EyeTV EPG update frequency & timing on Elgato EyeTV

Started by techydude, July 11, 2009, 11:24:52 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

techydude

A few months ago I emailed Elgato asking why my daily IceTV EPG updates had moved to ~3am each morning even though I'd initially set it up in the afternoon.

Elgato advised that it was an IceTV requirement.

Yet I read on an IceTV support topic (or forum post maybe) that Ice's EPG updates are generally done by lunch-time each day, and that after lunch would be a good time to schedule your daily updates (i think the question came from a Media Centre user).

So why am I forced into a 3am update schedule because I'm using Elgato EyeTV?

A classic example of how this clearly isn't serving *me* was last Friday when all the Michael Jackson specials popped up like daisies in a graveyard and sent shockwaves through the whole evening's lineup.

I'm guessing it's about IceTV spreading its bandwidth load?

Not Happy, Jan.

Daniel Hall at IceTV

There is no requirement by IceTV as to what time of the day the update is to occur.

We absolutely recommend udpates of the guide after 1pm, we always have.

As for EyeTV, there are limits in place as to how often it is allowed to download the guide, this is currently once per hour, if EyeTV performs an update to quickly it will be told how long to wait until the next update can occur. This generally doesn't happen with EyeTV though as it only auto updates once per day as this is the quickest it can be set via the EyeTV Preferences. Also the EyeTV preferences don't allow you to set the time of day for the update to occur, this is controlled entirely by EyeTV.
Regards,

Daniel.
CTO.

techydude

great, Elgato points the finger at IceTV, and IceTV points the finger at Elgato, and i'm stuck in the middle with 3am EPG updates.

Daniel Drysdale at IceTV

#3
techydude,

I can understand your frustration, I have no idea why a representative of Elgato told you that we set a requirement for a 3 am download. I can assure you that this "requirement" does not come from IceTV, as the engineer that worked with Elgato on integrating their software with our service and now the Software Manager here at IceTV, I would be the one sending requirements to them and I have never mandated a set contact time.

I'm afraid someone at Elgato is misinformed.

The external guide loading mechanism in EyeTV is shared by all the services that they integrate with, we had no choice but to accept hourly scheduling requests and daily epg updates as Elgato were unwilling to change their system to cater for us. Our normal preference is for hourly epg updates and half-hourly scheduling requests.

I've whipped up an automator workflow to launch EyeTV and force a guide update (see attached file).

I'm not going to guarantee it will work but if not it isn't hard to reproduce yourself.

Unzip the attachment, copy into your Applications directory and then use Lingon (http://www.tuppis.com/lingon/) to schedule it to run everyday at a convenient time for you, make sure it is after 1 pm.

I hope this helps you and I apologise for the misinformation from Elgato.
Cheers,

Dan
Software Manager @ IceTV


Daniel Drysdale at IceTV

You don't have to use Lingon it just makes it easy to set the task to run on a schedule. OS X uses launchd instead of cron to schedule tasks and editing launchd scripts by hand is a pain.
Cheers,

Dan
Software Manager @ IceTV