FAQ for beginners

[klaberte]

With deference to all of you, I thought it would be a good idea to create a place for a FAQ for newbies, such as myself. Here are some of the questions I had after reading through the materials and trying to set up WMC to work with epg123. If this is useful, we can reorganize this FAQ in the future.

[klaberte]

Q: Help! I've managed to screw up WMC, and now it doesn't even run! How can I fix WMC?
A: Uninstall and then reinstall WMC: Go to Control Panels->Program and Features. Click Turn Windows features on or off. Media Features->De-select Windows Media Center. Hit OK and follow prompts to reboot. After rebooting, follow the same path to re-select Windows Media Center. After a few minutes (and a possible reboot), you should have a nice, clean installation of WMC!

[klaberte]

Q: Do I have to pay for this?
A: You don't have to pay for epg123. However, epg123 gets its EPG data from schedulesdirect.org. To use epg123, you need to have an account on schedulesdirect.org. The first 7 days are a free trial. After that, you pay $25/year so that epg123 can continue to get your EPG data. http://schedulesdirect.org/membershiplevels

[klaberte]

Q: It seems like epg123 is changing things inside of WMC, e.g. pushing information for the guide, changing channel lineup, etc. Can WMC be running while epg123 is running?
A: It appears that WMC can run while epg123 is pushing data into it. Perhaps someone can explain further.

[klaberte]

Q: What's the deal with the channel logos?
A: epg123 does have some options for importing station logos into WMC, which can show up on your Guide data. However, several users are unhappy with the results, as the default guide layout doesn't allow a lot of room for the logo, and so the logos are hard to see/read.

[klaberte]

Q: Yuck! I imported the logos, and I hate them!!!! How can I get rid of them?
A: ???

[klaberte]

Q: Do I need to register an account with schedulesdirect.org to use epg123?
A: Yes.

[garyan2]

With deference to all of you, I thought it would be a good idea to create a place for a FAQ for newbies, such as myself. Here are some of the questions I had after reading through the materials and trying to set up WMC to work with epg123. If this is useful, we can reorganize this FAQ in the future.

I was planning on having a FAQ on the site, but this is perfect for actually getting user questions to put in it ... so without further ado.

Q: Help! I've managed to screw up WMC, and now it doesn't even run! How can I fix WMC?
A: Uninstall and then reinstall WMC: Go to Control Panels->Program and Features. Click Turn Windows features on or off. Media Features->De-select Windows Media Center. Hit OK and follow prompts to reboot. After rebooting, follow the same path to re-select Windows Media Center. After a few minutes (and a possible reboot), you should have a nice, clean installation of WMC!

Q: Do I have to pay for this?
A: You don't have to pay for epg123. However, epg123 gets its EPG data from schedulesdirect.org. To use epg123, you need to have an account on schedulesdirect.org. The first 7 days are a free trial. After that, you pay $25/year so that epg123 can continue to get your EPG data. http://schedulesdirect.org/membershiplevels

Donations to the author is certainly appreciated. -> I am in no way affiliated with or compensated by Schedules Direct... I just happened to have chosen them to be the best source of guide information to be used by epg123.

Q: It seems like epg123 is changing things inside of WMC, e.g. pushing information for the guide, changing channel lineup, etc. Can WMC be running while epg123 is running?
A: It appears that WMC can run while epg123 is pushing data into it. Perhaps someone can explain further.

WMC can be running while the epg123 updates take place. Upon updating the database, epg123 will notify WMC that updated guide information is available and it should "refresh."

Q: What's the deal with the channel logos?
A: epg123 does have some options for importing station logos into WMC, which can show up on your Guide data. However, several users are unhappy with the results, as the default guide layout doesn't allow a lot of room for the logo, and so the logos are hard to see/read.

The logos linked/downloaded by Schedules Direct are not optimized for WMC in neither colors nor aspect ratio. The images however can be downloaded and edited to be more appealing if the user desires to do so. Shortest route to get good logos would be to use My Channel Logos (MCL XL).

Q: Yuck! I imported the logos, and I hate them!!!! How can I get rid of them?
A: ???

Been there, done that, created a "do over" option. To clear out channel logos, run "epg123Client.exe -nologo" ... this will remove all logos from all channels.

[klaberte]

Q: What is this "Automatically import guide data into WMC" checkbox for? Do I want to select it?
A: Umm yea. That's kinda the whole point of using epg123 with WMC. epg123 will go and get the program listings and create some files in the /epg123 directory to represent this information. If you don't check the "Automatically import guide data into WMC", then that data will just live in the /epg123 directory, never making its way into WMC. Selecting "Automatically import guide data into WMC" pushes this data into WMC. Assuming you have corresponding channels selected within WMC (and have those channels matched to the appropriate listing; see below), the program information from epg123 will show up in your guide. Without selecting "Automatically import guide data into WMC", you would need to find some other way for WMC to benefit from this data in the /ep123 directory.

[klaberte]

Q: And what about the "Automatch stations to channels"? Do I want that selected?
A: Yes, unless you have a very good reason (and a lot of time and patience). Selecting this "Automatch stations to channels" does two things.

First, it configures WMC so that the corresponding channels show up in the WMC guide. This is equivalent to going into WMC to Tasks->TV->Guide->Edit channels, and selecting all the channels you want selected. (But since you have already done this in epg123, why do it again?)

Second, it matches the corresponding channels to the appropriate channel listing. This is equivalent to going into WMC to Tasks->TV->Guide->Edit channels->[Select a channel]->Edit listings, and then finding the corresponding channel call sign which marks the associated program data (in our case, imported from epg123). [See http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 63#p101763 for an example of doing this manually.]

[klaberte]

Q: When I run epg123 in a shell, the last shows "Kicking off ReindexSearchRoot task". What happens if I close the shell while "Kicking off ReindexSearchRoot task" is still active?
A: ??? [my guess is that this is a step running inside of WMC, so killing this epg123 shell will have little effect, but will wait for confirmation. Also, if you kill the shell, you might miss the cache clean up. What are the consequences?]

[klaberte]

Q: What is the potential downside for checking "Allow NEW flag to override Original Air Date"?
A: ???

[garyan2]

Q: What is the potential downside for checking "Allow NEW flag to override Original Air Date"?
A: ???

I was originally concerned about this flag and had some reservations about even including it ... but my concerns were actually mitigated by properly using the isGeneric flag on some programs. I've been using the flag since it was added without any apparent issues.

Just an FYI for everyone ... SD has gotten access to original air dates per country and may include in their API sometime in the future. This flag would no longer be necessary if this happens.

[garyan2]

Q: When I run epg123 in a shell, the last shows "Kicking off ReindexSearchRoot task". What happens if I close the shell while "Kicking off ReindexSearchRoot task" is still active?
A: ??? [my guess is that this is a step running inside of WMC, so killing this epg123 shell will have little effect, but will wait for confirmation. Also, if you kill the shell, you might miss the cache clean up. What are the consequences?]

The only thing that will not happen if the shell is closed during the reindex is 1) the exit code of the reindex will not be logged in the trace.log file, and 2) the cache will not be cleaned (unused files deleted).

[markfromBrooklyn]

To update my system from EPG123 release v0.9.8 to v0.9.9 should I just download and extract the new files to a folder and run the new epg123.exe file?

Thank you

And thank you so much for providing this program.

[klaberte]

Q: When I run epg123 in a shell, the last shows "Kicking off ReindexSearchRoot task". What happens if I close the shell while "Kicking off ReindexSearchRoot task" is still active?
A: ??? [my guess is that this is a step running inside of WMC, so killing this epg123 shell will have little effect, but will wait for confirmation. Also, if you kill the shell, you might miss the cache clean up. What are the consequences?]

The only thing that will not happen if the shell is closed during the reindex is 1) the exit code of the reindex will not be logged in the trace.log file, and 2) the cache will not be cleaned (unused files deleted).

To clarify, if epg123 is run after that aborted run, e.g. via scheduled task, all the cache files would be correctly cleaned, right?

[garyan2]

To update my system from EPG123 release v0.9.8 to v0.9.9 should I just download and extract the new files to a folder and run the new epg123.exe file?

Thank you

And thank you so much for providing this program.

Just need to replace the old files with the new. No need to run from a different folder.

[garyan2]

Q: When I run epg123 in a shell, the last shows "Kicking off ReindexSearchRoot task". What happens if I close the shell while "Kicking off ReindexSearchRoot task" is still active?
A: ??? [my guess is that this is a step running inside of WMC, so killing this epg123 shell will have little effect, but will wait for confirmation. Also, if you kill the shell, you might miss the cache clean up. What are the consequences?]

The only thing that will not happen if the shell is closed during the reindex is 1) the exit code of the reindex will not be logged in the trace.log file, and 2) the cache will not be cleaned (unused files deleted).

To clarify, if epg123 is run after that aborted run, e.g. via scheduled task, all the cache files would be correctly cleaned, right?

Correct. It will clean up what was missed (catch up).