all my channels correctly.

Am I missing something?

RoderickGI · « **Reply #20 on:** August 27, 2015, 07:40:43 pm »

Quote from: DocLotus on August 27, 2015, 09:39:57 am

Wonder how MS did it in WMC? I never saw any matching screens, must be done automatically somehow or another. Would be nice if MC could do the same.

Microsoft had complete control over the EPG data path from source to presentation on screen, including huge influence over the provider, zap2it, who in turn had ten years experience to build a database of all possible channel names in the areas that Microsoft provided EPG services. No doubt they collected data from WMC users on the channel names that were scanned, by location, via their "improvement programs". Size and influence allowed MS to make the process transparent to users.

JRiver has no control or influence over the data source(s) used with MC, no database of all the different channel names used in all locations, and doesn't collect data about our TV settings or watching habits.

It looks like there are problems with the new Rovi data source, going by reports on www.thegreenbutton.tv. Enough that some people are using alternate sources of EPG data. It looks like Microsoft is putting in a lot of effort, and has Rovi doing backflips to correct all the issues.

Why did MS make the change, given that the zap2it source seemed to be working so well? Cost reduction is the most likely reason. But even with WMC dropped and the change to Rovi, JRiver can't fund the support that Microsoft can and will. For a while longer anyway.

Also, if memory serves me correctly, when I used WMC with an external EPG data source, since MS don't provide EPG data here, I'm pretty sure that I had to do some matching from XMLTV channel names to OTA scanned channel names.

DocLotus · « **Reply #21 on:** August 27, 2015, 08:03:19 pm »

Interesting information. I guess BIG money gets better data.

Thanks, Roderick.

Castius · « **Reply #22 on:** August 27, 2015, 11:33:21 pm »

In my case my channels matched exactly visually. but still didn't auto match. So looking forward to testing the fixes.

ErikN · « **Reply #23 on:** August 28, 2015, 11:00:08 am »

Quote from: CountryBumkin on August 26, 2015, 04:55:56 am

When your doing the first time setup with mc2xml, I find that the Automatch (matching channels to its epg station data) works much better if you select "-F" (channel name first) in the mc2xml setup window.

It sounds like fixes are coming. As far as ordering, I tried it all. The core of my original post was that the numbers were dead on but used a different separator "2.1" versus "2-1". As long as the user has the ability to manually edit/adjust the assignments there is little harm in 'auto-match' being more aggressive. If there are three channel '18' then pick the one whose station code matches the most letters in order. Or even just pick the first and highlight the match 'red' to indicate that the user should double check the assignment.

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Author Topic: EPG Auto Match (Read 6708 times)