Channels disappearing

[pvogel]

Dear MCE experts,

We at Ice get occasional queries about channels disappearing or missing on initial scan. Examples:

"For the last three days my media center doesn't display channel 9 in either SD or HD in the EPG.  When I check the channels in the setup, both Channel 9's are listed but there is no frequency shown."

"Before installing IceTV, when I performed a channel scan in MCE I retrieved 45 services. After installing Ice TV there was only 15 services."

We have been unable to reproduce this problem so are hoping some of our esteemed users can shed some light?

Peter Vogel

[Eaglehawk]

We Canberra users have this issue with PRIME HD and MCE2005. The channel is still "listed" but the frequency disappears from the Edit Channel list.

As for the greater problem of finding less channels, I believe the procedure to fix that is to scan, then STOP the scan, DELETE ALL, and then restart the scan. MCE is completely inconsistent into what it seems to find, especially after the install of a new EPG (be it BRP, IceTV etc).

[poedgirl]

This happens with me as well. Channel 9 will just randomly be removed from the channels (even while I'm watching it!).

Also, when scanning after setting up IceTV, I need to do a scan then delete all channels and scan again for it to find all of them. I think this is a bug with the way MCE handles the EPG data and the channels because it was happening when I was using FreeXMLTV also.

[impact]

Oh a past fan....

Yes - there is definately a problem with the first time install of guide data and its scanning (why should you need to scan at this stage at all is probably a good question too!).

And you guys are correct - start a scan, stop it, delete all the channels and then do the scan again - is the most reliable solution, in rare instances you may find the need to do it a couple of times - a real pain in the neck.


The next problem that occurs, is sometimes - purely at random - you can loose a channel or all the channels... No guide data to be found at all. this only occurs for digital tuner setups, and happens more times than enough pre RU2. Rollup 2 (RU2) was to address this, and failed miserably because of some last minute changes made for Eurpean users, and hence one of the reasons for the update to the update of RU2.

Morale of the story is to ensure you have all the updates installed (and dont be frightened of RU2 because you cant use Crunchie - you can!)

If it happens, the only solution is to go through the installation process of icetv setup / do the scan / map the channels again. Luckily it does not occur often - and appears to possibly be a timing issue, but I know its not a great help to you - but at least the bug is somewhat acknowledged....

If it happens to you more than once a month - hmmmm.... something may be seriously wrong with your setup though!

[Shane]

I second impact here... get RU2 and all updates installed.

To make sure:

1. Go to Windows Update, choose "Custom" instead of "Express" and choose all updates (not the hardware unless you want to and/or know what you are doing).

2. Reboot if necessary, then do step 1 again. If there are no more updates, your done, if there are, go back to step 1 again.

Pre RU2 I had an occasional channel drop, then RU2 initial release they dropped constantly, then the Update for RU2 came out and I've had one channel drop and that was due to changing tuner cards and not rescanning.

MCE tuning is a touchy beast, but once done (with all updates applied) should be OK.

Regards,
Shane.