Using Smart EPG on Australian Model TMS

[FireBird]

Item 26 "LiveEPG"

SE uses the native EPG data to regularily update its own data while you're watching TV.

Item 31/17 "Info with new recs," and,

Displays the PVR info OSD (the ones on the top right side of the screen) for 3 seconds whenever a new recording starts.

Item 31/18 "Playinfo as PVR info"?

An additional PVR info box will be displayed if a playback is running.

[keith_leitch]

To address my problem with the navigation keys, someone advised me to consider a firmware reload. However, I have now tried this on two different machines (2460 and 7160) with two different versions of SE loaded (6.2g and 7.0e) and no other TAPs. I cannot navigate through the infobox. It is very strange!

[keith_leitch]

Does "LiveEPG" replace the daily scan, or just help to update it?

[Twilight]

[quote="keith_leitch"]Does "LiveEPG" replace the daily scan, or just help to update it?[/quote]

it just help du update it !

twilight

[keith_leitch]

[quote="keith_leitch"]To address my problem with the navigation keys, someone advised me to consider a firmware reload. However, I have now tried this on two different machines (2460 and 7160) with two different versions of SE loaded (6.2g and 7.0e) and no other TAPs. I cannot navigate through the infobox. It is very strange![/quote]

I was hoping that someone would have more advice about this. It is very strange, as other users can navigate through the Infobox entries, but I cannot. Firebird seemed to be saying that the keys were being used by something else, but I have my problem even with no other TAPs running. I have also tried on two different machines, with the same result.

[nmcace]

Hi,

Just wondering if there's any way to reallocate to logos to different channels. The Australian Nine network has shuffled around their stations and introduced a new one, and the logos no longer are displaying correctly for these channels.

Cheers!

[Anthea]

Well, that might be done in the "logos.lil" file (is a text file), found in /ProgramFiles/Settings/Logos, where you have the assignment of station ID and station name, or better: the base file name under which the logo can be found

[FireBird]

According to that post, work is in progress.

[DanielF]

Just joined this forum, and not sure if 'answering' this thread is the correct place to ask my questions. If not, please redirect me...

I installed SmartEPG on my 7100Plus just before leaving Sydney for a 3-month holiday, thinking it would automatically handle the daylight-saving changeover in my absence (my wife, who stayed at home, being technically incompetent).

Not only did it NOT, but it has done strange things to my PVR! We had a major (planned) power blackout for several hours while I was away, and my wife said that after that, dozens of her recorded programs just 'disappeared' from the list. A ~Mediafiles directory appeared in the recorded programs list (it might have been there before; I don't recall), but it was empty.

Despite there now being only four or five 1-hour programs remaining in the recordings list, the SmartEPG usage indicator shows '35% free space', which obviously means something 'invisible' is taking up almost 60% of the HDD space!

Not knowing how to fix this (couldn't find a solution by Googling), I decided to 'clean' the system and start afresh (without SmartEPG). So I did a system reset and a HDD format, but, surprise surprise, SmartEPG is still there, with all its search records, and its usage bar still shows 35% free even though there are now NO recordings in the list (and still the empty ~Mediafiles directory).

So my question is: what's going on here?? How to I clean/format the whole machine, get rid of SmartEPG, and get back my whole HDD capacity?

Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks.

Daniel
Gerroa, Australia

[FireBird]

Hi Daniel,

and not sure if 'answering' this thread is the correct place to ask my questions.

Your ?question? touches several different topics but as this thread isn?t that busy, let?s do it here. Let?s start with the easiest answer.

So I did a system reset and a HDD format, but, surprise surprise, SmartEPG is still there

The toppy silently ignores your format instruction if a TAP is still running. Therefore the best way is to hold the 0 key while starting your Toppy to make sure it doesn?t AutoStart any TAPs and then perform the format. But don?t do it right now ? see below.

We had a major (planned) power blackout for several hours

If the outage hits a running Toppy, the file system may be corrupted and there is a risk of losing files or having to reformat the disk. So if the outage is planned, it is a good idea to put the Toppy in standby.

and my wife said that after that, dozens of her recorded programs just 'disappeared' from the list

If the space is shown as used, there is some chance to recover the lost files. There?s a TAP called lost+found, which tries to recover the files. But there are several possibilities for the outcome:

* the files are recovered, playable and everything is fine.
* the files are recovered but the file names have been lost. In that case, you?ll see the files via ftp only and some work is needed to rename the files and to make them playable
* lost+found is not able to recover anything and reformatting the disk is the only way to get the disk space back.

I installed SmartEPG on my 7100Plus just before leaving Sydney for a 3-month holiday, thinking it would automatically handle the daylight-saving changeover in my absence

There seems to be a misunderstanding: while SE adapts the time offset in its EPG database, it is the firmware that has to do the changeover. SE just supports it by programming a wakeup timer some minutes after the changeover so that the firmware can change the new time zone. But as I?m not aware how Australien firmwares behave in that respect, that is a question for an AUS forum like this one.

Cherrs,
Alex

[DanielF]

Alex,

Many thanks for taking the time to address my issues! Your answers were very helpful.

I didn't know about the 'silently ignore format' instruction when TAPs are running. It's a pity they don't mention important things like that in the User Guide!

I'm actually not concerned about the 'lost' recordings, and with so many TAPs already installed (and perhaps conflicting?!) I prefer not to install any more. I'll just reformat the HDD (now that I know how to do that, thanks to your tip) when it's free of recorded programs, then restore the ProgramFiles directory using FTP from my PC backup copy.

OK, I understand the situation with daylight saving now. Unfortunately 'auto' setting for daylight saving doesn't seem to work properly on the 7100Plus (I can't remember what the problem is - it's years since I tried it - possibly the wrong changeover dates in the firmware, since Australia changed many years ago). So I just have to switch manually at each DST changeover, in the Time setup menu.

Since doing the factory reset (will that execute with TAPs running?), other strange behaviour has occurred. Now when the PVR goes to standby, the blue light around the front-panel power button lights up (it didn't before, I think) and the time no longer displays when in standby (blank VFD). I found a menu that allows me to specify the standby display, and I set it to 'time', but it still doesn't display the time. Not a big issue; just confusing for the wife who was instructed to check the display (for the time/channel display) to determine if the PVR is off or on (resp.).

Another little issue has also cropped up, not directly related to the previous issues...

Also while I was away, some LCNs were renamed/repurposed by the stations, so I did a fresh automatic channel scan to find the the new names. Now the SmartEPG 'search' list has the wrong channels for some searches (e.g. 'ABC' when it was previously 'Win'), and when I press 'OK' to edit the channel, and select the correct channel (as 'Yes', the others all 'No'), when I save/exit it reverts to the wrong channel!

I guess I'm going to have to delete all searches and re-enter each one. So tedious, as I have a few screenfuls! If there was some way to ascertain (from the machine) the ChannelID for each LCN, I could just edit 'Search.txt' in my backup and FTP it to the Toppy to replace the current one.

Thanks,
Daniel

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

Daniel,

There is an Australian forum dedicated to Australian models and Australian circumstances. Whilst the European forum members are always very friendly, sometimes they may lack the local knowledge that can help you.

The Australian Forum can be found here: http://topfield.forumchitchat.com/

When you ask a question, you should also tell us what version of the TAP you are running.

With the SE searches looking for the wrong channels, that is because the Nine network juggled the parameters that form its channels when it created the new HD channel. I'm not sure what could have caused "ABC" and "Win" to become confused.

SE uses a "channel ID" to uniquely identify each channel in your searches. Nine actually swapped some of these values between channels, GEM became 9HD, etc. It also depends on where you are because I think that some regional WIN affiliates did something different.

The problem with daylight savings is that the PVR does not look ahead, it only knows the DST status as at now. Because the EPG is transmitted using UTC, the PVR calculates the wrong local time for some EPG items. Download the DSTConfig TAP and set the DST rules for your state. In SE, set "25 Automatic Summer Time" to "Manual", this should fix most of the DST problems.

Download DSTConfig from here.

Contrary to DVB standards, some Australian networks transmit the wrong UTC with the EPG in the week leading up to and sometime following the DST transition. You just need to be vigilant.

You should also post a question on the Australian forum about the 7100Plus, perhaps there is a know issue with DST transitions.

[FireBird]

Now when the PVR goes to standby, the blue light around the front-panel power button lights up (it didn't before, I think) and the time no longer displays when in standby (blank VFD).

On my Toppy it?s Menu - Settings ? Miscellaneous ? Standby Mode. If set to active, the clock should be displayed.

Also while I was away, some LCNs were renamed/repurposed by the stations, so I did a fresh automatic channel scan to find the the new names. Now the SmartEPG 'search' list has the wrong channels for some searches (e.g. 'ABC' when it was previously 'Win')

Whenever you change the Toppies channel list (e.g. by a scan), you need to synchronise SE?s channel list. This is done by just opening option 1 in the SE?s menu. Just double-check if the scan options are still ok but then your searches should be ok again.

Cheers,
Alex

[DanielF]

DMC and Alex,

Thank you both for your continued help with my problems. I think I'm almost 'there' now!
Time now displays in Standby; channels are synced and correctly shown in the Search list.
All that's left to do is format the HDD to clear the 'invisible' occupied space, which I'll do as soon as we've watched all the recorded programs, then restore the entire ProgramFiles directory via FTP. Now that I have a better understanding of how SE works in association with DST, I'll give it another chance! ;-)

Incidentally, my SE version is 7.0e - sorry for not mentioning that at the outset.

I already had DSTConfig in the ProgramFiles directory, and remember running it some time ago to set the start/end dates for DST. But do I need to move it to AutoStart directory so it's running all the time? Is it the TAP that changes to/from DST, or has it just set (once-only) the dates for the 7100Plus to do that?

DMC, I was aware of the chitchat forum, but started here because it seemed to have threads more directly relevant to SmartEPG problems. I'll ask first on the Aus forum next time I have issues.

Rgds, Daniel

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

You only need to run DSTConfig once. It should not go in your AutoStart directory.

[DanielF]

[quote="DeltaMikeCharlie"]You only need to run DSTConfig once. It should not go in your AutoStart directory.[/quote]

OK, so how should the 7100Plus be set?

Currently I have Time set to 'Auto', Offset 11 hours, and DST set to 'On'. DST doesn't have an 'auto' option. So how will it change at the appropriate time?

Rgds, Daniel

[DanielF]

I've now re-formatted my HDD and recovered 92% of its capacity (according to TMSArchive.tap). I guess most of the used space is occupied by TAPs and their data.

Talking of which, I notice a half-Gig file named ProgramFiles\Settings\SmartEPG_TMS\EPGDB\EDBC_LiveEPG.tmp. What would happen if I deleted it?

Rgds, Daniel

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

OK, so how should the 7100Plus be set?Rgds, Daniel

• In the PVR firmware, leave your DST as Auto unless you know that your DST rules are wrong.
• Set your DSTConfig values.
• Set SE menu item 25 as per my previous post.

[Twilight]

I guess most of the used space is occupied by TAPs and their data.

i don't think so, normaly the harddsik has two partitions: 2GB are occupied by the system it self.

Talking of which, I notice a half-Gig file named ProgramFiles\Settings\SmartEPG_TMS\EPGDB\EDBC_LiveEPG.tmp. What would happen if I deleted it?

then it would created again don't think about deleting files which are used from taps... if you have a small harddisk witch only 500GB this takes you 0.5%...
if you switch of the live epg function in SmartEPG this file will delted by SmartEPG it self!

twilight

[bulletmark]

I have a question about SE and Firebirdlib and not sure where to post but given this is an English thread I will post here and hopefully somebody (Firebird?) may respond. I have a small personal tap called AskDelete which I have happily used for years. Recently I installed SE on my 7100+ and now find a clash with my tap. Without SE, or with SE but with the standard infobox configured, when I hit stop on a recorded file then my tap window pops up using a standard Firebirdlib OSDMenuMessageBox at the same time the standard infobox pops up and I can interact with my window fine. With SE running and using its own info box (with or without pilot), as soon as I press stop then my window pops up with SE but my window then gets immediately "hidden". I can tell it is still running because if I press left/right then it is temporarily refreshed on the screen. Once the infobox times out then it will stay on the screen. I can hack around this by doing a OSDMenuMessageBoxShow() repeatedly within that time although it flickers on the screen as it refreshes etc.I have tried heaps of code modications to get around this problem but it just seems that SE does not co-exist with OSDMenuMessageBox. In fact, if I quickly press the menu button after my window appears then my config window will appear fine because it uses raw TAP_Osd functions. Any suggestions?