No Thumbnails for Recorded TV shows

[kingwr]

I have recently lost all the graphics for my Recorded TV shows, both the series and the actual shows. This is on the MC7 computer itself, the DMA2100 extenders, the Xbox 260, and the Echo. Now I just get pale blue boxes for everything. The only thing that has changed on the MC7 box is the configuration add-in for the Echo and an update of the Companion App services. Can the Companion App services have something to do with losing the graphics for my Recorded TV shows?

[Motz]

I believe inside of Recorded TV media center actually generates automatically off of screen shots.

Going into the guide and selecting a show or a recording brings up the "series" image, but that is pulled from the internet from microsoft. We don't touch any of that stuff at all.

[kingwr]

So the included YAMMM and the "Artwork" and "Metadata" settings only effect what shows up in Companion App on the iPad?

I wonder what happened to my thumbnails?

[Motz]

Correct and right now we only pull in artwork for your local movie files and recorded movie files. We download the artwork via themoviedb. michael wrote yammm so he would know the specifics. We do scan the recorded tv for movie files, but we don't actually touch any of the generated artwork at all, basically WMC just points to a URL on the internet for them from my understanding.

[Motz]

Interesting discussion on experts: http://experts.windows.com/frms/windows ... 94580.aspx

Seems like maybe HB knows more.

[kingwr]

I recently lost all my thumbnails for Recorded TV. I just get pale blue boxes for everything. This is the case on the MC7 computer, the extenders, and the Xbox 360.
Here's what changed between the time I last saw thumbnail images:

Re-performed TV Setup
Installed update to Ceton Companion App Services
Install Ceton Echo Settings add-in

Ceton says their software doesn't have anything to do with the thumbnail images for Recorded TV.

I deleted the thumbs.db file from the Recorded TV folder, but that didn't help. I have a feeling there is another thumbnail database on the C: drive somewhere, but I don't know where it would be.
Any suggestions on how to get these back?

[richard1980]

The actual database is stored in %ProgramData%\Microsoft\eHome\thmb\TVThumb.db, not the thumbs.db in the Recorded TV folder.

[mikinho]

kingwr- Any luck?

I wrote both the Echo add-in and relavent portions of the Ceton Companion Services (CCS) so if there is anything in them I can help but I can say with certainty it isn't the Echo add-in (nothing relavent there) and for CCS we look at that data but do not touch it.

Could I give you a tool to dump some values from your metadata to help pinpoint if the error?

There are a couple possible places you could have issues. 1- The embedded WTV metadata itself...unlikely since everything is affected. 2- Your EGP database. Media Center will only download, cache artwork and grab screenshots for "well known" Recorded TV files. 3- The TVThumb.db which stores the cached screenshots; 4- Your WTV shell extensions are corrupt (See myangeldust's post in that experts thread) preventing the thumbnail generator from working

My guess is you have a combination of #3 and #4...it is the most common.

[kingwr]

I did delete the TVThumb.db file and then watched to see if the process would run to rebuild it and rebuild the thumbnail images. However, the process never ran and the file was never rebuilt. I then proceeded to try to reset my configuration using the MC update utility. This was successful but now I have no live TV capability and attempts to perform the TV signal setup result in a failure message that says a serious error has occurred and prompts me to reboot the computer and try again.

I am looking at a reinstall, at this point. First in about 4 years. My old frustrations and hatred for Windows returning.

[mikinho]

What argument did you give mcupdate?

Depending which you ran I would run:

1- %SystemRoot%\ehome\mcupdate.exe -PvrRecoveryTask
2- %SystemRoot%\ehome\mcupdate.exe -MediaCenterRecoveryTask

Then reboot

The first time you you run Media Center it may crash, if it does run Media Center as an administrator and it should work.

[kingwr]

Tried both. No Joy. Finally uninstalled and reinstalled Media Center. Everything worked fine after that except I can't install my DMA2100 extenders. Uninstalling Media Center didn't erase the DMA2100 extender information, so they are still show up, yet they don't connect and uninstalling them or reconfiguring has no effect. May be looking at a wipe of the SSD and reinstall of the OS, now.

EDIT: Enabled the Administrator user and now all is well. Reinstalled Ceton Companion Services and everything appears to be back to normal.