Channel not found even though it's in the channel map?

[mdavej]

After months of trying to solve this issue, the solution was very simple. So I thought I'd post in case someone else ever runs into the same thing.

A couple of months ago, just a single cable TV channel stopped working. I would tune it and get an SDV error that the channel did not exist in my system. But I knew it was still in the system and in my package because my neighbor still got it. So I looked at my channel map, and sure enough, it's still there. I tune it in the Ceton diagnostic web page, and it resolves fine.

Thinking it's a mapping issue, I try TV setup again in WMC and a couple of different lineups from nearby zips. No change.

Then I call the cable company for a few more hits. No change.

Try many reboots of my tuner and tuning adapter. No change.

Contact zap2it about the channel map possibly having an error. But they say everything is fine on their end.

Open a ticket with Ceton and do weeks of troubleshooting. No change. But did discover what was happening. I'd pick or type in one channel, say 500, but the Ceton logs show an attempt to tune an entirely different channel, say 400, which indeed does not exist in my system or the channel map.

Finally, I downloaded Guide Tool and looked at the channel list on the left. Sure enough, there was 400 AND 500. So I simply r-clicked and deleted the bogus 400 channel, and boom, 500 started working again. Keep in mind this bogus channel 400 never at any point showed up in the channel editor in WMC. Without Guide Tool I would have now way of knowing it was in the channel database at all. I don't know how the wrong one got in there to begin with, but deleting it did the trick. I guess WMC looks for the call letters and tries to tune the first matching channel number it finds.

[signcarver]

I actually see the reverse happening more often... someone set something up with guide tool to add channel and then when the guide was finally updated and/or changed the old thing manually added was still there. I also have several clear qam tuners and WMC always adds channels I don't get in my market and keeps trying to force them in as the OTA it tries to add matches the physical qam number.(i.e. 4.1). Any time I have seen this issue, it will list both in the guide and usually one or both have both as sources. So you may have had to remove 400 from the guide. Until recently, in my area Epix HD was only available on cablecard tuners on 1362, where they moved it to years ago but was available on STBs at the old location of 1295 so both were in the guide and often both would list the 1295 as the source but the TA could not find 1295 in its map as it only had 1362. A few months ago when we lost more channels on the basic cablecard map, they fixed it on the TA and now both work again.

[mdavej]

Reading this gave me a bit more understanding: http://1geek1tool.com/2009/11/06/what-i ... e-service/

Looks like in my case there was an orphaned channel object, a channel with no guide service, a bogus channel number and no visibility. I still have no idea how it got there. I had a few other bogus channels in the database as well but none were duplicates like the one that was causing my problem. I went ahead and deleted every channel that didn't have matching guide data.