# Is something seriously wrong with TiVo’s guide data?



## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

I thought I’d see posts about this left and right, but I don’t, so is this somehow just me?

tonight, 1/16/2020, of the 9 channels I have favorited, FIVE of them have no guide data at all. 

I’ve NEVER seen anything like this from Tivo in my 16 years. Nothing even close. 

that’s on top of not the correct guide data for the conners tonight, screwed up guide data for Seth Meyers a week or two ago, screwed up SNL guide data, and screwed up Saturday morning data. But this is by far the worst yet. 
What the heck is going on? I’m literally going to have to access TV guide and set up manual recordings. 

I rebooted and did a guide update, and nothing.


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## WVZR1 (Jul 31, 2008)

I've no issues with my 'GUIDE' --- NONE!


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## justen_m (Jan 15, 2004)

Fine here, Cable One Boise.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Huh...thanks...guess it’s just my area. I’ve literally never had anything like this happen. Am I supposed to contact Tivo?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Puppy76 said:


> I thought I'd see posts about this left and right, but I don't, so is this somehow just me?
> tonight, 1/16/2020, of the 9 channels I have favorited, FIVE of them have no guide data at all.
> I rebooted and did a guide update, and nothing.


Run a service connection after 3pm Eastern. Which networks? I only have 20 channels as Favorites, so I may not see those you are having problems with.


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## mbernste (Apr 6, 2003)

I know _The Conners_ were listed twice in my "To Do" list with very generic guide data. I didn't look this morning to see if it was recorded. Other than that, I haven't had any issues with the guide. I know several of the shows are still in reruns this month or only have two new episodes as preparation for next month's sweeps. Because of this, new shows are going to be light for a little while. Expect the same to happen in March and April in preparation for the season-end May sweeps as well.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

JoeKustra said:


> Run a service connection after 3pm Eastern. Which networks? I only have 20 channels as Favorites, so I may not see those you are having problems with.


Thanks, I'll try that!

I've got no guide data for CBS or PBS or World, And also the smaller stations Comet and MyTV (I'm sure others too that I don't bother displaying).

Weirdly, I've noticed my to do list is still showing all my cbs shows as taping tonight, Young Sheldon, Evil, etc., and yet he guide data is blank now. I'm going to have to remember to update after 3Eastern, and possibly set up manual recordings.

I've never seen anything like this at all from a Tivo.



mbernste said:


> I know _The Conners_ were listed twice in my "To Do" list with very generic guide data. I didn't look this morning to see if it was recorded. Other than that, I haven't had any issues with the guide. I know several of the shows are still in reruns this month or only have two new episodes as preparation for next month's sweeps. Because of this, new shows are going to be light for a little while. Expect the same to happen in March and April in preparation for the season-end May sweeps as well.


The Conners is showing as recording two episodes tonight, with generic data...tv guide shows that too, zap2it shows two other shows, so that's probably not the TiVo's fault at least, but this seems like it's all massively downhill the past couple of weeks.

The shows being light I can see, but I e never had that affect my guide data like this before...literally has never happened.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

mbernste said:


> I know _The Conners_ were listed twice in my "To Do" list with very generic guide data.


That's a good example. The Conners will broadcast on ABC tonight, 1/16, with two episodes that lack an OAD and have a generic decription, so TiVo should record them. There is an (R) for repeat however.

Like the post above, Gracenote shows two different repeats with generic data.


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## nc88keyz (Oct 24, 2005)

You were part of the FCC repack for ota. best to report guide issues with tivo form on website. but they absolutely know about it. Rescan your channels and force a network call reboot box and wait. Ita ridiculous they knew this was coming and what should have been done proactively. 

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk


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## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

I noticed last night the 2020 episodes of Modern Family have been labeled E13 and E14 when the 2019 eps ended at E9.


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## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

JoeKustra said:


> That's a good example. The Conners will broadcast on ABC tonight, 1/16, with two episodes that lack an OAD and have a generic decription, so TiVo should record them. There is an (R) for repeat however.
> 
> Like the post above, Gracenote shows two different repeats with generic data.


Actually, I think ABC just made the change yesterday from 2 repeats of The Connors to Mixed-ish and Black-ish for tonight.


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## Adam C. (Jul 24, 2017)

realityboy said:


> Actually, I think ABC just made the change yesterday from 2 repeats of The Connors to Mixed-ish and Black-ish for tonight.


I just checked the guide on my Recast. For ABC tonight it shows Jeopardy Greatest of All Time from 8pm-9:02pm, and The Last Days of Richard Pryor from 9:02pm-11pm. I thought the Richard Pryor show was supposed to air Friday night, so I have no idea what's going on.


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## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

Adam C. said:


> I just checked the guide on my Recast. For ABC tonight it shows Jeopardy Greatest of All Time from 8pm-9:02pm, and The Last Days of Richard Pryor from 9:02pm-11pm. I thought the Richard Pryor show was supposed to air Friday night, so I have no idea what's going on.


Jeopardy games for Wed-Fri this week were if needed, and it wasn't needed so I think it left everyone scrambling a bit despite the fact that ABC knew which games were needed since it was prerecorded.


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

We missed CBS recordings on Monday night owing to that one channel not having any guide data. I tried several service connections but none got that channel populated. What worked was a "Clear Program Information and To Do List," followed by the service connections necessary to get the guide data restored.

* Comcast in Western Illinois


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

No missing guide information for me, but I submitted a lineup ticket to Tivo this morning on episode sequencing issues. I listed a dozen different series where they have or will mess up the episode number sequencing. Here's the series I submitted, All Rise, Bull, Carols Second Act, Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, DCs Legends of Tomorrow, Dare Me, Dynasty, Evil, Modern Family, NCIS, and Power. Probably doesn't matter to most folks, but Plex is particular about it for getting the metadata right.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

reneg said:


> No missing guide information for me, but I submitted a lineup ticket to Tivo this morning on episode sequencing issues. I listed a dozen different series where they have or will mess up the episode number sequencing. Here's the series I submitted, All Rise, Bull, Carols Second Act, Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, DCs Legends of Tomorrow, Dare Me, Dynasty, Evil, Modern Family, NCIS, and Power. Probably doesn't matter to most folks, but Plex is particular about it for getting the metadata right.


It's almost like they're just making stuff up.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

nc88keyz said:


> You were part of the FCC repack for ota. best to report guide issues with tivo form on website. but they absolutely know about it. Rescan your channels and force a network call reboot box and wait. Ita ridiculous they knew this was coming and what should have been done proactively.


‍ *sigh*

thanks, it probably should have, but didn't even occur to me that that nonsense could be what's causing this.

I did a rescan (and forced another update), and...this is all a mess.

My CBS station is, apparently, broadcasting on two frequencies now, the old one, and a new one...the new one has Tivo guide data, the old one doesn't. The old frequency has a significantly stronger signal

Comet, my PBS stations, and MyTV are all continuing to broadcast on their old frequencies. Tivo no longer has guide data for them or knows what they are, but they aren't broadcasting on the (I'm assuming) new frequencies that Tivo has guide data for.

I think my Pbs station is doing SOMETHING tomorrow with the physical transmitter, so maybe the new frequencies are correct, but just a day early. Maybe.

I guess I'll try to record off the new cbs frequencies and hope for the best, though it's disturbing they're weaker. Otherwise I'll have to disable that channel, re-enable the old one, and set up manual recordings for tonight.

I can't believe how messed up/complicated this is, and I'm still ticked we're just giving away bandwidth to cell phone companies.

I also found out Tivo wrecked the signal scan tool on hydra...it no longer displays video, which means I can't tell how well a station is REALLY coming in, and in this case I can't verify what the hell the station actually IS lol.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

Adam C. said:


> I just checked the guide on my Recast. For ABC tonight it shows Jeopardy Greatest of All Time from 8pm-9:02pm, and The Last Days of Richard Pryor from 9:02pm-11pm. I thought the Richard Pryor show was supposed to air Friday night, so I have no idea what's going on.


Rovi and Gracenote both confirm 2020 is running Friday night, The Last Days of Richard Pryor is running on Thursday night and ABC ran a commercial confirming it the other day.


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## ClayKY (Aug 24, 2005)

Puppy76 said:


> Huh...thanks...guess it's just my area. I've literally never had anything like this happen. Am I supposed to contact Tivo?


It's not just you. It's happened numerous times to my cable box as well as my mother's in the last few weeks with no rhyme or reason as to which channels are affected. A new data fetch will fix it if a download is available, otherwise I've had to resort to a "clear guide data" and do a fresh data fetch.

Good luck.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

I'd like to thank @Puppy76 for starting this thread. It is the location to report quality errors in the guide. We already have a thread for missing SM, one for service connection problems and a whole forum for last minute guide 1P screwups. This thread's focus is the wrong, missing, and just poor data being contained in the guide. Since I changed from Sony DHG then Motorola DVDR, the TiVo guide (like the DHG) has always been the source of the majority of posts. Ironically, The Sony's guide was from Rovi and they stopped providing a guide, which virtually killed the product.

Now back to our complaints already in progress.


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## mbernste (Apr 6, 2003)

Adam C. said:


> I thought the Richard Pryor show was supposed to air Friday night.


The Richard Pryor show aired last night (Thursday). This makes sense since I don't think this type of show would typically preempt 20/20.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

I know Tivo takes flack for Rovi guide data errors but I'm finding posts on the internet that Gracenote is having bad data also. There is no perfect guide data.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

As of yesterday the switchover seems to have happened okay...everything is broadcasting on their new channels. 

I can’t believe how little warning we got, and wish Tivo had thrown up a warning themselves rather than just vanishing half my stations. 

and I’m still pissed about us just giving away tons of our broadcast space AGAIN

but at least it seems to be working. 
Found out during this the Hydra channel power scan thingee feature is completly broken though.


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## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

The guide data has been unreliable since the switch from Gracenote to Rovi. Some programs are screwed up so often that I resort to manual recordings.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Yes. It's been an issue since they switched to Rovi. Mine is a mess even a few days out, and then it gets cleaned up, and there's never a full two weeks of data, back in the Gracenote days it was rock solid 2 weeks out.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

This looks like the repack issue. They totally botched that too. They could have pulled telemetry data from the boxes to see when the stations moved over in each market, but no, they made people manually file requests to have channels moved over one at a time, and stuff didn't record in the meantime.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Other example: Strange Problem - Stumptown on HD channel records in SD


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

I’d just noticed that SD versus HD issue myself the past week or two. Stumptown has been getting labeled correctly (says and is HD) but a number of other shows are getting labeled SD which clearly aren’t. 

And man, my ABC station is only like 2.2GB/hour. I wish all my major stations got at least 4.x...although at least my storage space goes further. And there’s a huuuuuuuuge difference between 1.3-1.5/hour and 2GB/hour on MPEG-2. A bigger difference IMO between that then between 2GB and 7GB.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Puppy76 said:


> And man, my ABC station is only like 2.2GB/hour. I wish all my major stations got at least 4.x...although at least my storage space goes further. And there's a huuuuuuuuge difference between 1.3-1.5/hour and 2GB/hour on MPEG-2. A bigger difference IMO between that then between 2GB and 7GB.


When Letterman left The Late Show there was a small pause and then the new set with Colbert was a real blowout. At that time my CBS feed had no sub-channels. I could understand why OTA was always said to look better. But then over the course of a year the station added 3 (and now 4) sub-channels. The quality is why I stay with 1080p. The channel went from 16+Mbps down to now 10Mbps. My basic cable channels, like SyFy and TNT are better. I'm still MPEG-2, and see no change in the future. Last I checked USA was 12.57Mbps and ABC was 6.71Mbps. I don't watch a lot of ABC or Fox (except sports).

I do wonder what quality streaming will bring. So far every time I check, they are still PCM but not yet MP3. Soon.

Oh yeah, the guide is a joke. Not funny either. Go to Friday and there's a chance for reasonable accuracy. Pass that it's a waste. I remember TVGOS from Rovi. It was a 7-day guide. Some things don't change.


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## tapokata (Apr 26, 2017)

A variable in streaming video quality is the efficiency of the codec. H.264 results in a steam that is about 50% smaller than MPEG-2, so that full bandwidth MpEg channel that was humping at 19 Mbps provides equivalent data at ~9 Mbps. H.265 drops that rate even further, so the encoded file now produces reasonable results at ~5 Mbps.

While a 5 Mbps MPEG-2 format file can look like the dogs breakfast, a 5 Mbps H.265 can have the picture quality of full bandwidth HD Mpeg-2 stream. ATSC 3.0 can deliver up to 57 mbps in the current 6 Mhz channel space.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

I disagree about that bitrate looking bad with MPEG-2. Imo lower still looks great. 1.5GB/hour is where it starts looking bad-ish with 720p/60fps, although even that is watchable. IMO it’s a fast diminishing returns thing past 2GB/hour, not that it doesn’t look better, and not that H.265 wouldn’t be an awesome upgrade to use thr same bandwidth better. 

Between using H.265, HDR (if anything will support it...) and better reception/error correction, I’m potentially excited by ATSC 3.0......IF the transition actually works, and we actually have easy/cheap hardware to receive it. Including from Tivo...


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Puppy76 said:


> I'd just noticed that SD versus HD issue myself the past week or two. Stumptown has been getting labeled correctly (says and is HD) but a number of other shows are getting labeled SD which clearly aren't.
> 
> And man, my ABC station is only like 2.2GB/hour. I wish all my major stations got at least 4.x...although at least my storage space goes further. And there's a huuuuuuuuge difference between 1.3-1.5/hour and 2GB/hour on MPEG-2. A bigger difference IMO between that then between 2GB and 7GB.


Those numbers have to be off if you're using OTA. If you're on Comcast, they make a LOT more sense, as they could be re-compressing your locals to MPEG-4 and then those numbers would add up.

OTA used to be 19.3mbps, which is about 9GB/hour. Today, OTA typically ranges from 8mbps to 12mbps, which would be 4GB/hour to 6GB/hour, with a few few O&O stations that aren't channels sharing as high as 17mbps, or about 8GB/hour. There may be a few as low as 6-7mbps if they are in a really tight stat mux, which would be 3-4GB/hour. There is no way anyone can do MPEG-2 HD in 2.2GB/hour.

Are you on Comcast, or looking at file sizes for half hour shows?



tapokata said:


> A variable in streaming video quality is the efficiency of the codec. H.264 results in a steam that is about 50% smaller than MPEG-2, so that full bandwidth MpEg channel that was humping at 19 Mbps provides equivalent data at ~9 Mbps. H.265 drops that rate even further, so the encoded file now produces reasonable results at ~5 Mbps.


Also, the encoders have gotten WAY more efficient. Today, a good MPEG-2 encoder can deliver the same quality that used to require 19.3mbps in about 12mbps. The problem is, stations always want more, so instead of delivering great HD quality, they put two HD channels on one or a ton of subchannels, and now we have 8mbps channels that look like what 12mbps channels looked like 5 years ago.

Comcast started tri-muxing MPEG-2 HD around 2012, and it looked pretty awful, at about 12.5mbps average for each of the 3 HD channels. By the time they were done with MPEG-2 and moving to MPEG-4, they had gotten the same awful quality down to 9mbps CBR, where they would "slot" channels without having to do local/regional stat muxes. Imagine if they had put their encoding power towards quality and left them tri-muxed! They would have looked good. Not being happy with that, they then moved those advancements in encoding to MPEG-4, but instead of putting 7 HDs per QAM in a stat mux, which is about equivalent to what DirecTV does with generally good results, they put 9-10 HDs per QAM CBR so that they could be "slotted", and it looks like total garbage. The crazy part is that their total garbage quality is actually an amazing example of efficient encoding, it's just bit starved to such an extreme that it looks like garbage. At the rate they are going, we can expect 2mbps HEVC for unicast IPTV, which would probably look just about as bad, but with all the advancements in encoding rolled into smaller and smaller streams.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Bigg said:


> There is no way anyone can do MPEG-2 HD in 2.2GB/hour.


They can and they do. Lower than that. Like I said, I had a station that used to be 1.3-1.5GB/hour for 720p. That was very watchable, but had obvious macro blocking with much action. 2GB/hour with MPEG2 looks good, and would look amazing with H.265. There's a much bigger difference going from 1.5 to 2GB/hour than from 2 to 7.



> Are you on Comcast, or looking at file sizes for half hour shows?


no, and no.

also, I don't know what the max possible is per station, but the highest I've ever seen was ~7GB/hour for a station carrying only a single channel, so I've assumed that must be roughly the limit.

Although thinking about it, I've got a station doing ~2GB right now, + ~2.2, + ~2.8ish, which would add up to 7GB, but there's some left over for what I'm guessing is an SD channel, Ion I think, which presumably is 1GB or less.



> Also, the encoders have gotten WAY more efficient. Today, a good MPEG-2 encoder can deliver the same quality that used to require 19.3mbps in about 12mbps. The problem is, stations always want more, so instead of delivering great HD quality, they put two HD channels on one or a ton of subchannels, and now we have 8mbps channels that look like what 12mbps channels looked like 5 years ago.


I've wondered what difference there is in encoders, noticed a few oddities and differences between different stations here. My ABC station occasionally had weird...sort of shifting of colors to pink briefly here and there, though I haven't seen that recently.



> Comcast started tri-muxing MPEG-2 HD around 2012, and it looked pretty awful, at about 12.5mbps average for each of the 3 HD channels.


That would be about 5.5GB/hour, which is really high, and ought to look fantastic with MPEG2.

Ugh, last time I dealt with Comcast, they were randomly chopping off the sides of video on some channels.


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## Chuck_IV (Jan 1, 2002)

I have various problems ALL the time since we were forced to start using Rovi’s putrid guide data. 

From once in a while completely missing guide data to wrong guide data to the VERY frequent “generic” episode data where it describes the show in general but not the specific episode. While Tribune’s data wasn’t perfect, is was EXPONENTIALLY better than the [email protected] we have now. 

I am convinced Rovi is just LAZY and do the absolute MINIMUM to get by with their guide data and that is why they probably charge a cheaper price than others, which is why companies use them. 

And yes, my frustration with their guide data has built to this over time. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Puppy76 said:


> They can and they do. Lower than that. Like I said, I had a station that used to be 1.3-1.5GB/hour for 720p. That was very watchable, but had obvious macro blocking with much action. 2GB/hour with MPEG2 looks good, and would look amazing with H.265. There's a much bigger difference going from 1.5 to 2GB/hour than from 2 to 7.


How many channels are on that station? I've heard of some 3 or 4 HD broadcasters, which is beyond extreme levels of compression, and even 4 720p channels would still be about 2GB/hour, not 1.3-1.5GB/hour, and those would look like complete trash. Unless it's a weather loop subchannel or something else that compresses really, really well....

What market are you in and what channel are you claiming uses that extreme of a bitrate? I want to cross reference with rabbitears.tv to see what their data shows.



> also, I don't know what the max possible is per station, but the highest I've ever seen was ~7GB/hour for a station carrying only a single channel, so I've assumed that must be roughly the limit.


19.3mbps. That's the spec. Calculated out, that's 8.69GB before metadata/DRM. I don't think any US channels are still broadcasting at the full 19.3mbps OTA. A few small cable providers still run a handful of sports channels at about 19mbps, half of a QAM. Most markets today don't have anything above 13mbps. Back in the early 2000's, many channels were running a single HD channel at 19.3mbps. There's really no reason to broadcast at that bitrate now, they can do the same quality at 12-15mbps and still have a subchannel or two. 19.3mbps would also blow up people's DVRs even worse.



> Although thinking about it, I've got a station doing ~2GB right now, + ~2.2, + ~2.8ish, which would add up to 7GB, but there's some left over for what I'm guessing is an SD channel, Ion I think, which presumably is 1GB or less.


It's 8.69GB. With a stat mux, you'd have to record all channels at the same time, otherwise the numbers won't add up. And there is no guarantee that they're using all the bandwidth either. They often arbitrarily limit bandwidth or have a subchannel that's offline at that point in time placeholding for some future channel. I emailed our local PBS about that, as their VQ sucked and they had about 5mbps missing from their broadcast, after a year or more they finally fixed their encoder to use the full bandwidth and get the main channel up to 12mbps where it looks pretty decent. I can't say I caused them to fix it, but more emails can't hurt to keep things moving along.



> I've wondered what difference there is in encoders, noticed a few oddities and differences between different stations here. My ABC station occasionally had weird...sort of shifting of colors to pink briefly here and there, though I haven't seen that recently.


There are many different encoders out there, the newer they are the more efficient they are. The practical limit for MPEG-2 HD is basically 2HD/4SD, and even that has somewhat of an impact on VQ, where the image is "flatter" and doesn't have the "pop" and "wow" that a 12mbps or higher encode would have.



> That would be about 5.5GB/hour, which is really high, and ought to look fantastic with MPEG2.


It would look good today, but back then, that was horrendous. Today, they could stat mux 5 HDs onto a QAM and it would be tolerable quality wise. It's only the last few years that broadcasters have been able to get more than one HD channel in an OTA broadcast without everything going to hell.



> Ugh, last time I dealt with Comcast, they were randomly chopping off the sides of video on some channels.


Comcast is extremely over-aggressive in terms of video compression.

For reference:

(typical bitrate range used for OTA MPEG-2)
19.3mbps - 8.69GB/hr
12mbps - 5.4GB/hr
8mbps - 3.6GB/hr

(used for Comcast MPEG-4)
4.1mbps - 1.8GB/hour
3.8mbps - 1.7GB/hour
3.5mbps - 1.6GB/hour

6mhz OTA broadcast: 19.3mbps
6mhz cable QAM: 38.8mbps


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## Charles R (Nov 9, 2000)

Outside of our local PBS (which used to look the worse) all of the OTA channels are barely on the side of watchable. I have already stopped recording a few shows over the issue however if they get any worse I'm going to simply write them off (totally). They simply don't care... at all.

Our local ABC even has a repeatable (every few minutes) image breakup/flash at the bottom of the image. It's virtually identical every time and I have seen it on three different tuners and the signal strength is fine. It's a sad state when virtually all streaming looks far superior to OTA - every time I switch and see the "mess" I get closer to saying bye... to their SD image at best.


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## spiderpumpkin (Dec 1, 2017)

Charles R said:


> Outside of our local PBS (which used to look the worse) all of the OTA channels are barely on the side of watchable. I have already stopped recording a few shows over the issue however if they get any worse I'm going to simply write them off (totally). They simply don't care... at all.
> 
> Our local ABC even has a repeatable (every few minutes) image breakup/flash at the bottom of the image. It's virtually identical every time and I have seen it on three different tuners and the signal strength is fine. It's a sad state when virtually all streaming looks far superior to OTA - every time I switch and see the "mess" I get closer to saying bye... to their SD image at best.


In my area the local OTA ABC, CBS, NBC, CW and PBS I record are far superior to those broadcast by Comcast.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Bigg said:


> How many channels are on that station? I've heard of some 3 or 4 HD broadcasters, which is beyond extreme levels of compression


I wouldn't call it extreme, much less beyond extreme, but I've got multiple stations with 4 channels and multiple with 3.



> and even 4 720p channels would still be about 2GB/hour, not 1.3-1.5GB/hour, and those would look like complete trash.


1.3-1.5 doesn't look like "complete trash" at all, just noticeably compressed.

2GB/hour looks good.

And you're assuming they'd divide the bandwidth up equally, which they've never done. Now they've got 2x720 and 1x 1080 station, plus an SD Ion station, doing roughly 2/2.2/2.8ish GB now (plus something for the SD station, I'm not sure what). Used to be 1.5/2.2/4ish, and again there's a MUCH bigger difference between 1.5 and 2GB than between 2 and 7. That extra 500MB/hour makes a gigantic difference.



> 19.3mbps. That's the spec. Calculated out, that's 8.69GB before metadata/DRM. I don't think any US channels are still broadcasting at the full 19.3mbps OTA. A few small cable providers still run a handful of sports channels at about 19mbps, half of a QAM. Most markets today don't have anything above 13mbps. Back in the early 2000's, many channels were running a single HD channel at 19.3mbps. There's really no reason to broadcast at that bitrate now, they can do the same quality at 12-15mbps and still have a subchannel or two. 19.3mbps would also blow up people's DVRs even worse.


huh, so that's about 1.5GB more per hour than I've ever seen for an individual station. Don't know how much overhead there is. Currently that station is doing 7GB/hour between the three main networks, and something for the SD one. I'm curious how much, but not curious enough to bother recording something on it lol. Normally in my experience stations here tend to use about 1GB/hour for SD, but who knows.



> It's 8.69GB. With a stat mux, you'd have to record all channels at the same time, otherwise the numbers won't add up. And there is no guarantee that they're using all the bandwidth either. They often arbitrarily limit bandwidth or have a subchannel that's offline at that point in time placeholding for some future channel. I emailed our local PBS about that, as their VQ sucked and they had about 5mbps missing from their broadcast, after a year or more they finally fixed their encoder to use the full bandwidth and get the main channel up to 12mbps where it looks pretty decent. I can't say I caused them to fix it, but more emails can't hurt to keep things moving along.


Maybe I should try to find out what that fourth channel is using!

For that matter, my PBS station might be missing something, as it's around 4.8GB, then 1GB each for World and PBS Kids.



> It would look good today, but back then, that was horrendous. Today, they could stat mux 5 HDs onto a QAM and it would be tolerable quality wise. It's only the last few years that broadcasters have been able to get more than one HD channel in an OTA broadcast without everything going to hell.


This station has been doing 2 HD channels that look good since 2016, and before that a different one did 2 good looking HD stations. I think it was since maybe April of last year all 3 HD networks on it have looked good though. It's been a while now. Even before that though the third one was entirely watchable, just not ideal with fast action.

I think my FOX station is doing like 6.4/GB/hour, which is now the highest of anything here. I use it probably the least though ever since the Disney sale.

I ought to save that max bitrate for broadcast for future reference.

Sounds like ATSC 3.0 will be lower, but with better reception, and it's a moot point since H.265 is so much more efficient. Hulu is normally only 3Mb/s H.264 for very good looking 1080p, as I recall! That's significantly lower than my worst HD station, which is handling HD just fine with MPEG2 at ~4.5Mb/s.

Hence why I'm potentially excited by better reception and H.265! (And possibly 4K and possibly HDR! Maybe H.265 encoding first broadcast will get better too.)


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Charles R said:


> Outside of our local PBS (which used to look the worse) all of the OTA channels are barely on the side of watchable. I have already stopped recording a few shows over the issue however if they get any worse I'm going to simply write them off (totally). They simply don't care... at all.
> 
> Our local ABC even has a repeatable (every few minutes) image breakup/flash at the bottom of the image. It's virtually identical every time and I have seen it on three different tuners and the signal strength is fine. It's a sad state when virtually all streaming looks far superior to OTA - every time I switch and see the "mess" I get closer to saying bye... to their SD image at best.


I guess I'm lucky that all of mine work, although I'm also lucky that most of mine are locally owned, not Sinclair nonsense, so maybe that's why.

my abc station did used to sort of subtly skew the colors pink now and then, more of a curiosity than a real issue, but they seem to have that under control.

and my nbc station has 3 tiny dots on screen all the time, which I've assumed are some watermarking, and again, more a curiosity than a real annoyance, thankfully.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

spiderpumpkin said:


> In my area the local OTA ABC, CBS, NBC, CW and PBS I record are far superior to those broadcast by Comcast.


You must have MPEG-4 locals then?



Puppy76 said:


> I wouldn't call it extreme, much less beyond extreme, but I've got multiple stations with 4 channels and multiple with 3.


You're claiming bitrates of roughly 4mbps for MPEG-2, which is beyond extreme compression for MPEG-2 HD.

What market are you in? I want to see the rabbitears.tv data.



> 1.3-1.5 doesn't look like "complete trash" at all, just noticeably compressed.
> 
> 2GB/hour looks good.


Then it's not 3mbps or it's not MPEG-2. The borderline for complete trash on OTA HD is somewhere in the 6-8mbps range. I want to see rabbitears.tv data. Are they using MPEG-4? There are a few OTA stations using MPEG-4, most TVs, but not all can view it. Any TiVo other than the TCD648 (OLED Series 3) should be fine with MPEG-4 OTA.



> And you're assuming they'd divide the bandwidth up equally, which they've never done. Now they've got 2x720 and 1x 1080 station, plus an SD Ion station, doing roughly 2/2.2/2.8ish GB now (plus something for the SD station, I'm not sure what). Used to be 1.5/2.2/4ish, and again there's a MUCH bigger difference between 1.5 and 2GB than between 2 and 7. That extra 500MB/hour makes a gigantic difference.


It would be in a stat mux. You can bias a stat mux, but it still changes the bandwidth allocation multiple times a second. You also keep using GB/hr which is the wrong unit of measure. Broadcast is measured in mbps. You can roughly convert in your head, 10mbps is roughly 5GB/hour, but not quite because you have 3600 seconds in an hour but 8000MB in a GB (technically 8096 if you want to be really precise).



> huh, so that's about 1.5GB more per hour than I've ever seen for an individual station. Don't know how much overhead there is. Currently that station is doing 7GB/hour between the three main networks, and something for the SD one. I'm curious how much, but not curious enough to bother recording something on it lol. Normally in my experience stations here tend to use about 1GB/hour for SD, but who knows.


Again, I am not aware of a single station in the US broadcasting 19.3mbps on a single video channel, but that's what a physical channel broadcasts. That's the spec. The highest currently in the US is 16-17mbps, and most are 6-12mbps. At 6mbps, they can barely squeeze 2HD/4SD, which is currently the maximum any encoder manufacturer or broadcast engineer is going to claim they can do, although several channels don't care at all about quality and now have 3HD channels or more on a single broadcast, which pretty much guarantees awful VQ. You might be able to get away with 3x720p with no SD subchannels, as 720p compresses easier than 1080i.



> Maybe I should try to find out what that fourth channel is using!
> 
> For that matter, my PBS station might be missing something, as it's around 4.8GB, then 1GB each for World and PBS Kids.


If you can ID all channels that are broadcasting on that physical channel and record them all at the exact same time, you can figure out if they have "dead" or "wasted" bandwidth, but I doubt it with that channel load. PBS is the most likely culprit for "dead" bandwidth due to having a limited budget for dialing in their encoders properly. WEDH-DT had "dead" bandwidth for quite some time, and they are in a relatively major market (30ish DMA) that's adjacent to WGBH, WGBY, and WNET.



> This station has been doing 2 HD channels that look good since 2016, and before that a different one did 2 good looking HD stations. I think it was since maybe April of last year all 3 HD networks on it have looked good though. It's been a while now. Even before that though the third one was entirely watchable, just not ideal with fast action.


I think we need to check your definition of "good".



> I think my FOX station is doing like 6.4/GB/hour, which is now the highest of anything here. I use it probably the least though ever since the Disney sale.


That's 14.2mbps which is quite respectable. NBC has gotten the most aggressive with channel sharing in a lot of markets (thanks, Comcast). You can get stunning HD these days out of 12mbps or higher, acceptable out of 8mbps or higher. Bitrate alone doesn't mean good VQ though, back in the MPEG-2 cable days I had a Comcast channel at 17mbps that looked mediocre at best.



> Sounds like ATSC 3.0 will be lower, but with better reception, and it's a moot point since H.265 is so much more efficient. Hulu is normally only 3Mb/s H.264 for very good looking 1080p, as I recall! That's significantly lower than my worst HD station, which is handling HD just fine with MPEG2 at ~4.5Mb/s.
> 
> Hence why I'm potentially excited by better reception and H.265! (And possibly 4K and possibly HDR! Maybe H.265 encoding first broadcast will get better too.)


Total apples and oranges. Supposedly HEVC is twice as efficient as H.264, which is twice as efficient as MPEG-2, so the 8mbps bar we hit today should eventually get down to 2mbps HEVC. However, even that's apples and oranges, as MPEG-2 encoding is very mature, HEVC is not. Further, the larger a stat mux group, the better results you can get, so using a mix of HD and SD channels on ATSC 3.0 will result in very efficient stat muxing.

Lastly, comparing Hulu (unless it's the live TV) to broadcast is again apples and oranges, since that stuff is offline encoded, which is always more efficient than online encoding. Even for streaming TV, they can use a VBR encode to a certain extent in order to save bandwidth while still offering better quality when it needs more bandwidth, and it's not up against one or two or three other channels in a stat mux, it's just some sort of constrained VBR. Netflix is notorious for really incredible encoding at remarkably low bitrates, because they throw both a massive amount of horsepower at their encoding, and a lot of intelligence. They're entirely offline, so they can have several racks of machines working on different resolutions and codecs of the same file at the same time, and they can spend minutes encoding every second of video. They're using some sort of narrow AI to detect the type of video or content in each frame of sequence of video, and then adjust the encoding down to match the content so that they use just enough bitrate at any given time to create stunning results. Broadcast doesn't have any of that relative luxury.


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## Charles R (Nov 9, 2000)

Puppy76 said:


> I guess I'm lucky that all of mine work, although I'm also lucky that most of mine are locally owned, not Sinclair nonsense, so maybe that's why.


Overall I think it's more one's sensitivity, expectations, display size and so on. Sure some stations are going to look better than others based on a number for factors however in general there has been a large decrease in image quality and a large increase in sub-channels.

Back in the day image quality drove me to OTA and nowadays it's driving me away.



Bigg said:


> The borderline for complete trash on OTA HD is somewhere in the 6-8mbps range.


I'd say that sounds about right. Back in the day even my 720p channels were there or higher (1080i quite a bit).


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Charles R said:


> I'd say that sounds about right. Back in the day even my 720p channels were there or higher (1080i quite a bit).


That's for the past few years. That number used to be 13 or 14mbps. Encoder technology has come a long, long way. Cheap servers to run software encoders have pushed it forward a lot too.

EDIT: Also, 720p degrades more gracefully than 1080i, even though with proper compression and de-interlacing, 1080i will always look better than 720p due to having more than double the resolution.


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

This is a duplicate of a posting I put on another thread.
A brief rant here re: the guide. It has gotten worse than ever lately. Not only is it not deleting channels no longer carried by Comcast for over a year, it has not kept up with any changes in the local (Boston) channel listings. I find it completely undependable, and have to check listings every day on a Comcast box to see what is REALLY on that night. i can understand daily last-minute changes on a local level, but not complete channel additions/deletions that took place months ago.
I have not received any messages of channel changes in..well, I can't remember the last one. There are still listings for MGM TV, which Comcast has not carried for a year, as well as listings for the STARZ and ENCORE channels that were dropped from Comcast end of 2019. None of the new HITZ channels that Comcast is now carrying are listed, which makes me think that no one really cares about them anyway.
Maybe the change in ownership will make a difference...I hope so. I'm still hooked on the TiVO experience after almost 20 years, but this is making it tough.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Here's one nobody knows about. The 1P manager allows you to set the earliest episode it will record. So if you want to just record the current SNL, you could set it to 45. Guess what NCIS, Criminal Minds, Chicago P.D. and The Blacklist all have in common? They let you set the start season to passed the current season. So don't do that.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

JoeKustra said:


> Here's one nobody knows about. The 1P manager allows you to set the earliest episode it will record. So if you want to just record the current SNL, you could set it to 45. Guess what NCIS, Criminal Minds, Chicago P.D. and The Blacklist all have in common? They let you set the start season to passed the current season. So don't do that.


Unless you want your recordings to start next season...


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

World (AKA PBS World) is showing "to be announced" lately, for whatever reason...BUT I've noticed an entry on PBS for tonight is correct on my TiVo, but WRONG on other online TV Guides I've seen, INCLUDING wrong on PBS' own website!


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Unless you want your recordings to start next season...


Now that's what I call optimism. I'll start recording NCIS three years from now. Soon someone will post that there are so many TBA showing at the end of the guide. I lost 18 hours of data depending how you look at it. I guess I should have said only the data stops at 7pm. The guide doesn't.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Here's another good one. In the guide tomorrow's The Tonight Show on NBC is generic. If you Search for it, there are three entries. The first two are generic but different. The third is correct as far as metadata goes anyway. I can't promise the guest list is right. A 1P should still pick it up, but no promises on SM.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

JoeKustra said:


> Here's another good one. In the guide tomorrow's The Tonight Show on NBC is generic. If you Search for it, there are three entries. The first two are generic but different. The third is correct as far as metadata goes anyway. I can't promise the guest list is right. A 1P should still pick it up, but no promises on SM.


I don't watch the Tonight Show (though its hardly the last show I'd watch!) but watch Seth Meyers, and the data for it's been screwed up some this month, for the first time that I've ever been aware of it being screwed up.

Finding your Roots was screwed up for me too this month, in that case with the Tivo explicitly claiming the new episodes had aired a few months ago, though in that case people are saying that it may be because PBS "prime" has them available in November, and MY station didn't air them until this month...maybe.

That's yet another reason I need a streaming device already, as I'm having to stream it while it's still free from PBS.org!

I'm back to checking the guide daily again, like (but not as painful as) pre-TiVo 2004.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

I think the merger of NBC and Universal has not gone well. Now Comcast has added more chaos.

But that doesn't explain the TiVo guide. It's Search function has become very messed up recently.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

JoeKustra said:


> I think the merger of NBC and Universal has not gone well. Now Comcast has added more chaos.
> 
> But that doesn't explain the TiVo guide. It's Search function has become very messed up recently.


Until you said that I'd forgotten that NBC and Universal didn't used to be combined. Just 2004! I'd totally forgotten.

I like NBC...they've got a lot of shows that are a little "weird", which is a good thing in my book, willing to take some chances on a bit more esoteric stuff than some networks.

I wish they'd air Syfy as like a broadcast subchannel though!


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

Are other people getting a lot of "Upcoming: <show name>" in the guide? It looks like the TiVo doesn't have any guide data for a period in time (day? half day?) and the fail-safe behavior is to have an entry called "Upcoming" that simply points to the next thing in the guide.

Many channels have this and it looks like it started a week or two ago.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Yep, same old crap from Rivo.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

powrcow said:


> Are other people getting a lot of "Upcoming: <show name>" in the guide? It looks like the TiVo doesn't have any guide data for a period in time (day? half day?) and the fail-safe behavior is to have an entry called "Upcoming" that simply points to the next thing in the guide.
> Many channels have this and it looks like it started a week or two ago.


It's comes and goes. I've seen it for months. TiVo never stops trying to get the guide to work. When all they needed to do was provide a guide it was easy. When it came to linking it to recording they are still trying. I have a wish list set for Comedy Central Programming. That way their screwups show in the 1P manager.

"Upcoming:" has always been in the guide (since Rovi). Just hit 24 hours back 3x while in the guide. Seeing it for future time slots usually goes away.


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## zexel (Aug 4, 2012)

powrcow said:


> Are other people getting a lot of "Upcoming: <show name>" in the guide? It looks like the TiVo doesn't have any guide data for a period in time (day? half day?) and the fail-safe behavior is to have an entry called "Upcoming" that simply points to the next thing in the guide.
> 
> Many channels have this and it looks like it started a week or two ago.


My bolt guide is showing "title not available" in half of my channels. On some channels it is it is for just a few hours out, on others it is for days. I am OTA and have about twenty channels in my guide. This just started a few days ago. This is crazy. A lot of my one passes are not going to record.


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## BizzyMarks (May 21, 2006)

For the past couple months, I've seen "To Be Announced" pop up on several channels and as the days pass, it grows. I've Cleared Guide Data a couple times and that temporarily fixes it.  I see it mostly the channels towards the end of the alphabet: TNT, TBS, PBS, SyFy (just off the top of my head). I was forced to reimage my Premiere because it got stuck on "Clearing Guide Data" on boot. Now with a new, clean image, it just finally downloaded new guide data, and while skipping to the end of the data, there are more "To Be Announced" entries prior to the "Guide Data Through" date. That tells me there is something in the data itself that TiVo is unable to read and fails to continue to process. Either the guide data is corrupted, or there is something in there that TiVo is unable to process/handle.

Does anyone have access to TiVo's developers?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

After today's service connection my guide is back to the Rovi format. That format is the date in System Information has 2/13 and data becomes TBA on 7pm on 2/13. My guide was old TiVo format until today. TiVo format is the date in System information would be 2/13 but data would extend to 2/14 at 1pm. However I did pickup late night today, so something good did happen. It could play server games, but it's too low on my priority list. My Premiere never changed to the TiVo format. It has always been in the Rovi format since the 20.7.3 change.


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## chetly (Apr 19, 2014)

powrcow said:


> Are other people getting a lot of "Upcoming: <show name>" in the guide? It looks like the TiVo doesn't have any guide data for a period in time (day? half day?) and the fail-safe behavior is to have an entry called "Upcoming" that simply points to the next thing in the guide.
> 
> Many channels have this and it looks like it started a week or two ago.


Yes and it's screwed up my super bowl watching... see new thread TiVo/Comcast FAIL...


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## pldmich (Dec 4, 2010)

For about a week I'm getting more and more "title not available". Some channels no programming, others will have half an hour bookended by "title not available". Ridiculous that I'm spending a lot of time online to check scheduling.


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

I'm not concerned about future "Upcoming: ..." in the guide as it may update. I am concerned about it showing up for current shows - usually as "Title Not Available". I don't think I've missed any of the shows I normally watch, but when I looked at the guide Saturday night, there were many channels with "Upcoming...".

This is a problem. I guess the official way to complain is via TiVo's website?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

powrcow said:


> This is a problem. I guess the official way to complain is via TiVo's website?


They will probably just tell you to call a number. I wonder how many guide servers TiVo uses? Except for the changes made recently I seldom see a problem. But my guide only displays Favorites. I get 150 more channels I never see.


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## zexel (Aug 4, 2012)

pldmich said:


> For about a week I'm getting more and more "title not available". Some channels no programming, others will have half an hour bookended by "title not available". Ridiculous that I'm spending a lot of time online to check scheduling.


 I was having this problem but I seem to have fixed it by going to, help- reset to defaults-clear guide data & to do list. Then after that finishes do a tivo service connection. I had to do the service connection three times to get a weeks of correct guide information.


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## Zookeypurr (Feb 4, 2020)

zexel said:


> I was having this problem but I seem to have fixed it by going to, help- reset to defaults-clear guide data & to do list. Then after that finishes do a tivo service connection. I had to do the service connection three times to get a weeks of correct guide information.


Thank you for your instructions, they seemed to be perfect and fix the problem! I have been trying for days to fix this. I even called into tech support at TiVo. The 'tech' had me going through guided setup several times only to give up and tell me he would 'escalate' this to a higher level. Then he said it would be 7-10 business days for them to get to it. Thank you again Zexel!


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## pldmich (Dec 4, 2010)

zexel said:


> I was having this problem but I seem to have fixed it by going to, help- reset to defaults-clear guide data & to do list. Then after that finishes do a tivo service connection. I had to do the service connection three times to get a weeks of correct guide information.


Worked. Thanks. Hope this isn't a problem that will recur but at least I know what to do now it it does.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

Just a quick comparison of general accuracy.

Looking at last week's late night talk shows, the guest lists are more accurate in Gracenote (via Channels DVR) and inaccurate in TiVo. Then there's this oddity, in a new show I've been watching on PBS:

Vienna Blood
Gracenote
• Jan 19, The Last Séance, Part 1
• Jan 26, The Last Séance, Part 2
• Feb 02, Queen of the Night, Part 1
TiVo 
• Jan 19, The Last Seance
• Jan 26, Queen of the Night
• Feb 02, Episode 3

Gracenote is accurate. In the list of my TiVo recordings above, the title of Episode 3 was used for Episode 2. Using TiVo search, I see multiple airings of the same episodes listed with inaccurate titles and also as simply "Episode #". And why no "Part 1" or "Part 2"? This is sad.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Pokemon_Dad said:


> Just a quick comparison of general accuracy.
> 
> Looking at last week's late night talk shows, the guest lists are more accurate in Gracenote (via Channels DVR) and inaccurate in TiVo. Then there's this oddity, in a new show I've been watching on PBS:
> 
> ...


I noticed that too. My TiVo's been skipping new episodes of Finding Your Roots entirely, though thankfully I discovered it prior to them leaving pbs.org.

How is Vienna Blood? I'm always up for a mystery, and they claimed it's from a writer of Sherlock, or something. I've been grabbing them but haven't watched it yet.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

Puppy76 said:


> How is Vienna Blood? I'm always up for a mystery, and they claimed it's from a writer of Sherlock, or something. I've been grabbing them but haven't watched it yet.


It's more of a standard police procedural than I'd hoped, but the historical references are interesting and I expect subplots like the young doctor's family encountering rising nationalism will deepen that aspect over time.


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## Narkul (Nov 7, 2004)

Been getting more and more Title Not Available and now have missed recordings over it. Tivo is just sinking, no way I'm buying their stick if they can't even figure out how to maintain bug free software they've had on their own hardware for years now.


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## Zookeypurr (Feb 4, 2020)

Narkul said:


> Been getting more and more Title Not Available and now have missed recordings over it. Tivo is just sinking, no way I'm buying their stick if they can't even figure out how to maintain bug free software they've had on their own hardware for years now.


I had this same problem, Zexel posted this:

I was having this problem but I seem to have fixed it by going to, help- reset to defaults-clear guide data & to do list. Then after that finishes do a tivo service connection. I had to do the service connection three times to get a weeks of correct guide information.

It worked, problem fixed.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

I would just advise you, however, to use that only as a last resort. The last time I did it, the TiVo ended up in Guided Setup, erasing everything I had (recordings, One-Passes, etc.).


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

I'd caution against the clear guide data and to do list. My Premiere was having "Title Not Available" issues with programs just a few hours out. I attempted the "clear guide data and to do list" and the TiVo was never able to get off the "This will take about an hour" screen during boot. I waited about 18 hours.

This was a new-ish (as of last year) drive. I put my original, smaller drive in and it rebooted fine but complained about not getting updates in the past 30 days. So I had it connect to TiVo which took quite some time. It completed the service connection but guide data is still spotty as before. So the "clear guide data and to do list" wasn't a good option for me.

I'm running SpinRite on the larger drive to see if there are any problems. As of right now there are none. SMART shows nothing bad either.

I'm leaning toward something happening with the software. The "Title Not Available" just started appearing the past month, but I normally watch only recorded programs so I could have missed guide problems before then.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

powrcow said:


> I'd caution against the clear guide data and to do list. My Premiere was having "Title Not Available" issues with programs just a few hours out. I attempted the "clear guide data and to do list" and the TiVo was never able to get off the "This will take about an hour" screen during boot. I waited about 18 hours.


There have been problems, but the last batch was really bad. My story: Title not available


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

JoeKustra said:


> There have been problems, but the last batch was really bad. My story: Title not available


I wish I would have waited.


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## Narkul (Nov 7, 2004)

Well I cleared the guide and todo list before I saw these warnings, but everything turned out ok. The process took about 15 minutes on my bolt, then everything was up and running and I just needed to wait for the guide data to reload. Checked the guide this evening and everything is back including the shows previously listed as no title available.


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

My mother's TiVo is now suffering from this same fate with Frontier FiOS. I may have to do this because I have forced multiple calls and even a reboot.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

I'm pretty sure TiVo has a hiring problem. Tonight, 7pm, CNBC. Program listed in the guide as Cnbc Special Report. Next it will be Usa.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Yes, Rovi/TiVo guide data seems to be horrendously understaffed which leads to the incredibly poor data we see - especially with episode titles missing.

It's the weakest part of TiVo now, and why I'm leaning on my WMC machine more nowadays as I had to switch it to Gracenote (Tribune) data. Which as anyone knows was the guide service TiVo used before and is so superior it's not even funny anymore.

It's also why TiVo guide data sucks even worse than normal around the holidays - you can predict when the guide data workforce starts taking vacations because now they can't even keep up and you get more episode-less listings, horrendously misspelt programming and such because the people left can't do it all.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

I'm not getting "Title not available", but the guide data is just showing the wrong shows at the wrong times for several channels. It's back to the way it was immediately after Rovi acquired Tivo. I have to watch it like a hawk which entirely defeats the purpose of a DVR.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

Another little oddity: while trying to set up a recording I just noticed the TiVo Online guide ends at about 12 days from now, while our Roamio Pro guide ends at less than 13 even right after a manual connection. I thought TiVo always maintains 14 days. My Channels DVR has a full 15 days downloaded from Gracenote.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Pokemon_Dad said:


> Another little oddity: while trying to set up a recording I just noticed the TiVo Online guide ends at about 12 days from now, while our Roamio Pro guide ends at less than 13 even right after a manual connection. I thought TiVo always maintains 14 days. My Channels DVR has a full 15 days downloaded from Gracenote.


Think data not days. Even zap2it, which uses Gracenote, stops 10:59pm on 2/19. Data for late night is really short and always has been. Most scripted prime time dramas are good for the following week, but not for the next week until Thursday, Friday and Sunday for ABC. There's also the time variable since different regions get service connections at different times. With TE3 my guide data normally ends on the day following what's in SI at 1pm eastern. On TE4 that time is 7pm. Make a manual connection at 5pm and then at 3am. There will be no change. A few minutes after data is loaded the SI value of Indexing will update. But no update of data doesn't cause an indexing. For the last few years there is an indexing done without a connection, usually during an early hour. There are a lot of strange things with the guide and they change too. I was told many times that the "14 day" guide includes the two previous days. An excuse. With TE4 the guide extends two days without data. This is its normal.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

Thanks @JoeKustra. Maybe you also know why TiVo Online and the TiVo DVR are different. But anyway the result is that on Channels DVR I was able to quickly set up a recording for February 19th while I was thinking of it and then go on about my business, but the TiVo Online guide was not complete for that day, so I had to get into the server closet to access the Roamio Pro which just barely had that the guide data for that day.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Pokemon_Dad said:


> Thanks @JoeKustra. Maybe you also know why TiVo Online and the TiVo DVR are different. But anyway the result is that on Channels DVR I was able to quickly set up a recording for February 19th while I was thinking of it and then go on about my business, but the TiVo Online guide was not complete for that day, so I had to get into the server closet to access the Roamio Pro which just barely had that the guide data for that day.


Once again it's timing. The service connection should sync the two guides. I also have my TiVo set to Favorites and the default for Online is My Channels/Channel List. Funny how a login survives my PC powering off, but the Online default changes do not. Anyhow, I stay happy by thinking that the TiVo guide is 8 days. Most times it takes until Sunday until ABC updates Jimmy Kimmel. But NBC will usually have a few days of The Tonight Show ready by Wednesday.

Want a laugh? Look at the descriptions for The Magicians on SyFy. They indicate how bad things could become.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

JoeKustra said:


> Want a laugh? Look at the descriptions for The Magicians on SyFy. They indicate how bad things could become.


It appears there are two optional versions of the description: one line, and full paragraph. In TiVo Online the Season 1 descriptions are full paragraphs, but the Season 5 descriptions are one liners (two short sentences). In Channels DVR they are all one line for every episode of every season.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

On TiVo's support help page:
"We are currently experiencing issues with some channels having missing Program Guide Data or showing up as ("To be Announced") on the TiVo Guide. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for choosing TiVo!"
2/8 8:45 EST.


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

JoeKustra said:


> On TiVo's support help page:
> "We are currently experiencing issues with some channels having missing Program Guide Data or showing up as ("To be Announced") on the TiVo Guide. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for choosing TiVo!"
> 2/8 8:45 EST.


Interesting. I put in a support ticket and received this response:

I understand you're experiencing guide issues on specific timeslots. I'm sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. We're investigating similar cases and we have reason to believe this is associated with a network issue. I highly recommend the steps below which should allow your TiVo to download the pending guide updates.​
They recommended a reboot of all network gear, force a service call, and guided setup as a last resort. None fixed my problem.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

powrcow said:


> They recommended a reboot of all network gear, force a service call, and guided setup as a last resort. None fixed my problem.


I think that's called "cut & paste" troubleshooting. BTW, a service connection will be performed within 30 minutes of a TiVo restart.


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

Yeah, I humor them and usually do it, plus it's been forever since the router has been rebooted.

I noticed the guide data was coming through better on Thursday, then bad again yesterday.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

Bigg said:


> You must have MPEG-4 locals then?
> 
> You're claiming bitrates of roughly 4mbps for MPEG-2, which is beyond extreme compression for MPEG-2 HD.
> 
> ...


Do you get these numbers off of Tivo or your own router? I am not disagreeing I simply don't know where these numbers come from.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

TiVo is working on the guide problem. The "guide is broken" message is spreading: Tivo Customer Support Community


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

This below is what shows up at the top of the support page. Don't know how recent it is as it is not dated or timed, but it has been an ongoing problem for so long, it could be months.

_We are currently experiencing issues with some channels having missing Program Guide Data or showing up as ("To be Announced") on the TiVo Guide. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for choosing TiVo!_


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## bsbd (Mar 1, 2015)

It seems pretty obvious that TiVo actually isn't working on the guide problem but rather they're just waiting and hoping TBA gaps eventually flush out. I've rebooted the box and forced the TiVo network service connection over a half dozen times during the day and there no evidence of even the slightest change. Re-compiling or re-indexing the guide database should have resulted in some visible progress, so absent that I'm left to conclude they're really not doing anything.


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## spiderpumpkin (Dec 1, 2017)

It's the users fault for not rebooting their machine enough.


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## buildersboy66 (Dec 9, 2016)

"It seems pretty obvious that TiVo actually isn't working on the guide problem but rather they're just waiting and hoping TBA gaps eventually flush out."

Exactly! TiVo is stealing our money and continues to not address one thing. This guide data issue saga has gone on long enough TiVo! Word of mouth goes a long way, and currently I would not recommend you even as a choice. It is obvious there is not one working brain running TiVo. SAD!


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

buildersboy66 said:


> Exactly! TiVo is stealing our money and continues to not address one thing.


Tivo ain't stealing my money. Lets see
$199 for a Roamio OTA/Lifetime in late 2016 and a TivoHD bought for $10 and had 8 months of service left on it. When that was up got the $99 lifetime offer. That was mid 2014.

While the guide aint the best...it could be worse. The cable company I have included in the rent (consolidated) uses Rovi for guide info and the guide is messed up...wrong info, items saying new when they're not, items not saying they are new when they are. I have Tivo on OTA (cable is IPTV so have to use their crap DVR)


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## buildersboy66 (Dec 9, 2016)

Nope. Not going to be a fanboy no more.


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## bsbd (Mar 1, 2015)

bsbd said:


> It seems pretty obvious that TiVo actually isn't working on the guide problem but rather they're just waiting and hoping TBA gaps eventually flush out.


So in my case the channels with "TBA" in the guide were as if they were running a mystery program that started at 7pm last night and supposedly ran for 24 hours until 7pm tonight (EST). Each affected channel had actual real guide info for programs scheduled to begin 7pm or later tonight. Oddly if the first program start time wasn't till 8pm then all current and future guide info for that channel blanked out from 7pm until 8pm, then at 8pm it all of a sudden re-popluated correctly.

Now it's mostly back to normal with a few gaps -- missing programs -- but no more TBAs. Like I said before, flushed not 'fixed'.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

unclehonkey said:


> While the guide aint the best...it could be worse. The cable company I have included in the rent (consolidated) uses Rovi for guide info and the guide is messed up...wrong info, items saying new when they're not, items not saying they are new when they are. I have Tivo on OTA (cable is IPTV so have to use their crap DVR)


Rovi doesn't exist. Rovi bought TiVo and kept the TiVo name.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

JoeKustra said:


> Rovi doesn't exist. Rovi bought TiVo and kept the TiVo name.


But do they use the TiVo name for their data service, or is that still Rovi?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> But do they use the TiVo name for their data service, or is that still Rovi?


I have seen the Rovi logo on cable company's STB on a few commercials, which may just be the old iGuide. But I haven't seen a Rovi copyright on any web site.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/rovi

Oh Crap - Rovi buys TiVo?


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

It just seems weird to me that they'd be selling data to other companies under the TiVo name; more likely that they'd keep the Rovi name for their data business, even if it's just as a division of TiVo..


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## whoareyou_1999 (Feb 3, 2016)

It looks like the message regarding guide issues was removed from the support page? 
Is this issue supposed to be resolved?

Support knows nothing about it.

_Edit:
Support is telling me it is resolved on TIVO end and the only way to correct is to repeat guide setup from my end._


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

whoareyou_1999 said:


> It looks like the message regarding guide issues was removed from the support page?
> Is this issue supposed to be resolved?
> 
> Support knows nothing.


I fixed your message.


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## whoareyou_1999 (Feb 3, 2016)

JoeKustra said:


> I fixed your message.


Yeah, I don't believe a word they said. I'm going to give it some time and see if it automagically fixes itself


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

whoareyou_1999 said:


> Yeah, I don't believe a word they said. I'm going to give it some time and see if it automagically fixes itself


This post (Is something seriously wrong with TiVo's guide data?), and the link, describe a reason to be cautious. If the guide is really f'd up, I would backup my important stuff before running a CPI&TDL.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> It just seems weird to me that they'd be selling data to other companies under the TiVo name; more likely that they'd keep the Rovi name for their data business, even if it's just as a division of TiVo..


It's all "TiVo" now. I've even seen music reviews and biographies signed with the provider name "TiVo". That feels very strange.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Pokemon_Dad said:


> It's all "TiVo" now. I've even seen music reviews and biographies signed with the provider name "TiVo". That feels very strange.


Interesting. And yes, very strange! I wonder how difficult it is to sell services to your competitors under your own name?


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Interesting. And yes, very strange! I wonder how difficult it is to sell services to your competitors under your own name?


Direct competitors like Channels DVR use Gracenote. AllMusic is not a competitor, but it is very very weird to see TiVo referred to as a sourse of music data: https://www.allmusic.com/product-submissions


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## spiderpumpkin (Dec 1, 2017)

I primarily use my Tivos to record passes but it misses more and more shows with their guide problems. I've duplicated many of the passes on my Channels DVR as a backup recording source because they use Gracenote.


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

As of today, the guide data on my Premiere looks good. I don't see any "Title Not Found" throughout the day anymore. Lots of "To Be Announced" at the end of the guide, but that's to be expected (edit: actually it isn't). Only oddity is FX has "FX Programming" throughout most of the daytime hours.

Next week, I'll try putting the drive back in that wasn't surviving the CPI&TDL reboot and see if that works.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

powrcow said:


> As of today, the guide data on my Premiere looks good. I don't see any "Title Not Found" throughout the day anymore. Lots of "To Be Announced" at the end of the guide, but that's to be expected. Only oddity is FX has "FX Programming" throughout most of the daytime hours.
> Next week, I'll try putting the drive back in that wasn't surviving the CPI&TDL reboot and see if that works.


Those TBA are new. The "<network> Programming" is new. The guide is still screwed up. I've seen TBA in the past and they always matched a TBA on Gracenote. On my Premiere, the guide's "Program Information to:" in System information always meant that guide data would stop at 1pm on that date. On a Roamio it would stop on the following day at 1pm.


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

JoeKustra said:


> Those TBA are new. The "<network> Programming" is new. The guide is still screwed up. I've seen TBA in the past and they always matched a TBA on Gracenote. On my Premiere, the guide's "Program Information to:" in System information always meant that guide data would stop at 1pm on that date. On a Roamio it would stop on the following day at 1pm.


Interesting! Almost all of the time the TiVo has just worked for me so I haven't explored the end of guide data. I had no idea that the TBA were never there before.

I suppose the better way to say it is that as of right now, my TiVo is going to record all the programs I expect it to record through about Thursday of next week.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

powrcow said:


> I suppose the better way to say it is that as of right now, my TiVo is going to record all the programs I expect it to record through about Thursday of next week.


I'd bet those are prime time major network new programs. The guide usually has those out pretty far. You lose with late night. That's where checking zap2it.com is valuable.


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## bsbd (Mar 1, 2015)

Don't mean to be hopping between the two threads, I just post to the one with the latest activity.

Well I've been trying the service connection procedure every so often and just now got the first guide data download since yesterday. It incremented the "Program Information To:" field in the SI by 1 day to Sun 2/23. I checked the end of the guide data and it did add Saturday night & Sunday day programming info and as I hoped it pushed out the 24-hour TBA event on each channel another 24 hours to Sunday evening at 7pm. Hopefully that keeps happening.

There are a couple of gaps I had noticed before unfortunately the downloads yesterday and today did not fill them in. One gap is the Disney channel tonight from 8:00pm-9:35pm and the other is for a local PBS channel tomorrow afternoon.

Just like powrcow I had never explored the end of guide before to even notice whether the TBA events were normal. I guess it's good to be oblivious. It wasn't until this weekend they bit me. Hopefully once these small gaps flush out things will stabilize even with the TBAs getting pushed along at the end.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

bsbd said:


> Don't mean to be hopping between the two threads, I just post to the one with the latest activity.
> Hopefully once these small gaps flush out things will stabilize even with the TBAs getting pushed along at the end.


Let me give you my opinion. *The guide is still broken.* They are trying to make one guide out of two. I'm speaking TE3 and TE4. The TE3 guide has always ended at 1pm in my time zone. The guide and the data. No TBA or Title Not Available. A while back, I think it was when Rovi took over or when 20.7.3 was released, the date in SI changed. I have a Premiere. It never changed. The SI date is reflected in the guide as 1pm on that date. So "Program Information To:" was only until 1pm EST for me. There was a change and the guide went out 24 more hours but the date in SI did not change. Now the SI date includes prime time except Series 4. It also went until 1pm on the following day. NO TBA. It was data. Not always good data, but data. The only time I ever saw TBA was with "events" that messed things up, like playoffs, specials, election stuff and so on.

Your (TE4) guide was ending at 7pm EST. But SI was then wrong since no prime time for the date shown there. I have a TE4 Roamio but no cable card. My Premiere doesn't have a cable card either. It doesn't affect the guide or its data. The data on TE4 ending at 7pm is normal. Any show starting before 7pm but long enough to go past 7pm is normal and has been that way when Rovi was TVGOS (a long time ago). Bottom line: TiVo is still futzing with the guide. But it seems to be just a part time project. The variable time for a service connection is messing up their work and I'll wager that we will soon see all updates on all TiVo units being performed overnight. I'll light a candle.


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## bsbd (Mar 1, 2015)

JoeKustra said:


> The TE3 guide has always ended at 1pm in my time zone.......Your (TE4) guide was ending at 7pm EST.


Not that it's important here, but just to be clear, the UI in my Roamio Pro is apparently TE3, the classic UI. When I hit the TiVo button I get TiVo Central. I may have gotten and promptly ignored a notice a long time ago that I could download the new UI, but I like the classic just fine.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

bsbd said:


> Not that it's important here, but just to be clear, the UI in my Roamio Pro is apparently TE3, the classic UI. When I hit the TiVo button I get TiVo Central. I may have gotten and promptly ignored a notice a long time ago that I could download the new UI, but I like the classic just fine.


You should have an app that you can't remove that says "Get New Experience".

I'm glad you have TE3 since it makes explaining things easier. I have two TE3 Roamio units on-line right now. On Saturday I power on the Premiere and another Roamio. You can tell when the guide is happy when the data and guide both end at 1pm. If it ends at 7pm then TiVo is playing around. Hang in there. Maybe TiVo's guide people will get bored or get reassigned to fix bugs.


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## bsbd (Mar 1, 2015)

JoeKustra said:


> You should have an app that you can't remove that says "Get New Experience".


Right, I just checked and saw it in the Apps list.



JoeKustra said:


> If it ends at 7pm then TiVo is playing around.


Ah-ha, good to know.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

bsbd said:


> Right, I just checked and saw it in the Apps list.
> Ah-ha, good to know.


Latest service connection indicates it's still messed up. My next update will be early tomorrow. Hamsters may have the Coronavirus.


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## EdwPowers (Apr 15, 2002)

JoeKustra said:


> You should have an app that you can't remove that says "Get New Experience".
> 
> I'm glad you have TE3 since it makes explaining things easier. I have two TE3 Roamio units on-line right now. On Saturday I power on the Premiere and another Roamio. You can tell when the guide is happy when the data and guide both end at 1pm. If it ends at 7pm then TiVo is playing around. Hang in there. Maybe TiVo's guide people will get bored or get reassigned to fix bugs.


I have two Roamios on TE3 and the daily updates have always ended at 7PM or 8PM depending on whether it is DST or not. I believe my previous models always have done this as well.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

EdwPowers said:


> I have two Roamios on TE3 and the daily updates have always ended at 7PM or 8PM depending on whether it is DST or not. I believe my previous models always have done this as well.


There is no logic to any of this. My guide data end dates (as opposed to SI) have always been 1pm EST or 2pm EDT. I do think 7/8pm will be the new normal however. The fewer variations in the guide, the less work will be needed to maintain it.

Current Status:
R1, SI=2/22, Guide data 2/22 1900, Guide end 23:59 2/22
R2, SI=2/23, Guide data 2/23 1900, Guide end 08:00, 2/24
R3(TE4), SI=2/23, Guide data 2/23 1900, Guide TBA 18:00 2/24, Guide TNA 10:00 2/26

R = Roamio, TNA = Title Not Available. All made service connections between 5am and 7am.

I don't care.


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

JoeKustra said:


> There is no logic to any of this. My guide data end dates (as opposed to SI) have always been 1pm EST or 2pm EDT. I do think 7/8pm will be the new normal however. The fewer variations in the guide, the less work will be needed to maintain it.
> 
> Current Status:
> R1, SI=2/22, Guide data 2/22 1900, Guide end 23:59 2/22
> ...


How big are the guide updates? Does each TiVo make individual requests for each channel? Or is there a pre-packaged update made available by TiVo that each unit grabs?

You're right, the above behavior, at least between R1 and R2, should be consistent unless there was a weird case where R1 grabbed data right before TiVo updated the package. I can see inconsistencies in parsing the guide data between TE3/4. That's what I originally thought happened - TE3 was crashing on an improperly handled error in guide data that TE4 was handling. It was the only way I could explain why the same channels seemed to be consistently missing data.

I'm with you - I don't know what's going on. TiVo went from being one of the few appliances that mostly "just worked" and did so for years. There were missteps along the way, but I could always say that it found and recorded what I asked it to. Maybe they're repackaging their guide data for integration with the new TiVo Stream 4k?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

powrcow said:


> How big are the guide updates? Does each TiVo make individual requests for each channel? Or is there a pre-packaged update made available by TiVo that each unit grabs?


It's a block of about 100k to 300k. Much depends on your provider. I only receive 400 channels. Some get 1000 channels. I once performed a guided setup on a Spectrum zipcode/provider. Then I scanned my feed, which added 400 more. When I went to the Channel list, it crashed/died. TE4 has longer descriptions [no comment]. For a joke, check the descriptions on SyFy. I wonder if they pay someone for those descriptions or do it as a joke.

On R1, the Roamio that failed this morning, I'm presently copying all the programs to a different TiVo. Then I'm doing a CPI&TDL.


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

JoeKustra said:


> It's a block of about 100k to 300k. Much depends on your provider.


So it is doing a unique query based on, at least, your provider. I would hope they pre-package (or cache) the guide data for each provider since there should be more boxes than providers and they're all making a daily call.

If the size is that small, no way is it a network issue but a parsing or applying updates issue.

Thanks for your testing!


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

powrcow said:


> So it is doing a unique query based on, at least, your provider. I would hope they pre-package (or cache) the guide data for each provider since there should be more boxes than providers and they're all making a daily call.
> If the size is that small, no way is it a network issue but a parsing or applying updates issue.
> Thanks for your testing!


It was a while ago. My ISP can provide my use down to the byte and it's updated every hour. Last month I used 22GB and I have a 1.5TB cap for 100Mbps down/10Mbps up. I get those speeds 24/7 also.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

JoeKustra said:


> On R1, the Roamio that failed this morning, I'm presently copying all the programs to a different TiVo. Then I'm doing a CPI&TDL.


Update: on the Roamio I performed the CPI&TDL I bricked it. This time I ran the hidden KS code of 76543210 which starts a Guided Setup. My data was backed up. I'm restoring the data and when that is finished I will try a Premiere. I will then try my TE4 Roamio.


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## TivoJD (Feb 8, 2005)

So annoying, the one thing that can fix the holes in the guide (CPI&TDL) is a crap shoot now whether it will complete or you will have to do the KS and lose everything. I've tried running guided setup for a zip code across the country and let it complete and fill in the guide and then re-ran for my own zip and it did work once to fix the holes in the guide (and no issue with it getting stuck). I tried that again yesterday and it didn't work though, still had the holes in the guide where my other boxes did not. I may try it again today.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

It's obvious, with the 7pm data end, that things are changing. Current status:
R1 SI = 2/24 1900 then TBA to end of guide at 2/25 22:30 (TE3)
R3 SI = 2/24 1900 then TBA to 1900 then TNA to 2/27 at 2/27 (TE4)
Premiere SI - 2/24 1900 Guide to 2/24 23:30

No scheduled guide updates until tomorrow. We can adapt. Can TiVo? Also, all my file transfers are done with Online. I have 1TB of content on my TE4 box, but some of it may be corrupt.


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## Stevexyz (Apr 20, 2019)

As of 0600 PT today, the guide problem that I was having has been fixed.
Not to diminish others, the major problem I had on my guide was 48 hours of guide data was missing - specifically 2/20 @ 1600 to 2/22 @ 1600.
Did anyone see their guide corrected?


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## Chuck_IV (Jan 1, 2002)

Lately I’ve been seeing generic titles like “Animal Planet Programming” and just wrong programming in the guide. Like today, my guide on A&E showed a string of 60 days in episodes currently on and coming up, when it was really Alaska PD episodes. 

Forcing a connection is clearing it up but the previous connections were only 6 or 7 hours prior. This is becoming a frequent occurrence. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

JoeKustra said:


> Update: on the Roamio I performed the CPI&TDL I bricked it. This time I ran the hidden KS code of 76543210 which starts a Guided Setup. My data was backed up. I'm restoring the data and when that is finished I will try a Premiere. I will then try my TE4 Roamio.


Do you think it's possible that a CPI&TDL that failed when the guide data was bad could work when the guide data is good again? Or is it failing during the "clearing" portion and not during the loading portion?

I'm on my original smaller drive and I'd like to move back to the larger drive that unfortunately was stuck at CPI&TDL.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

powrcow said:


> Do you think it's possible that a CPI&TDL that failed when the guide data was bad could work when the guide data is good again? Or is it failing during the "clearing" portion and not during the loading portion?
> I'm on my original smaller drive and I'd like to move back to the larger drive that unfortunately was stuck at CPI&TDL.


I did brick my Premiere. If it's a Roamio, then you can invest in a "cradle" and perform a quick format on the drive. Replace it and start Guided Setup. On the Roamio a KickStart of 76543210 worked to wipe the drive. That failed on the Premiere. There was no bad data on the Premiere or Roamio. It's just me playing with my toys. I still have two running TE3 Roamio units. I pulled the Premiere since I need to work on it and it had my TE4 Roamio on top of it.

TiVo Kickstart Codes and Information


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## JammasterC (Aug 9, 2005)

Ugh I got the “Title not available”
for 810 HD NBC. 
Can’t record it either. 
Error: request can not be processed. Contact your cable provider.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

Data on my Roamio and mini ended at 2/24. I forced a connection this morning and they both took awhile at Loading data.

Seemed to load a lot of data and my todo list now goes past 2/24 but I also still have plenty of TBA holes in the guide.

I am afraid to do a Clear & Delete due to bricked issues. I guess I’ll hope those holes fill in and the problem doesn’t happen again.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

cwoody222 said:


> I am afraid to do a Clear & Delete due to bricked issues. I guess I'll hope those holes fill in and the problem doesn't happen again.


Your fears are justified. If my guide gets really screwed up, next time I'll do a Guided Setup and redo all my options and 1P.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

Did a few more connections and reboots and it won’t fill in any more than it did before. So I have some data past 2/24 now but lots of holes still.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

is the Tivo guide data updated with the rescheduled Daytona 500 start for this afternoon. It was rained out yesterday (Sunday.)

Just curious because I checked YTTV's guide and it is updated already. Interested to hear whether this is true of the Tivo guide or not.

If yes then would be interested to hear if it would have been updated if one didn't do a manual connection to Tivo's servers.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

trip1eX said:


> is the Tivo guide data updated with the rescheduled Daytona 500 start for this afternoon. It was rained out yesterday (Sunday.)
> Just curious because I checked YTTV's guide and it is updated already. Interested to hear whether this is true of the Tivo guide or not.
> If yes then would be interested to hear if it would have been updated if one didn't do a manual connection to Tivo's servers.


Gracenote shows it, but no other guides that I could find. I can promise that without a service connection your TiVo guide will not update. It may not anyhow.

It's showing 4pm to 7:30pm EST with Gracenote.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

TiVo support recommended rerunning guided setup. Is there a possibility of bricking my Roamio like with Clear & Delete or is guided setup safe?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

cwoody222 said:


> TiVo support recommended rerunning guided setup. Is there a possibility of bricking my Roamio like with Clear & Delete or is guided setup safe?


As far as I have experienced, Clear Program Information and To Do List hangs up and kills the Roamio and Premiere. I have not tried a Clear & Delete Everything or Guided Setup or TE4. I may try next weekend, but right now the unit's My Shows has too much to move.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

Thanks for the info. I think I’ll refrain then.

Is it worth trying to fix the mini? I can safely try guided setup on that but if the Roamio has bad data it’s pointless to fix the mini, right?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

cwoody222 said:


> Thanks for the info. I think I'll refrain then.
> Is it worth trying to fix the mini? I can safely try guided setup on that but if the Roamio has bad data it's pointless to fix the mini, right?


That's correct. The Mini gets most of its data from its host. A TE3 Mini doesn't have CPI&TDL anyhow. It does have GS and C&DE.

Have you compared your missing data with Online? I wonder what it looks line if you are logged out since you get generic data for 24 hours.

Looking through my guide I see more TBA than normal, but it's a politics week.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

When I check TiVo Online (logged in), I see just as much "To be announced" as I do on my devices. Doesn't seem to be any better.

Thanks again for your help. If I'm scared to do a GS or other commands I guess I'm left to wait and see if daily connections fix it.

As an aside, what DOES the Mini get from its daily connections, if not guide data? Just account status and date/time set?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

cwoody222 said:


> When I check TiVo Online (logged in), I see just as much "To be announced" as I do on my devices. Doesn't seem to be any better.
> Thanks again for your help. If I'm scared to do a GS or other commands I guess I'm left to wait and see if daily connections fix it.
> As an aside, what DOES the Mini get from its daily connections, if not guide data? Just account status and date/time set?


A mini does its service connection when it starts. Probably just getting authorizations for the account and hosts, but I don't know how much memory it has, so can it even hold a guide? Probably. RAM is cheap. Remember that a Mini can show My Channels if the host is on My Channels. If the host is on Favorites, the Mini can't show My Channels. Same with apps. But all this changes with the A95 and TE4.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

I have an A93 but am running TE4.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

I've been thinking. There have been two software updates since the last release notes. Also, there must be software support for those TiVo+ ads and channels in the guide. Speculation: that's what broke CPI&TDL. My best guess.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

I found that tivo online had absolutely zero guide data last night, but the tivo itself did have guide data, so that was weird (I could see things like "my shows" in tivo online, just no guide data).


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

tomhorsley said:


> I found that tivo online had absolutely zero guide data last night, but the tivo itself did have guide data, so that was weird (I could see things like "my shows" in tivo online, just no guide data).


You're going to need to stop using weird and TiVo in the same sentence. But it does seem to be the new pattern: TE3 guide's EOD is SI+1 12pm and TE4 guide's EOD is SI+1 7pm. If that part is settled, what will they work on (or screw up) this week?


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

JoeKustra said:


> You're going to need to stop using weird and TiVo in the same sentence.


Yeah. This is just sooo TiVo...


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

Looks like my “Title not available” holes in my Guide has fixed themselves.

Shows that weren’t scheduled are now and I don’t see any holes, where I know there were some yesterday in particular places.


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## JammasterC (Aug 9, 2005)

Last night was the most “title not available” I’ve seen yet. 
Did a TiVo connection, didn’t solve issue.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

I was going to post that either they hired a new guide manager, or the old one left. I hate to jinx it, but for the last week my channels have been really good. This week is crap since there's a lot of political stuff happening. The new format was stable all last week. But I'll wait another week before drawing any conclusions about the new pattern.

I have found forced connections done before noon seldom have any affect unless there was a early morning failure. Also, I think that TiVo has given up on Search. Perhaps they feel only voice should be used.


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## ryanmcv (Nov 13, 2015)

JammasterC said:


> Last night was the most "title not available" I've seen yet.
> Did a TiVo connection, didn't solve issue.


The guide data for this past weekend was awful. Several of my shows didn't record because of missing guide data ("title not available"), including the latest airing of _Seven Worlds, One Planet_ on BBC America. That show also airs at the same time on AMC, Sundance, and a couple of other channels -- and they all had "title not available" during the air time for the show. Super frustrating.


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## homersby (Dec 10, 2015)

Puppy76 said:


> I thought I'd see posts about this left and right, but I don't, so is this somehow just me?
> 
> tonight, 1/16/2020, of the 9 channels I have favorited, FIVE of them have no guide data at all.
> 
> ...


Not sure if my issue if the same but it just started and I moving my post to this thread. Any ideas would be appreciated. I am thinking maybe the Tivo is failing or cable card?

Hi All, I know this board is often very helpful in solving problems and I have just started having one and thought I would see if anyone can help. My guide info just started getting a lot of TBA entries in it, along with completely missing chunks of time. For example, last night, Sunday 2/23 on CBS it showed 60 minutes at 7PM for an hour and then jumped right to 11PM with nothing in between which overlooked God Friended ME, NCIS LA, and NCIS NO. Today there are even more blank spaces, TBA's, and gaps like the one I just described above.

I have a cable card installed in my white Tivo Bolt with 4 tuners and have never had any issues with it in about 3 years. I am on Fios in Baltimore County. Network info is up to date and connections for data say they are working. I did a basic restart this morning but no improvement.

Any ideas? Thanks!


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

homersby said:


> Any ideas? Thanks!


Is it still bad? You can go back about two days. Also, does TiVo Online agree?

I recorded CBS from 8pm to 11pm last night without any problems. They would have been delayed, but CBS killed their news program.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

homersby said:


> Not sure if my issue if the same but it just started and I moving my post to this thread. Any ideas would be appreciated. I am thinking maybe the Tivo is failing or cable card?
> 
> Hi All, I know this board is often very helpful in solving problems and I have just started having one and thought I would see if anyone can help. My guide info just started getting a lot of TBA entries in it, along with completely missing chunks of time. For example, last night, Sunday 2/23 on CBS it showed 60 minutes at 7PM for an hour and then jumped right to 11PM with nothing in between which overlooked God Friended ME, NCIS LA, and NCIS NO. Today there are even more blank spaces, TBA's, and gaps like the one I just described above.
> 
> ...


It has nothing to do with your cable card or your device failing.

It's a data problem on TiVo's end that they need to address.

It may fix itself or you may have to re-run Guided Setup.

Mine fixed itself. If you're having successful daily network connections, the hope is that it'll fix itself before it affects recordings.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

How I stay happy: TiVo has a seven day guide. That stuff at the end is just work-in-progress.


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## homersby (Dec 10, 2015)

JoeKustra said:


> Is it still bad? You can go back about two days. Also, does TiVo Online agree?
> 
> I recorded CBS from 8pm to 11pm last night without any problems. They would have been delayed, but CBS killed their news program.


Still bad and now I am stuck on Clearing Guide Data and To Do list screen which says it could take up to an hour but it's been 90 minutes now. I did a manual recording last night for the NCIS shows so I got them, but only because I noticed the problem.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

homersby said:


> Still bad and now I am stuck on Clearing Guide Data and To Do list screen which says it could take up to an hour but it's been 90 minutes now. I did a manual recording last night for the NCIS shows so I got them, but only because I noticed the problem.


I'm sorry. You may have bricked your unit. Search for CPI or TDL and you will find that there are several member (like me) that did that and had to format their drives. You may wish to try the KiskStart code 76543210, which will wipe your drive but no tools are needed. Put the remote in IR mode first (TiVo + "C" until red LED blinks 3x). This problem is new and affects Roamio and Premiere units. No reports of Bolts yet. TiVo Kickstart Codes and Information


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

I posted earlier about Search not working. Try using Search for S.W.A.T., which used to work. It does work with VOX and the current TV program is the only answer. But the old search only finds the movie. This is TE3 and TE4. Also notice NCIS. It should be first found. But it's found several pages down last after NCIS:NO and NCIS:LA. Thanks TiVo. I think I will go bother the chat person.


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## TivoJD (Feb 8, 2005)

JoeKustra said:


> I'm sorry. You may have bricked your unit. Search for CPI or TDL and you will find that there are several member (like me) that did that and had to format their drives. You may wish to try the KiskStart code 76543210, which will wipe your drive but no tools are needed. Put the remote in IR mode first (TiVo + "C" until red LED blinks 3x). This problem is new and affects Roamio and Premiere units. No reports of Bolts yet. TiVo Kickstart Codes and Information


Bolts are included, I bricked a bolt I had doing the CPI&TDL.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

TivoJD said:


> Bolts are included, I bricked a bolt I had doing the CPI&TDL.


Thanks. And sorry.


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## homersby (Dec 10, 2015)

JoeKustra said:


> I'm sorry. You may have bricked your unit. Search for CPI or TDL and you will find that there are several member (like me) that did that and had to format their drives. You may wish to try the KiskStart code 76543210, which will wipe your drive but no tools are needed. Put the remote in IR mode first (TiVo + "C" until red LED blinks 3x). This problem is new and affects Roamio and Premiere units. No reports of Bolts yet. TiVo Kickstart Codes and Information


Hmmm. Not sure what I did but tried your info above along with some other codes from the link. Took several tried pulling the plug and restarting, but it is back and seems to be working including cleaning up the guide. My few recordings are gone and I have to clean up my channel guide again, but at least it's back. Thanks for your help.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

homersby said:


> Hmmm. Not sure what I did but tried your info above along with some other codes from the link. Took several tried pulling the plug and restarting, but it is back and seems to be working including cleaning up the guide. My few recordings are gone and I have to clean up my channel guide again, but at least it's back. Thanks for your help.


Sorry you had to find out this way. I've done that procedure many times and never had a problem.

edit: I sent them a Tweet @TiVoSupport. It's what Twitter is good for.


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## series5orpremier (Jul 6, 2013)

ryanmcv said:


> The guide data for this past weekend was awful. Several of my shows didn't record because of missing guide data ("title not available"), including the latest airing of _Seven Worlds, One Planet_ on BBC America. That show also airs at the same time on AMC, Sundance, and a couple of other channels -- and they all had "title not available" during the air time for the show. Super frustrating.


Yeah, I don't have proper data for the Antarctica episode. I manually recorded it is as something like "Planet Earth" but now it's mislabeled and not in the Seven Worlds, One Planet folder. My last chance is two more showings of that episode Thursday night but the guide data is still bad for those too and I have no hope of it correcting itself before then.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

JoeKustra said:


> I was going to post that either they hired a new guide manager, or the old one left. I hate to jinx it, but for the last week my channels have been really good. This week is crap since there's a lot of political stuff happening. The new format was stable all last week. But I'll wait another week before drawing any conclusions about the new pattern.


Should we send a cake?


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

My guess is that the problem affected the MSO TiVos and they actually had to fix the problem. Guide data for my TiVo has been "good" for a few weeks. Good as in it's accurate for a few days. Enough that programs get recorded.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

powrcow said:


> My guess is that the problem affected the MSO TiVos and they actually had to fix the problem. Guide data for my TiVo has been "good" for a few weeks. Good as in it's accurate for a few days. Enough that programs get recorded.


Except that they haven't updated the guide in 3 days.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

morac said:


> Except that they haven't updated the guide in 3 days.


Has anything not been recorded as a result? I mean, obviously it would be theoretically possible, but everything has been fine for me despite the lack of updates...


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Has anything not been recorded as a result? I mean, obviously it would be theoretically possible, but everything has been fine for me despite the lack of updates...


I haven't missed a thing. I'm good until Sunday PM. But as of Monday, March 2, I have a brick. Only program available for the next week is The Daily Show.

My TE4 box, a Roamio, is only used for storage. I'm going to off-load everything (most may be bad anyhow) and on Sunday run a CPI&TDL. Even if it bricks the box, nothing will be lost. It doesn't have a cable card.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

JoeKustra said:


> I haven't missed a thing. I'm good until Sunday PM. But as of Monday, March 2, I have a brick. Only program available for the next week is The Daily Show.
> 
> My TE4 box, a Roamio, is only used for storage. I'm going to off-load everything (most may be bad anyhow) and on Sunday run a CPI&TDL. Even if it bricks the box, nothing will be lost. It doesn't have a cable card.


I'm the same but data for me runs out the following Monday.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

cwoody222 said:


> I'm the same but data for me runs out the following Monday.


It's funny. The TE4 guide extends every day with TNA blocks. It extended 24 hours this morning. The guide extends to 9am EST, right where it should be (close). The end of data is still 3/7/at 7pm.


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## powrcow (Sep 27, 2010)

I don't see this issue as long as there's accurate guide data for at least two days out. Yes, it's nice knowing that I can look at the To Do List today and see everything's good for the next 7+ days, but in reality the TiVo can call in and get an update the next morning and everything could be different.

About a month ago the guide data was so horrible I was missing recordings, but that wasn't due to bad data 3+ days out - the data was bad for the current day and beyond.

I'm curious why they're messing with how the end of the guide data is handled but it sounds like even TiVo might not even know or care. Most likely the people who really understand what's going on have left and the rest of the people are in maintenance mode.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Funny: Sunday's "God Friended Me" and Monday's "9-1-1: Lone Star" have the same descriptions. Not even the same network.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Well, they always said he moves in mysterious ways...


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## whoareyou_1999 (Feb 3, 2016)

My guide is _mostly_ ok, but I'm still finding "holes" in my TIVO's guide data. TIVO's online guide looks correct, so the data seems to be available, but just not populating properly on my Roamio.​
Does anyone know if repeating guide setup will get my guide to the point where the missing data will be corrected?


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

Could be worse
My cable company (Consolidated) today had most channels with "-no title-" in the guide. They are IPTV so you use their receivers. They (I think) use Rovi also because the descriptions pretty much match Tivo's "enhanced" (long) descriptions. Plus it usually matches what tv.com shows.

Anywho a call to them they acknowledge as an "outage". Got a call back from their techs about 4pm from them that "the data they received from the 3rd party company they get guide data from was corrupted which resulted in the "no title" (which for a Tivo would be the TBA titles) and they _hope_ to have it fixed by later tonight". I'm not home to check yet.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

unclehonkey said:


> Could be worse
> My cable company (Consolidated) today had most channels with "-no title-" in the guide. They are IPTV so you use their receivers. They (I think) use Rovi also because the descriptions pretty much match Tivo's "enhanced" (long) descriptions. Plus it usually matches what tv.com shows.


Last year tv.com started using CBS Interactive for their guide. Same as tvguide.com. I'm looking for a web site that uses Rovi, but haven't found one yet.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

unclehonkey said:


> They (I think) use Rovi also because the descriptions pretty much match Tivo's "enhanced" (long) descriptions.


I'm not sure TiVo can be blamed for those wordy descriptions. Look at SyFy or Discovery. Some of those can be so short as to be funny.

"Alice rejects a sandwich. Julia does a thing" The metadata is longer.


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

I'm just happy it got corrected sometime around midnight. Now I have titles again

btw: here is the weird thing. The guide can only go out almost 7 (so from Sunday to Saturday) yet when I do their crappy search it shows listings for 2 weeks away


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

unclehonkey said:


> I'm just happy it got corrected sometime around midnight. Now I have titles again
> btw: here is the weird thing. The guide can only go out almost 7 (so from Sunday to Saturday) yet when I do their crappy search it shows listings for 2 weeks away


The Search function uses TiVo's servers, not the data on your box. The first function to gray out with an internet failure is Search. It is really crappy.


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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

I am recording the entire series of an old SciFi show called the Invaders. One episode a week. Have 3 left to be complete. I had missed the first 4 episodes. It just rolled over to episode one so was happy I would finally have them all. But when I looked at my to do list episode 2 was missing, not scheduled to be recorded. No episode that week. So I looked at guide. The episode is there but shows as an episode from some animal series, I'm assuming something about undesirable animals since it is also called "The Invaders". The next week the correct info is back for episode 3. I manually setup the animal invaders show so I would not miss episode 2. Of course it will not be in the correct folder and will have the wrong episode info if any.

Thing is, as most here know this is not an isolated thing. Many show titles/episodes listed wrong, even change as time goes on, right one day, then wrong for a couple weeks, then maybe right again. Outer Limits (original series and remake), Twilight Zone (original and remake), many times some episodes get mixed up, listed under the wrong series. So if you are recording an entire series you can end up with holes as some episodes will not record. A couple of the craziest were MLB baseball and PGA golf. All of a sudden MLB baseball was not finding anything. It got "renamed" to "Classic MLB baseball", which should be for reruns of old games I guess. PGA golf was fine. Then the British Open (now just called "The Open") was scheduled to be aired. Well it did, but after that all current PGA golf was listed as "The Open". I mean really, I can see screwing up some vintage shows but current MLB baseball and PGA golf?


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

JoeKustra said:


> The Search function uses TiVo's servers, not the data on your box. The first function to gray out with an internet failure is Search. It is really crappy.


I'm referring to my cable company/IPTV issued DVR, not the Tivo


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

tommage1 said:


> I am recording the entire series of an old SciFi show called the Invaders. One episode a week. Have 3 left to be complete. I had missed the first 4 episodes. It just rolled over to episode one so was happy I would finally have them all. But when I looked at my to do list episode 2 was missing, not scheduled to be recorded. No episode that week. So I looked at guide. The episode is there but shows as an episode from some animal series, I'm assuming something about undesirable animals since it is also called "The Invaders". The next week the correct info is back for episode 3. I manually setup the animal invaders show so I would not miss episode 2. Of course it will not be in the correct folder and will have the wrong episode info if any.
> 
> Thing is, as most here know this is not an isolated thing. Many show titles/episodes listed wrong, even change as time goes on, right one day, then wrong for a couple weeks, then maybe right again. Outer Limits (original series and remake), Twilight Zone (original and remake), many times some episodes get mixed up, listed under the wrong series. So if you are recording an entire series you can end up with holes as some episodes will not record. A couple of the craziest were MLB baseball and PGA golf. All of a sudden MLB baseball was not finding anything. It got "renamed" to "Classic MLB baseball", which should be for reruns of old games I guess. PGA golf was fine. Then the British Open (now just called "The Open") was scheduled to be aired. Well it did, but after that all current PGA golf was listed as "The Open". I mean really, I can see screwing up some vintage shows but current MLB baseball and PGA golf?


These errors are constant and never-ending as you describe.


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## Odds Bodkins (Jun 7, 2006)

Another annoyed subscriber checking in! As of Friday, tons of title not available on my guide. Ran guided setup again just now and nothing changed, possibly got worse. I guess I'll wait until this afternoon to connect again and see what's going on because I'm not risking bricking this unit seeing as some have had success doing nothing but waiting.

EDIT: all back now about 30 minutes after finishing guided setup. Maybe those trouble channels took a little longer for a reason??


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Odds Bodkins said:


> EDIT: all back now about 30 minutes after finishing guided setup. Maybe those trouble channels took a little longer for a reason??


You ran GS and it's ok? What hardware & software?


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## Odds Bodkins (Jun 7, 2006)

JoeKustra said:


> You ran GS and it's ok? What hardware & software?


Roamio Series 5 running 21.9.6 v7


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Odds Bodkins said:


> Roamio Series 5 running 21.9.6 v7


Thanks. I didn't think TE4 was affected.


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## KDeFlane (Jan 29, 2014)

I have more channel holes* than ever. On Friday, I noticed that the "daily" connect wasn't scheduled to happen until Sunday, which I thought was a strange delay, so I forced a connection. It fixed nothing. I just hope they're waiting for the Daylight Saving time switch to settle into place before making some corrections/updates. Manual recordings are bad, but manual records with no titles are the worst.

*to clarify, this is *not *simply blocks of time with "To Be Announced" but rather entire channels being completely empty/missing. When I navigate the side-by-side Live Guide, it displays nothing but an empty space where a full day's grid should be for each channel. This has happened in the past, usually to an entire family of related networks: FOX and FX, or ABC and Freeform; now I'm missing USA as well.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Missing data is a pain. But my feed has 460 channels. I pay for about 200. I have 50 checked and 20 favorites. My guide is almost always set to favorites. Even with just 20 channels I get some TBA blocks, usually ABC and Fox. When I look at a guide screen, I don't see any TBA 99% of the time. But if I enabled more channels I'm sure I would find more blocks with TBA. In fact, you can Search for "To Be" and wait for a few seconds. Each result is a different network. Except for PBS, all my TBA blocks are on local small stations. Then I look at zap2it.com (Gracenote) to see what the block should have in it.

DST has been in the guide for over a week. I have seen the service connection skip a day, but only when I power cycle the box. Every week I get one day with no data and one day with two days of data. That's when things are good. When the guide computers run out of power, and hamsters aren't fed, things get bad.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

For the first time I have a complete loss of data for one channel for an entire day. MSNBC on 3/21. It was bad yesterday also, but today's update didn't fix it. From 6am 3/21 to 2am 3/22.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

JoeKustra said:


> For the first time I have a complete loss of data for one channel for an entire day. MSNBC on 3/21. It was bad yesterday also, but today's update didn't fix it. From 6am 3/21 to 2am 3/22.


I have no data on any channels from 3/20 8 pm on. It's TBA on all channels.


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## ClayKY (Aug 24, 2005)

JoeKustra said:


> For the first time I have a complete loss of data for one channel for an entire day. MSNBC on 3/21. It was bad yesterday also, but today's update didn't fix it. From 6am 3/21 to 2am 3/22.


Same here as well as IFC and Big 10 Network.


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## KDeFlane (Jan 29, 2014)

I have one channel that thinks Monday 4pm-5pm is immediately followed by Wednesday 5pm-6pm. How's that for missing time? But only on that one channel!

[the next day...] My system did a connection and then rebooted itself. Tuesday now exists on ABC, but I am missing The Weather Channel (a fair trade-off to get Jeopardy! back)


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## dishrich (Jan 16, 2002)

Another Coronavirus special that's supposed to be on CNN [email protected] EDT, while correctly updated on Comcast, DirecTV - AND on even on DISH's EPG...who (DISH) ALSO uses the *SAME, DAMN, *ROVI EPG data - is AGAIN MIA on Rovi's own damn DVR service, that we DIRECTLY pay them for! (& yea, I rebooted, reconnected, etc., of course to no avail) Just incredible that Rovi is this f'ing incompetent!!!


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

The 3/15 Democratic Debate on CNN was in Gracenote a week ago. It only appeared in the TiVo guide today. I could have set it up manually, but I shouldn't have to.


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## tommiet (Oct 28, 2005)

I've also noticed that some of my OnePass scheduled recordings are recording OLD series when I have it set to only record only new.This just started happening in the last month or so.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

tommiet said:


> I've also noticed that some of my OnePass scheduled recordings are recording OLD series when I have it set to only record only new.This just started happening in the last month or so.


Check the OAD. TiVo started adding the series initial start date to generic descriptions over a month ago. They also removed the "R" repeat indicator. TiVo sees an old program and records it. Happens a lot with late night.

As for late night, I have found most are not repeats, especially on Friday.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Never thought I would see so many TBA on Gracenote. Of course, the TiVo guide is all wrong for sports, but I'm sure it will be corrected soon.


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## disturbedfred (Oct 2, 2004)

Puppy76 said:


> I thought I'd see posts about this left and right, but I don't, so is this somehow just me?
> 
> tonight, 1/16/2020, of the 9 channels I have favorited, FIVE of them have no guide data at all.
> 
> ...


Short answer, yes yes there is. The guide data is mangled and twisted. Roamio here and guide data is always borked. Wish TiVo would fix it, but not holding my breath that anytime in the future it will be better. Either learn to deal, or leave the ecosystem like most everyone else is going to do before much longer.


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## Steve Simmons (Feb 21, 2017)

JoeKustra said:


> I'm sorry. You may have bricked your unit. Search for CPI or TDL and you will find that there are several member (like me) that did that and had to format their drives. You may wish to try the KiskStart code 76543210, which will wipe your drive but no tools are needed. Put the remote in IR mode first (TiVo + "C" until red LED blinks 3x). This problem is new and affects Roamio and Premiere units. No reports of Bolts yet. TiVo Kickstart Codes and Information


Add me to the list of persons stung by this (Roamio basic). I never knew of the clearing option until reading this thread and shame on me for jumping at it from the beginning of the thread without reading the whole thread. :disappointed: Oh well, the couple of programs that were lost were no big deal.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Steve Simmons said:


> Add me to the list of persons stung by this (Roamio basic). I never knew of the clearing option until reading this thread and shame on me for jumping at it from the beginning of the thread without reading the whole thread. :disappointed: Oh well, the couple of programs that were lost were no big deal.


There's a small difference between pulling the drive to format and the KS method. With a drive reformat you will start receiving those "How To" messages every 3 days for a few weeks.

Yesterday I saw that the guide still displayed the sporting events that were cancelled. Upon closer examination I saw the fine print that indicated they were repeats from 2017 to 2019.


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## Steve Simmons (Feb 21, 2017)

I had used the KS method.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

I think I pissed off the guide people. After getting weekend MSNBC fixed (they did a lot of changes), the boiler plate for the second Saturday in the guide for MSNBC is 100% TBA.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Since this thread won’t die I can’t resist saying: Yes something has been seriously wrong with the guide data — ever since it switched to Rovi.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

dlfl said:


> Since this thread won't die I can't resist saying: Yes something has been seriously wrong with the guide data - ever since it switched to Rovi.


I hope it doesn't die, unless TiVo get the guide data correct. It's a good spot for pointing out stupid mistakes in the guide that are not 1P problems.

BTW, the use of the Report a Lineup Issue works much better. I am getting 3 business days for a fix.


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## homersby (Dec 10, 2015)

JoeKustra said:


> There's a small difference between pulling the drive to format and the KS method. With a drive reformat you will start receiving those "How To" messages every 3 days for a few weeks.
> 
> Yesterday I saw that the guide still displayed the sporting events that were cancelled. Upon closer examination I saw the fine print that indicated they were repeats from 2017 to 2019.


Well, my problem is returning again. Started seeing a lot of TBA and the guide on my box does not align with the Tivo.com guide. Also getting those large blocks of time on CBS again that show TBA at noon, and no other entry until 7PM. I guess the hard drive is going. I may format again since it worked last time, but I have a VOX that I am rolling back and may just switch the 2 boxes.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

homersby said:


> Well, my problem is returning again. Started seeing a lot of TBA and the guide on my box does not align with the Tivo.com guide. Also getting those large blocks of time on CBS again that show TBA at noon, and no other entry until 7PM. I guess the hard drive is going. I may format again since it worked last time, but I have a VOX that I am rolling back and may just switch the 2 boxes.


Sad. I had a perfect service connection on my boxes today (one TE4 and two TE3). There are a lot of TBA or TNA, but there are still gaps and changes in many schedules. I sent in an email on the TBA for all day next Saturday on MSNBC. The TE4 guide is different than the TE3 guide. Anyhow, good luck.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

homersby said:


> Well, my problem is returning again. Started seeing a lot of TBA and the guide on my box does not align with the Tivo.com guide. Also getting those large blocks of time on CBS again that show TBA at noon, and no other entry until 7PM. I guess the hard drive is going. I may format again since it worked last time, but I have a VOX that I am rolling back and may just switch the 2 boxes.


Every use Search on TBA? I just entered "To Be" and I see CBS with 6 hours tomorrow starting at noon, PBS Sunday at 2:30pm, and a dozen more. The Search function gets its data from TiVo's database. The guide really doesn't count for squat when it comes to anything important. Don't be so quick to condemn "bad data" since it may not be your drive.


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## homersby (Dec 10, 2015)

JoeKustra said:


> Every use Search on TBA? I just entered "To Be" and I see CBS with 6 hours tomorrow starting at noon, PBS Sunday at 2:30pm, and a dozen more. The Search function gets its data from TiVo's database. The guide really doesn't count for squat when it comes to anything important. Don't be so quick to condemn "bad data" since it may not be your drive.


I have not done that, but the last time I was here for advice and formatted the drive everything was back to normal across the guide. Also, my guide data does not match the online data. I certainly hope you are correct and am not doing anything yet. TBS had TBA all day while Friends was on most of the day, and now as I look back, it is all cleared up. Fingers crosssed!


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

homersby said:


> I have not done that, but the last time I was here for advice and formatted the drive everything was back to normal across the guide. Also, my guide data does not match the online data. I certainly hope you are correct and am not doing anything yet. TBS had TBA all day while Friends was on most of the day, and now as I look back, it is all cleared up. Fingers crosssed!


As for Saturday, that TBA was basketball. Set your data into Like TitanTV and use it as a second or third opinion. What repeated service connection do: changes the guide server. Sometimes they get messed up. My clue is when my TE3 guide looks like a TE4 guide. One always ends at 2pm, one always ends at 8pm. When they are working right.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

New guide adaptation: instead of TBA or repeat, basketball & other sports are now going to be labeled "Classic". LOL


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## pfiagra (Oct 13, 2014)

JoeKustra said:


> New guide adaptation: instead of TBA or repeat, basketball & other sports are now going to be labeled "Classic". LOL


I strongly object! Every match is not a "Classic"!


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## homersby (Dec 10, 2015)

JoeKustra said:


> As for Saturday, that TBA was basketball. Set your data into Like TitanTV and use it as a second or third opinion. What repeated service connection do: changes the guide server. Sometimes they get messed up. My clue is when my TE3 guide looks like a TE4 guide. One always ends at 2pm, one always ends at 8pm. When they are working right.


Looks like things are back to normal for now. Hopefully they stay that way.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

this is by no means normal


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

tommage1 said:


> I am recording the entire series of an old SciFi show called the Invaders. One episode a week. Have 3 left to be complete. I had missed the first 4 episodes. It just rolled over to episode one so was happy I would finally have them all. But when I looked at my to do list episode 2 was missing, not scheduled to be recorded. No episode that week. So I looked at guide. The episode is there but shows as an episode from some animal series, I'm assuming something about undesirable animals since it is also called "The Invaders". The next week the correct info is back for episode 3. I manually setup the animal invaders show so I would not miss episode 2. Of course it will not be in the correct folder and will have the wrong episode info if any.
> 
> Thing is, as most here know this is not an isolated thing. Many show titles/episodes listed wrong, even change as time goes on, right one day, then wrong for a couple weeks, then maybe right again. Outer Limits (original series and remake), Twilight Zone (original and remake), many times some episodes get mixed up, listed under the wrong series. So if you are recording an entire series you can end up with holes as some episodes will not record. A couple of the craziest were MLB baseball and PGA golf. All of a sudden MLB baseball was not finding anything. It got "renamed" to "Classic MLB baseball", which should be for reruns of old games I guess. PGA golf was fine. Then the British Open (now just called "The Open") was scheduled to be aired. Well it did, but after that all current PGA golf was listed as "The Open". I mean really, I can see screwing up some vintage shows but current MLB baseball and PGA golf?


My one pass for Uconn women's basketball also morphed into "classic women's basketball ". I had to stay on top of things cuz I was never confident it would record. Plus the fact that (when basketball was actually played) the games were hard to find.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

mattyro7878 said:


> My one pass for Uconn women's basketball also morphed into "classic women's basketball ". I had to stay on top of things cuz I was never confident it would record. Plus the fact that (when basketball was actually played) the games were hard to find.


It's going to be even harder to get accurate guide data with the cancellation/substitution of sports, Olympics and other shows with live audiences.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

March Madness and Opening Day>>>>>Damn You !! Corona Virus!!!


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

Well, my Bedroom Premiere did update 1 day from the 6th to the 7th. My Premiere XL4 was om March 2nd and I forced it yesterday and I got it to March 6th. Today it is still on the 6th. Do I need to force it every few days? Why will it suddenly need me to do it?


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## headless chicken (Oct 8, 2004)

Wow, TiVo has really gone to sh*t in the past few years after the Rovi acquisition. Not only is guide data not available or frequently TBD, but now episode titles are frequently missing and just using the season/episode number as the place holder, the episode numbers are very often incorrect and the summaries are missing more often than not.

Who is running this ship now because it appears TiVo is rudderless and heading for a crash. No one in their right mind would ever sign up for this once premium service when so many other options abound.


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

...and they still have wrong data for FOX on Sunday Night. The 6 PM Live show is showing at 9 PM west coast and it is NOT at 9 but 6. It is 9 Eastern...why can they not fix it and if you call support, for something else, they tell you they looked at your Tivo and we have the latest software! What that had to do with my issue was beyond me!


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

TiVo gets its data from TiVo. I have TE4 and TE3. At the end of the guide with TE4 it's normal for there to be a day or two of TBA. With TE3 it's normal for the data to end when the guide ends: the next day (from SI) at 2pm. While TE4 shows one more day in SI, that day ends at 7:59pm, so no prime time. That's what today looks like on my boxes. Normally schedules get crappy on Saturday. If tomorrow, one of my TE3 updates just one day, there will be problems. I should get two days on that box.

Speculation: the current bricking boxes with CPI&TDL is a result of TiVo trying to merge both guides into one. It makes good sense to maintain just one guide.

Observation: guide corrections have been very quick recently.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

MPSAN said:


> ...and they still have wrong data for FOX on Sunday Night. The 6 PM Live show is showing at 9 PM west coast and it is NOT at 9 but 6. It is 9 Eastern...why can they not fix it and if you call support, for something else, they tell you they looked at your Tivo and we have the latest software! What that had to do with my issue was beyond me!


Are you speaking of NFL or eNASCAR? My NFL is a "Greatest" at 3pm and is the 2017 Super Bowl. eNASCAR is 1pm and shows as live. At 6pm EDT it's just regular Sunday night stuff.


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

I did a network connect and it took 2 hours! I thought it would now be OK, but it still has the wrong info for FOX at 6PM on the 29th Pacific time!


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

I've noticed the last two mornings instead of "CBS Morning News" (which airs at 5am on KEYC CBS Mankato) it was listed as "CBS Evening News With Norah O'Donnell" which recorded (have a 1P)

First time for that


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## martzta (Nov 11, 2003)

I see lots of errors with the guide. Nothing listed, wrong listings, etc. Even last night 2020 listed a pandemic special and it was just a regular show. I believe that special was aired last Friday.


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

OK, mine did update today.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

martzta said:


> I see lots of errors with the guide. Nothing listed, wrong listings, etc. Even last night 2020 listed a pandemic special and it was just a regular show. I believe that special was aired last Friday.


You didn't get the update, ABC changed it on Friday and my Tivo had the right info. This is not the first time that a 20/20 program listing was changed just a few hours before broadcast.


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## bertp (Sep 24, 2018)

a few weeks ago two channels on Tivos were seemingly updated erroneously for the Birmingham AL market for Spectrum channels 4 and 7. Spectrum has not changed these channels and still shows them in the Spectrum App just the way they have always been; however with Tivo's new erroneous listing information, channels 4 & 7 are now virtually unusable on the Tivo! Is there anything that can be done about this?


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

tenthplanet said:


> You didn't get the update, ABC changed it on Friday and my Tivo had the right info. This is not the first time that a 20/20 program listing was changed just a few hours before broadcast.


Yes, you have to manually connect your TiVo to the network every day before primetime otherwise you will end up with changes in schedules/descriptions you didn't know about. And then that's not a guarantee you will get good data.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Just a FYI. Today, being the last day of the month, I reset all my stuff (down to the modem & TV). This caused my TE3 and TE4 to make service connections. The TE3 guide looks nice and normal. The TE4 guide is full of TBA and is shown in System Information that it has two additional days of data. It doesn't.

When someone posts that they have crap for guide data, I'll wager they have TE4. TE4 does have good days, and they have their own signature. The quality of the data seems the same. The quantity of data does vary. Anything past 8 days is a crap shoot. On either guide.


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

unclehonkey said:


> I've noticed the last two mornings instead of "CBS Morning News" (which airs at 5am on KEYC CBS Mankato) it was listed as "CBS Evening News With Norah O'Donnell" which recorded (have a 1P)
> 
> First time for that


after going through my recordings over the weekend Thursday and Friday DID have a replay of CBS Evening News shown during those two times. Not the rest of the week nor yesterday either


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

unclehonkey said:


> after going through my recordings over the weekend Thursday and Friday DID have a replay of CBS Evening News shown during those two times. Not the rest of the week nor yesterday either


I was scanning the To Do List today, and saw a couple of those scheduled at various times in the coming ten days. Seemed odd to me...


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## ke3ju (Jan 5, 2004)

I do miss DirecTV's guide data. It was very very good. All guest stars listed, and you could look them without having to type their names into the search. You could do it right from the show. That's probably the most disappointing thing I've found since we cut the cord.


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> I was scanning the To Do List today, and saw a couple of those scheduled at various times in the coming ten days. Seemed odd to me...


since I'm working days I've been up early enough to see that the last few days CBS Evening News (rerun) was on at 5am on KEYC instead of CBS Morning News (so the guide was wrong)


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

ke3ju said:


> I do miss DirecTV's guide data. It was very very good. All guest stars listed, and you could look them without having to type their names into the search. You could do it right from the show. That's probably the most disappointing thing I've found since we cut the cord.


ED, what I hate is depending on getting the shows in our One Pass and having them not flag it as new!

'73 from Portland, OR


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Full Frontal didn't record last night...according to my TiVo, it was a rerun of last week's, but according to the TBS web site there was a new episode...


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## chiguy50 (Nov 9, 2009)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Full Frontal didn't record last night...according to my TiVo, it was a rerun of last week's, but according to the TBS web site there was a new episode...


My Roamio Pro recorded it at 10:30 PM EDT. It was indeed a new episode.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

chiguy50 said:


> My Roamio Pro recorded it at 10:30 PM EDT. It was indeed a new episode.


As did mine.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

It's weird...as of Tuesday it was still scheduled to record. Yesterday's Guide Data update must have wiped it out, and somehow I didn't notice.


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## the_Skywise (Nov 27, 2000)

Cartoon Network schedule data is notoriously wrong almost always. Right now it's supposed to be Teen Titans Go and I'm looking at Victor and Vallentino (not that I care for either but The World According to Gumball is supposed to be on in an hour and now I'm questioning if THAT'S true)


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

the_Skywise said:


> Cartoon Network schedule data is notoriously wrong almost always. Right now it's supposed to be Teen Titans Go and I'm looking at Victor and Vallentino (not that I care for either but The World According to Gumball is supposed to be on in an hour and now I'm questioning if THAT'S true)


It's not just the shows are wrong, but the times. For some reason CN runs shows in like 25 minute chunks for hours at a time, while the Tivo guide has them as 30 minutes. By the end of the block, only half the show is recorded.


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## dishrich (Jan 16, 2002)

Today AXS TV is airing a new 4-hour comedy event, that starts at 7 ET/4PT...SHOCKINGLY, Rovi hasn't updated this of course, while all my Gracenote EPG sources are: (note the start time in the article says 4-4-*4PT*)
https://www.multichannel.com/news/axs-tv-to-air-april-4-comedy-gives-back-laugh-aid-event
Having to resort to yet another "manual record" event... 



chiguy50 said:


> My Roamio Pro recorded it at 10:30 PM EDT. It was indeed a new episode.


Thanks for the update, mine didn't get it, but IS now showing it in my TDL for tonight, as a 4-1-20 episode. Today when I scanned thru the EPG back to Thursday, it's (still) not there, either.


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

dishrich said:


> Today AXS TV is airing a new 4-hour comedy event, that starts at 7 ET/4PT...SHOCKINGLY, Rovi hasn't updated this of course, while all my Gracenote EPG sources are: (note the start time in the article says 4-4-*4PT*)
> https://www.multichannel.com/news/axs-tv-to-air-april-4-comedy-gives-back-laugh-aid-event
> Having to resort to yet another "manual record" event...
> 
> Thanks for the update, mine didn't get it, but IS now showing it in my TDL for tonight, as a 4-1-20 episode. Today when I scanned thru the EPG back to Thursday, it's (still) not there, either.


I just did a Manual update and it STILL is not there so I did a manual record from 4 PM to 8:30 PM and see what I get!


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## headless chicken (Oct 8, 2004)

JoeKustra said:


> When someone posts that they have crap for guide data, I'll wager they have TE4. TE4 does have good days, and they have their own signature. The quality of the data seems the same. The quantity of data does vary. Anything past 8 days is a crap shoot. On either guide.


How do you know your TE version?

I have been submitting "No Skipmode" reports almost daily for the past few weeks while in quarantine. Wondering if they have been affected by having fewer staff members available for data entry? In any case, I've been so annoyed I can't help but ream them out or go on a rant in the "any additional details" comment box.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

TE3 is the classic interface; TE4 is Hydra.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

headless chicken said:


> How do you know your TE version?


Visual aid:
TE3 Guide:







TE4 Guide:







There's no video window on the TE4 guide since I have that option disabled.


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## chiguy50 (Nov 9, 2009)

dishrich said:


> Thanks for the update, mine didn't get it, but IS now showing it in my TDL for tonight, as a 4-1-20 episode. Today when I scanned thru the EPG back to Thursday, it's (still) not there, either.


For anyone who is not aware, you can also find the previously aired TDL shows, as well as a number of off-air special features, at the Comedy Central app or on the website. I frequently go there for the extended versions of Trevor Noah's guest interviews or on the rare occasion that my TiVo has failed to record a new show.


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

had to chuckle the other day as a soft core porn video was rated "TVY". It was on Showtime Xtreme


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

I've said this before, but episode #s jump all over the place.. I let some PBS shows especially (and rare other shows) record new and reruns, and sometimes I have downloaded a previous run, or just keep the metadata file to see if I've seen it already.. and even currently running shows sometimes have two new eps on subsequent weeks be episode "110" for example.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I noticed that DuckTales season 3 started last Sunday, but my One Pass refused to pick it up even though the episodes were marked new. I changed my One Pass to repeats and it still wouldn’t pick up episodes. They showed up in the upcoming list, but would not schedule. 

Finally I deleted the One Pass and recreated it. That appeared to get things working. I have no idea what the problem was though. They did have the correct first air dates and titles, but no season or episode number.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

morac said:


> Finally I deleted the One Pass and recreated it. That appeared to get things working. I have no idea what the problem was though. They did have the correct first air dates and titles, but no season or episode number.


That means they changed the seriesId for the new shows. I'd report it to TiVo on the lineup page especially if you have any of the old shows and can get the seriesId for both. It's possible that they'll correct it themselves and your new 1P will start to fail also.

Scott


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

HerronScott said:


> That means they changed the seriesId for the new shows. I'd report it to TiVo on the lineup page especially if you have any of the old shows and can get the seriesId for both. It's possible that they'll correct it themselves and your new 1P will start to fail also.
> 
> Scott


But the series ID didn't change since selecting a new episode didn't give me an option to create a new one pass until I deleted my old one. If the new episodes had a different series ID, then I would have been able to create two one passes for the same show which I couldn't.


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## tautog (Nov 19, 2019)

Last night I lost all guide data. Every station had title not available. I have a Bolt OTA running Hydra. I can watch shows, just no data.
I have run CPI&TDL 3 times which had worked before for spotty titles missing. Nada. 
I tried to connect to box on tivo.com and it says there is a problem communicating with this box and make sure box is connected to home network. So I checked network connections on box. All ok. I then reset router and modem. Still nothing. So I disconnected ethernet cable and went wireless. Tried another CPI&TDL. Nothing. 
Anyone have an idea? Thanks.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Idea: It could be that TiVo's servers were not providing guide data when you tried. Idea: Repeat Guided Setup. Idea: Repeat Guided Setup with nearby zipcode.

It is normal for TiVo to not perform service connections from 6pm to 2am. I don't know why.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

JoeKustra said:


> It is normal for TiVo to not perform service connections from 6pm to 2am. I don't know why.


It could be that evenings are the time traditionally when internet traffic is the highest...perhaps in areas where internet service isn't all that great (which back when they started doing this was a much larger percentage of the country than now), they had a higher number of failed connections during those hours?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> It could be that evenings are the time traditionally when internet traffic is the highest...perhaps in areas where internet service isn't all that great (which back when they started doing this was a much larger percentage of the country than now), they had a higher number of failed connections during those hours?


Back before my cable company did a complete rebuild, we had a severe slowdown daily. My speed would drop from 40Mbps to 2Mbps sometimes. The time was 3pm to 6pm. That's when kids come home from school. No summer slowdowns. Since the rebuild, I'm a solid 100Mbps 24/7. But your theory is as good as any.


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## tautog (Nov 19, 2019)

JoeKustra said:


> Idea: It could be that TiVo's servers were not providing guide data when you tried. Idea: Repeat Guided Setup. Idea: Repeat Guided Setup with nearby zipcode.
> 
> It is normal for TiVo to not perform service connections from 6pm to 2am. I don't know why.


Thanks for tip but I fixed it on my own. While thinking about why it just seemed to be a network issue I remembered I had firewalled a bunch of sites on my router to block the pre roll ads. Deleted them and bingo, guide is back. Oh and so are the ads. So win-lose. Now I will add the sites back one by one and see if I can find the offender and still dump the ads. This also fixed problem of not being able to use the Tivo app on phone, tablet, and tivo online on computer.

Thanks again.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

Seal team is listed as new tonight
It says original air date original air date was 6 days ago. How odd.


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## headless chicken (Oct 8, 2004)

Bravo guide data has been incomplete and/or incorrect for the past few weeks resulting in tons of episodes being scheduled to record on To Do list that shouldn't, and also missing airings of new episodes.


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## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

mattyro7878 said:


> Seal team is listed as new tonight
> It says original air date original air date was 6 days ago. How odd.


Both Seal Team and SWAT were listed as new, but were reruns.
This may create problems when the episodes that were listed actually air, TiVo's probably won't record them, so keep an eye on ToDo lists over the next couple of weeks.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

I was about to go to SWAT last night but didn't. Guess I would gave been disappointed.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

I have a ONEPASS set for Rick and Morty. New episodes only as I have all the previous episodes. All of a sudden all the upcoming are being recorded. Checked the one pass. Recordings only and NEW episodes only. Any ideas why this might be??


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## MikeLobby (Jan 4, 2002)

First is was the pre-roll ads and now the guide data has gone to crap. Seriously what is going on? I went to catch up on This Old House tonight... The first episode supposedly recorded of the new Cape Ann project was actually the last episode of the previous project. The second episode recorded some Downton Abbey rerun. Ugh.

Last nights re-run of SNL said it was the Daniel Craig episode but it was actually John Mulaney. Some of the broadcast sub channels (mainly Quest) are completely wrong for the past couple of days. And to think I sold my DTV pal DVR last year... I should have kept it and sold the Tivos instead!


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

MikeLobby said:


> First is was the pre-roll ads and now the guide data has gone to crap. Seriously what is going on? I went to catch up on This Old House tonight... The first episode supposedly recorded of the new Cape Ann project was actually the last episode of the previous project. The second episode recorded some Downton Abbey rerun. Ugh.
> 
> Last nights re-run of SNL said it was the Daniel Craig episode but it was actually John Mulaney. Some of the broadcast sub channels (mainly Quest) are completely wrong for the past couple of days. And to think I sold my DTV pal DVR last year... I should have kept it and sold the Tivos instead!


I have been resorting to my streamer more and more for shows and not relying on recording.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

mattyro7878 said:


> I have a ONEPASS set for Rick and Morty. New episodes only as I have all the previous episodes. All of a sudden all the upcoming are being recorded. Checked the one pass. Recordings only and NEW episodes only. Any ideas why this might be??


Have you checked the guide data for the episodes that are recording? If generic or missing the OAD, TiVo will record them to be safe.

Scott


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

So I have 1p set up for some of the classic sports that is on broadcast networks. Have 1p set up for
Classic NASCAR (on local FOX)
Classic MLB Baseball (on local FOX)
Classic NHL Hockey (on local NBC)
Classic NFL Football (on local FOX)

That's what the titles say in the guide. Now I look at next weekend and while the title in the guide says "Classic MLB Baseball" in the description (TE3 by the way) it says "MLB Baseball" so the 1p wont grab it. So for funsies set up another 1p for that episode. So now I have 2 1p's set up. One for "Classic MLB Baseball" and one for "MLB Baseball"

Next Sunday's Classic NHL Hockey games in the description just say "NHL Hockey" so they won't record. But when I try and set up a 1p for "NHL Hockey" it wont let me. It just tries to edit the "Classic" 1p. 

Also when you go to set up a 1p for them they give weird defaults. Like all channels (instead of the channel it is on), and end 1 hour later

Thank goodness I only have 4 OTA channels available...otherwise I would be pulling out more of my hair


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## ManeJon (Apr 14, 2018)

I have found over the last couple of years my system is always recording old episodes as new. I look at the guide and it has the NEW next to title and when you look at description is says a 2018 episode. I am often going through scheduled recordings and getting rid of a lot of this stuff


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

So there’s another 4 hour episode of Family guy listed for Saturday night which is wrong. I didn’t get a lineup report in in time to fix this likely.


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## TivoJD (Feb 8, 2005)

Anyone notice they have a new report a lineup issue form? It has a spot for channel frequency now.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

TivoJD said:


> Anyone notice they have a new report a lineup issue form? It has a spot for channel frequency now.


I didn't see anything about channel frequency when I filled out the the form the other day.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

morac said:


> I didn't see anything about channel frequency when I filled out the the form the other day.


It displays for wrong or missing channels.


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## KDeFlane (Jan 29, 2014)

currently playing on my SyFy channel, according to my guide: To Be Announced (2000) -- i love that they don't know what the title is, but are certain of the year it came out. :/


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

KDeFlane said:


> currently playing on my SyFy channel, according to my guide: To Be Announced (2000) -- i love that they don't know what the title is, but are certain of the year it came out. :/


I remember that one...Johnny Depp was amazing in it!


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

I noticed there is a new link for submitting lineup changes
Tivo Customer Support Community

had to submit 3 lineup changes because this week Tivo just decided to take a nap and use old info
-a news program that Gray TV stations has been showing for a month now (Full Court Press Now) which pushed the rest of the night back a half hour (they still sign off nightly) was fine until this week. Now old info
-CW+ moved Maury back to back (10 & 11 am), Judge Jerry to 2 & 2:30 and Springer at 4. Again was fine for 3 weeks now it shows Springer at 11, Maury at 2 and Judge Jerry at 4 & 4:30
-Sunday night they have the Goldbergs at a wrong time on CW+

titantv has it right
zap2it has it right
tvguide has it right

Rivo/Tivo? god no


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

well I see this morning the 2nd issue above was corrected. I'm sure they caught the error finally


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

Yesterday our local PBS affiliate magazine arrived, and we saw an announcement of a new show we'd like to watch. The show begins airing in less than two weeks. For two days I've tried to searched for it from a TiVo and from TiVo Online so I can set up a OnePass, but it is not listed. 

But yesterday when I searched for it in Channels DVR (powered by Gracenote), there it was. I set up a Series Pass in Channels, and probably won't bother to try again on TiVo even to set up a manual recording. We're almost done with TiVo.


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## Rmy (Apr 30, 2020)

Has a fix been found? I noticed this morning over half of my channels now say Title not available" or "to be announced." Connected to the TiVo service for on demand update and that didn't help.


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## jacktechie (Feb 6, 2013)

Rmy said:


> Has a fix been found? I noticed this morning over half of my channels now say Title not available" or "to be announced." Connected to the TiVo service for on demand update and that didn't help.


Where are you? They repacked SF Bay Area stations April 29, 2020.
Apr 29th OTA channel frequency changes for SF Bay Area


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## Rmy (Apr 30, 2020)

jacktechie said:


> Where are you? They repacked SF Bay Area stations April 29, 2020.
> Apr 29th OTA channel frequency changes for SF Bay Area


Im in NJ. After trying the in demand connection to download guide data, I also tried to redo the guided set up, and restarted the TiVo. None resolved the issue but I noticed the channels that are missing guide data have it starting at 8pm tonight so hoping it will resolve itself then. No idea why those channels don't have current data though.


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

noticed last night's Fallon showed TBA in the guide. Next week a couple episodes are also TBA in the guide (yet the other programs on NBC are correct)


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## tecnodork (May 2, 2020)

This problem is so nasty I've finally decided to create an account here.. "Title not available" on every channel. Fully frustrated. Also in the northeast (upstate NY)
Have tried the "all purpose fix" (un-plug it, plug it back in) 
Have tried guided setup and waited a few days..
Has anyone managed to find a solution? Wife is getting edgy about the number of missed recordings. The I.T. department (me) is out of ideas!


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## Phil T (Oct 29, 2003)

My wife has been giving me fits also about the generic descriptions on most late night shows for the last several months.

I may have found a solution. I ordered up a X1 box to be delivered today. 
Will see how it does.


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

unclehonkey said:


> noticed last night's Fallon showed TBA in the guide. Next week a couple episodes are also TBA in the guide (yet the other programs on NBC are correct)


interesting that it had SM last night....even though the guide said "To Be Announced" and had I not set it to record (since the 1p wouldnt have picked it up) I would have missed it


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## lhvetinari (Jun 24, 2019)

tecnodork said:


> This problem is so nasty I've finally decided to create an account here.. "Title not available" on every channel. Fully frustrated. Also in the northeast (upstate NY)
> Have tried the "all purpose fix" (un-plug it, plug it back in)
> Have tried guided setup and waited a few days..
> Has anyone managed to find a solution? Wife is getting edgy about the number of missed recordings. The I.T. department (me) is out of ideas!


What model do you have? Generally a Clear Program Info is advised, but it can jam up Premieres. Roamios and Bolts should be safe, and if they're not they have built-in recovery.


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## tecnodork (May 2, 2020)

lhvetinari said:


> What model do you have? Generally a Clear Program Info is advised, but it can jam up Premieres. Roamios and Bolts should be safe, and if they're not they have built-in recovery.


"*Clear program information & To Do List:* Clears all program information, cancels all OnePass/ Season Pass recordings and everything in the To Do List, and removes all Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down ratings. This does not delete shows in the My Shows list. The TiVo Premiere acquires new program information during the next connection to the TiVo Service. Completing this process may take over an hour."

SERIOUSLY???
We're supposed to trash all our OnePass data to fix this?!?!
That sounds like a terrible idea....I think not.

This is a TCD840300 (Roamio Series 5 pro)
21.9.7.v7-840-6-840

Anyone have any ideas that don't amount to losing all our recording preferences?


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## lhvetinari (Jun 24, 2019)

It doesn’t actually cancel the one passes, it just cancels the recordings because it dumps the To Do list. Once it reconnects and re-downloads the guide data, it reschedules the 1ps. 
Take a backup with KMTTG just in case I might have it wrong. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

lhvetinari said:


> It doesn't actually cancel the one passes, it just cancels the recordings because it dumps the To Do list.


...although the last time I tried it, it really did wipe out everything. Including my recordings. Wiped the box clean and started fresh.

Very annoying. (Consider that to be an example of Midwestern Scandinavian understatement.)


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## lhvetinari (Jun 24, 2019)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> ...although the last time I tried it, it really did wipe out everything. Including my recordings. Wiped the box clean and started fresh.
> 
> Very annoying. (Consider that to be an example of Midwestern Scandinavian understatement.)


Did it have you do guided setup and everything? I did a CPITDL on my Bolt a few months ago and had none of that.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

lhvetinari said:


> Did it have you do guided setup and everything? I did a CPITDL on my Bolt a few months ago and had none of that.


It did. I had done it a couple of times before, successfully. But this time, for whatever reason, it went horribly wrong.


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## tecnodork (May 2, 2020)

OK, so I grit my teeth, do the reset as described, it takes a few hours... and nothing. Bupkiss. Squat. The big zero. Same exact problem. ..on the plus side, my one pass data does seem to be intact.

WTF tivo?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Fortunately I caught this, but the special report on CNN tonight was 75 minutes, not 60 minutes like the Tivo guide said it was.


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## tecnodork (May 2, 2020)

Update: we had a power outage this morning, long enough for my UPS to croak. 
After this particular 'forced reboot' (there have been several others, graceful and otherwise) the guide seems to have some show data in it.
Hoping that this is the beginning of our guides eventual recovery.

<rant>
Tivo's data sync processes are the slowest, worst documented and have the worst presentation of any piece of software I've had the pleasure of working with in years. If it is busy "ingesting" some new data, there should be a counter/progress bar/graph/anything to signify (and probably lie) to the human that something is going on "in there"!
</rant>

Hope anyone else suffering from this issue finds theirs "fixed" soon as well.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

tecnodork said:


> Update: we had a power outage this morning, long enough for my UPS to croak.
> After this particular 'forced reboot' (there have been several others, graceful and otherwise) the guide seems to have some show data in it.
> Hoping that this is the beginning of our guides eventual recovery.
> <rant>
> ...


You can watch the guide data being "ingested" by viewing the service connection progress. With TE3, the guide updates on a 26 hour schedule. With TE4, it now updates on a 8 hour schedule, but there's no progress indicator. The field "indexing" in System Information will update every 24 hours unless guide data has been received. In that case it updates a minute after the update completes. The indexing time doesn't mean anything except the last data down load had some changes. BTW, after a restart a service connection will be made within 30 minutes.


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## stevet555 (Jan 24, 2017)

You are not alone, having the same problems on TE4 - its really frustrating. I have resorted to clearing guide and onepass every few days as it retrieves guide info for 2 days, and then just keeps failing. Although my guide says "Title not available"..


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## tecnodork (May 2, 2020)

Damnit. It ran out of programming data again, and we missed recordings from yesterday. 
Just did a reset again. 
This is getting old fast. 

Has anyone called Tivo support for an explanation? Or would I be wasting my time?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

tecnodork said:


> Damnit. It ran out of programming data again, and we missed recordings from yesterday.
> Just did a reset again.
> This is getting old fast.
> Has anyone called Tivo support for an explanation? Or would I be wasting my time?


You would be wasting your time. When was your last service connection? TE3 or TE4?


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## tecnodork (May 2, 2020)

JoeKustra said:


> You would be wasting your time. When was your last service connection? TE3 or TE4?


Service connection succeeds every time, I just manually ran it after resetting. Eveything completed. Still nothing in the guide... but just found a hint! Stupid box apparently hasn't NTP sync'd... it thinks it's in 1969!

I repeat, there have been NO ERRORS reported, I had to go digging for this..... WTH?!


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

It's a Roamio running TE4. It was updated recently. It's probable you have a network problem. I would power off the TiVo, router and modem. Then power on the modem. When it is finished, power up the router. When it is finished, power up the TiVo. After 30 to 45 minutes check System Information again. Check your To Do List and guide.

12/31/69 is the start date. It means there hasn't been a good guide update since your last update. TiVos don't use NTP.


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## tecnodork (May 2, 2020)

JoeKustra said:


> It's a Roamio running TE4. It was updated recently. It's probable you have a network problem. I would power off the TiVo, router and modem. Then power on the modem. When it is finished, power up the router. When it is finished, power up the TiVo. After 30 to 45 minutes check System Information again. Check your To Do List and guide.
> 
> 12/31/69 is the start date. It means there hasn't been a good guide update since your last update. TiVos don't use NTP.


The network is rock solid. The tivos connection to that network is not an issue. My DHCP server (not built into the modem) shows a happy lease, I can tcpdump on that client IP and it has no issues reaching the WAN/Internet. This is a tivo client software problem. No amount of randomly rebooting the parts of my network infrastructure is going to fix that. After a SOFT reboot, the Tivo shows correct date/time but now says last attempt and next attempt are the same date/time? LOL! 
(And status is failed)


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## tim1724 (Jul 3, 2007)

JoeKustra said:


> TiVos don't use NTP.


Huh? Yes they do. At least on TE3 it uses NTP to set its clock.

Remember the kerfuffle two and a half years ago when their NTP servers (sjr1.tivo.com, sjr2.tivo.com, and sjr3.tivo.com) were all messed up? They eventually pushed out an update to use NIST's NTP servers instead although they still run their own servers for really old machines (e.g., Series 3).

But I do agree that the "Last attempt" showing Dec 31, 1969 just means that the field is zeroed out because no connection has succeeded yet.


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## schatham (Mar 17, 2007)

tecnodork said:


> The network is rock solid.
> View attachment 48740


Network might be, but not with the Tivo. Have you done a manual connection and watched the progress? Where does it fail?

What model Tivo is it and is it the account active? Does it say account in good standing?

Your system info is different than mine. All mine says is service connection, nothing about guide data. It looks like your service connection succeeded, but not guide data.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

I can deduce from post 297 that it is a Roamio running the latest TE4. I believe the new guide data process is enabled, but I all I see it do is extend the TBA a few hours.


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## stevet555 (Jan 24, 2017)

I can verify I have the same issue - connection to Tivo backend goes through ok, all other connects indicate ok. Box is Ethernet connected. I also tried guided setup, as well as clearing out guide and to-do. No number of connects fixes guide, and it seems the 2 processes are not connected as of the status for guide updates. On odd thing about the connects is even though it says ok, it schedules an attempt 4 hours later, I would have expected it to be next day. I think it’s actually failing and mis-reporting .

Basically clear out gets me 1.5 days of guide. After reboot, I can see it’s indexing or something as the audio cuts in and out every 10-15 seconds, I assume it’s indexing or something.
Also, the guide status doesn’t show up in system info till that initial is done.

I am also at a loss for next steps. I am running Roamio te4, optimum Long Island.


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## schatham (Mar 17, 2007)

stevet555 said:


> I can verify I have the same issue - connection to Tivo backend goes through ok, all other connects indicate ok. Box is Ethernet connected. I also tried guided setup, as well as clearing out guide and to-do. No number of connects fixes guide, and it seems the 2 processes are not connected as of the status for guide updates. On odd thing about the connects is even though it says ok, it schedules an attempt 4 hours later, I would have expected it to be next day. I think it's actually failing and mis-reporting .
> 
> Basically clear out gets me 1.5 days of guide. After reboot, I can see it's indexing or something as the audio cuts in and out every 10-15 seconds, I assume it's indexing or something.
> Also, the guide status doesn't show up in system info till that initial is done.
> ...


I wonder if going back to TE3 will fix this.


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## stevet555 (Jan 24, 2017)

schatham said:


> I wonder if going back to TE3 will fix this.


I have been on TE4 for > 1 year, so something definitely broke in the last 2-4 weeks for me. I am not sure i am willing to do that nuclear option yet myself, but if you try it, please report!


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## preilly44 (May 31, 2011)

I'm having the same issue too now (no guide data after many successful attempts). Did you ever resolve it?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

I hate to add confusion, but let me offer some observations. At this time TE3 and TE4 have different guides. Not so much in the content but in the scheduling. TE3 still makes one service connection on a daily schedule. The updates happen daily except for one day with no update and one day with two days of content. The guide data coincides with the end of the guide.

With the latest TE4 update, the updates are now every eight hours. This new schedule was added to System information:







While only one connection, usually after 10pm, has data (End of Data EOD) each connection will extend the end of the guide (EOG). TE3 actually has more guide problems since TiVo will feed it TE4 data (Last was 5/10). TE4 data ends at 8pm but the guide doesn't. That's normal. You don't get guide data unless TiVo's servers are happy and they are ready for you.

As for content, I find TE4 is usually more accurate than TE3. But that is because TE4 data extends 2 days further than TE3. But unless all you watch is daytime TV, then the fact that prime time is not part of the last day matters. Now these times are from my region and do vary in different locations. For some 6pm is normal TE3 EOD. Mine is always 2pm. I have never seen TE3 guide data being fed to my TE4 box. I have two Roamio TE3 and one on TE4 (which does little recording).

The last time I had a problem with a TE4 service connection was 5/8. Friday is the most popular day to have problems.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I’ll mention that even though the guide on my TE3 box won’t go past 3 pm on the last day, the actual data goes out to 7 or 8 pm (depending on DST). That’s confirmable either by checking the To Do list, if something is scheduled to record between 3 and 8 pm, or by looking at the guide in the iOS app.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

I have another report of an issue that is relatively minor compared to the complete fails reported on this thread, but this is typical of my overall experience with the TiVo/Rovi EPG:

I set up a recording for the next ESPN2 airing of the _30 for 30_ episode "Be Water" on a TiVo and in Channels DVR. The TiVo schedule thinks it will air at noon on Saturday, while the Gracenote service in Channels DVR says 5 PM.

I checked the ESPN website and confirmed Gracenote is correct. This is typical of my experience with TiVo since it was purchased by Rovi and forced to use that EPG.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

In TiVo's defense, it eventually corrected itself to 5 PM. Not something I feel I can count on every time though. Even worse, this makes it very difficult to plan a gathering to watch something live.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

From gracenote/ zap2it...
Saturday Night Live [/paste:font]
*Madeline Kahn; Carly Simon 
New*
10:00 PM ON KNBC 4 • TV-14 • Stereo • CC
From May 8, 1976: Host Madeline Kahn; Carly Simon performs. NEW???


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

It always has the 10pm 1 hour showing as new. You have to admit, it's not the same program from 1976.


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## Kurs0010 (Nov 9, 2016)

Anyone else irritated that the guide data is showing only a week out?


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Kurs0010 said:


> Anyone else irritated that the guide data is showing only a week out?


I have two weeks' worth...


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Kurs0010 said:


> Anyone else irritated that the guide data is showing only a week out?


Like Rob, I'm seeing the full amount of guide data it's going out through 10/7 for me right now.

Maybe check that it's successfully done service connections? Or maybe the guide data for your area is super weird?

this year though I'm seeing more late data than ever, and it seems to be that way on other guide sources too, not just Tivo. Like sometimes a day or two ahead it's only got generic data for Seth Meyers.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

Puppy76 said:


> this year though I'm seeing more late data than ever, and it seems to be that way on other guide sources too, not just Tivo. Like sometimes a day or two ahead it's only got generic data for Seth Meyers.


While Rovi's guide service may have their own issues, it is clear all the guide providers are having challenges. Since all the providers are having challenges that suggests the source of the wrong/late data is the common source of the content providers (TV stations and/or networks) themselves. I would not be surprised to learn that many of the (mostly talk) shows that are still live are being able to book people only a few days in advance, making advanced guide info difficult to provide (and probably a living hell for the show staff and talent).


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Puppy76 said:


> Like Rob, I'm seeing the full amount of guide data it's going out through 10/7 for me right now.
> Maybe check that it's successfully done service connections? Or maybe the guide data for your area is super weird?
> this year though I'm seeing more late data than ever, and it seems to be that way on other guide sources too, not just Tivo. Like sometimes a day or two ahead it's only got generic data for Seth Meyers.


Real or actual data is usually only 8 days. The last week is mostly boiler plate and not worth correcting. NBC late night is always late as it ABC. Friday night is hit or miss for CBS. If you accept an 8 day guide you will be happier.

TiVo is working on the guide. I think they are trying to merge TE3 and TE4 so they only have to maintain one guide. TE4 is two days longer, but still just filler at the end. But it does increment on day every day. It hasn't missed in over 3 months. Also notice any new news program (daily) has dropped the 2020 from its season. Even if a program moves, it drops the 2020. Probably there will be no 2021 as a season number.

My TE3 guide has program information to 10/6. The guide data ends 10/7 at 2pm. For me that's perfect. For TE4 the guide data ends on 10/8 with data ending at 8pm on 10/8 and the guide is TBA to 12:30am on 10/9, which is also perfect. My TE3 service connection was 30 minutes ago. TE4 has three updates daily at fixed times.


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## Kurs0010 (Nov 9, 2016)

Puppy76 said:


> Like Rob, I'm seeing the full amount of guide data it's going out through 10/7 for me right now.
> 
> Maybe check that it's successfully done service connections? Or maybe the guide data for your area is super weird?
> 
> this year though I'm seeing more late data than ever, and it seems to be that way on other guide sources too, not just Tivo. Like sometimes a day or two ahead it's only got generic data for Seth Meyers.


The weirdest thing happened - so I did a manual connection last night, and then randomly about 20 min later I got a message saying that Tivo has run out of program data - and none of my shows scheduled to record at 7, recorded! They started after I did another forced connection. So...I'm missing the first part of those recordings. Grrrr Strange about the message, since it was just showing a week out for data. Now I have two weeks.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

JoeKustra said:


> Real or actual data is usually only 8 days. The last week is mostly boiler plate and not worth correcting. NBC late night is always late as it ABC. Friday night is hit or miss for CBS. If you accept an 8 day guide you will be happier.
> 
> TiVo is working on the guide. I think they are trying to merge TE3 and TE4 so they only have to maintain one guide. TE4 is two days longer, but still just filler at the end. But it does increment on day every day. It hasn't missed in over 3 months. Also notice any new news program (daily) has dropped the 2020 from its season. Even if a program moves, it drops the 2020. Probably there will be no 2021 as a season number.
> 
> My TE3 guide has program information to 10/6. The guide data ends 10/7 at 2pm. For me that's perfect. For TE4 the guide data ends on 10/8 with data ending at 8pm on 10/8 and the guide is TBA to 12:30am on 10/9, which is also perfect. My TE3 service connection was 30 minutes ago. TE4 has three updates daily at fixed times.


huh, I didn't realize hydra updated more often. Now that you mentioned it, I did notice the other day that it had an upcoming connection less than 12 hours after the previous one, which surprised me as I had thought tivo always did maybe 26 hours or something.

I still see other odd things. In the guide for tonight last night it was showing me taping the weakest link, while in the list that shows what's taping, it correctly shows it as like an nbc pre-debate thing, among other weirdness, but mostly good.


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## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Kurs0010 said:


> The weirdest thing happened - so I did a manual connection last night, and then randomly about 20 min later I got a message saying that Tivo has run out of program data - and none of my shows scheduled to record at 7, recorded! They started after I did another forced connection. So...I'm missing the first part of those recordings. Grrrr Strange about the message, since it was just showing a week out for data. Now I have two weeks.


Weird! Thankful ve not had that happen

(I think I'm missing 7 minutes of family guy, but that's thanks to a hockey game or something like that lol)


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Puppy76 said:


> huh, I didn't realize hydra updated more often. Now that you mentioned it, I did notice the other day that it had an upcoming connection less than 12 hours after the previous one, which surprised me as I had thought tivo always did maybe 26 hours or something.
> I still see other odd things. In the guide for tonight last night it was showing me taping the weakest link, while in the list that shows what's taping, it correctly shows it as like an nbc pre-debate thing, among other weirdness, but mostly good.


First, A TiVo always makes a service connection within 30 minutes after a restart. Second, the TE4 is the one that does a 3x daily update, and at fixed times. The TE3 still has a 26 hour connection schedule. That causes one day with no data and one day with two days of data. A TE4 System Information was changed a while ago to show this:







TE3 doesn't have the extra update. I don't know what TE4 does when you force a service connection. But if a TE4 guide update fails, it will be noted and the retry will be about 5 hours later. I had a network outage so I was able to catch one.

I was being sarcastic when I said an 8 day guide. Usually the second week is just old filler, which I call boilerplate. But I see my trend where 2020 is being removed continues. Tomorrow CNBC has a new program at 7pm. No Sea, no Ep, no 2020.


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

JoeKustra said:


> First, A TiVo always makes a service connection within 30 minutes after a restart. Second, the TE4 is the one that does a 3x daily update, and at fixed times. The TE3 still has a 26 hour connection schedule. That causes one day with no data and one day with two days of data. A TE4 System Information was changed a while ago to show this:
> View attachment 52747
> 
> TE3 doesn't have the extra update. I don't know what TE4 does when you force a service connection. But if a TE4 guide update fails, it will be noted and the retry will be about 5 hours later. I had a network outage so I was able to catch one.
> ...


You've never forced a connection on a TE4 box? I can confirm that if you do and new guide data is available, it will download it. I did it today at 1:30 PM EDT after checking and seeing how far out the guide data went, was missing prime time on Sunday 10/11. I saw it in progress downloading and after it was over 10/11 data was there.


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

My mom's guide data is wonky right now. She runs out Sunday on some channels and then Monday everything is To Be Announced. I wonder if I need to do guided setup again to repick her lineup. This is what fixed it last time for Frontier Fios.


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## JandS (Oct 1, 2010)

JoeKustra said:


> Usually the second week is just old filler, which I call boilerplate.


Can't believe how much time you've saved me from having to cancel all those second-week errors in the guide, so thank you! It bugged me to leave them as-is so i did it grudgingly, got irritated, but didn't think it through. [At least I only did it on the 2 out of 3 boxes.]


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> You've never forced a connection on a TE4 box? I can confirm that if you do and new guide data is available, it will download it. I did it today at 1:30 PM EDT after checking and seeing how far out the guide data went, was missing prime time on Sunday 10/11. I saw it in progress downloading and after it was over 10/11 data was there.


Interesting. My TE4 box does a guide update about 10pm. In the months I've been tracking I always have normal data when I check about 7am. Even if the 10pm should fail or have no data ready, the 6am must get it. Also, it's normal (for me) that the last day's data ends at 8pm and goes TBA until 12:30am. Subsequent connections do move the TBA but never the data. It's one reason I prefer the TE4 guide: reliability. My third guide check is 2:30pm, so I can watch it and the TBA change.


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

JoeKustra said:


> Interesting. My TE4 box does a guide update about 10pm. In the months I've been tracking I always have normal data when I check about 7am. Even if the 10pm should fail or have no data ready, the 6am must get it. Also, it's normal (for me) that the last day's data ends at 8pm and goes TBA until 12:30am. Subsequent connections do move the TBA but never the data. It's one reason I prefer the TE4 guide: reliability. My third guide check is 2:30pm, so I can watch it and the TBA change.


Agree in the past couple of weeks since upgrading it seems to be more consistent.


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## EdwPowers (Apr 15, 2002)

I've been on TE4 for several months now. My guide updates are still exactly as they were on TE3, once per day skipping one day a week. Is the multiple daily guide updates only on devices that came with TE4?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

EdwPowers said:


> I've been on TE4 for several months now. My guide updates are still exactly as they were on TE3, once per day skipping one day a week. Is the multiple daily guide updates only on devices that came with TE4?


There should be one day where you receive two days of data. But no, TE3 still checks once per day and TE4 checks 3x per day. 21.10.1.v8







That shows SI on TE4. The guide update times never change, but a missed update causes a five hour delay before it retries.


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## EdwPowers (Apr 15, 2002)

JoeKustra said:


> There should be one day where you receive two days of data. But no, TE3 still checks once per day and TE4 checks 3x per day. 21.10.1.v8
> View attachment 54951
> 
> That shows SI on TE4. The guide update times never change, but a missed update causes a five hour delay before it retries.


Joe,
I am aware how the frequency of guide updates work. We have chatted about it before several months ago before I went to TE4.

But I am telling you that since "upgrading" to TE4, My updates are exactly the same, absolutely no change. I don't know how to add a picture but here is what my two Romios say.

Roamio 1:
Service connection:
Last successful: Monday November 23, 2020, 9:56am
Last attempt: Monday November 23, 2020, 9:56am
Last status: Succeeded
Next scheduled: Tuesday November 24, 2020, 1:04pm

Roamio 2:
Service connection:
Last successful: Tuesday November 24, 2020, 2:41am
Last attempt: Tuesday November 24, 2020, 2:41am
Last status: Succeeded
Next scheduled: Wednesday November 25, 2020, 4:35am
(today was the no guide data update on Roamio 2)

Both Roamios are the basic model with 3TB drives and are on version 21.10.2.v3-846-6-846.

So back to my original question: Are the TiVos that get multiple guide updates original with TE4 or been upgraded to TE4? Or possibly newer models than Roamio?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

EdwPowers said:


> (today was the no guide data update on Roamio 2)
> Both Roamios are the basic model with 3TB drives and are on version 21.10.2.v3-846-6-846.
> So back to my original question: Are the TiVos that get multiple guide updates original with TE4 or been upgraded to TE4? Or possibly newer models than Roamio?


My one TE3 Roamio didn't get an update today either since, like yours, it was shortly after 2am. My TE4 Roamio was a software upgrade last year, and not all Roamio boxes are the same. But my TE4 box receives a daily update. It hasn't missed a day since 4/27/20 when 21.9.7.v7 was installed. I have the same software you do, but I can't even speculate why you are missing the guide update section in System Information. Also, I don't have a Bolt or Edge.

Ok, way out speculation: TiVo thinks your one TE4 is a Mini VOX. I say that since my Mini is 21.10.2.v3 and Roamio is 21.10.1.v8.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

JoeKustra said:


> Ok, way out speculation: TiVo thinks your one TE4 is a Mini VOX. I say that since my Mini is 21.10.2.v3 and Roamio is 21.10.1.v8.


I currently see a 21.10.2.v3-848-6-848 on one of my Roamio's, so I think your thought is a bit too far out.


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## EdwPowers (Apr 15, 2002)

JoeKustra said:


> My one TE3 Roamio didn't get an update today either since, like yours, it was shortly after 2am. My TE4 Roamio was a software upgrade last year, and not all Roamio boxes are the same. But my TE4 box receives a daily update. It hasn't missed a day since 4/27/20 when 21.9.7.v7 was installed. I have the same software you do, but I can't even speculate why you are missing the guide update section in System Information. Also, I don't have a Bolt or Edge.
> 
> Ok, way out speculation: TiVo thinks your one TE4 is a Mini VOX. I say that since my Mini is 21.10.2.v3 and Roamio is 21.10.1.v8.


I have no idea why TiVo would think they are minis. I have none of those. The two Roamios are the only TiVo equipment I use currently.

A few lines above the service connection I have:
Program information to: 12/7

Actually, Roamio 2 is still 12/6 as it didn't get an update today.

Another minor "complaint" is sometimes I will go 2-3 days without new data even with daily calls. It has not gotten to the low data point but makes checking the TDL daily pointless. So I have added a daily recording to both so I know if new data has been received instead of wondering if there was no new shows to add. Schedules have been kind of sparse for a while but is picking up again.


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## ManeJon (Apr 14, 2018)

I get regular updates on my BOLT - but the data is often wrong particularly as to whether something is new or not


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

EdwPowers said:


> I have no idea why TiVo would think they are minis. I have none of those. The two Roamios are the only TiVo equipment I use currently.


I just noticed something. You have Plus. I have basic Roamio.
Bottom of SI:


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I think the program guide download is something that needs to get turned on on TiVo’s end.


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## EdwPowers (Apr 15, 2002)

JoeKustra said:


> I just noticed something. You have Plus. I have basic Roamio.
> Bottom of SI:
> View attachment 54981


I don't know why you think I have Plus. They are both basic, assuming it is 4 tuners that decide if they are basic. And they both use cable cards. I don't want the OTA hassles, plus I live far from towers.

Here is my complete SI from Roamio2:


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

EdwPowers said:


> I don't know why you think I have Plus. They are both basic, assuming it is 4 tuners that decide if they are basic. And they both use cable cards. I don't want the OTA hassles, plus I live far from towers.


I was looking at the post above yours and saw the 848. My error.

It's definite that your TE4 software is not the same as mine. The last release was 21.10.2.v3 on 11/3/20, same as yours. But that's about all they have in common. Until they match, it's impossible to compare guide dates and data. This is truly weird.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

ManeJon said:


> I get regular updates on my BOLT - but the data is often wrong particularly as to whether something is new or not


Does your guide update every day, adding one day, and always finishes at 7pm with some TBA at the end of the guide? That's what my TE4 looks like. My TE3 has a different schedule and the data ends at the same time the guide ends.


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## EdwPowers (Apr 15, 2002)

JoeKustra said:


> Does your guide update every day, adding one day, and always finishes with some TBA at the end of the guide? That's what my TE4 looks like. My TE3 has a different schedule and the data ends at the same time the guide ends.


That pretty much describes it. A connection every day with the early update having no data. Now, as mentioned before, sometimes I go 2-3 days without data but does eventually catch up. My updates are exactly as they were under TE3, except I don't remember the 2-3 days without new data under TE3.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

EdwPowers said:


> That pretty much describes it. A connection every day with the early update having no data. Now, as mentioned before, sometimes I go 2-3 days without data but does eventually catch up. My updates are exactly as they were under TE3, except I don't remember the 2-3 days without new data under TE3.


A service connection is not how my TE4 gets a guide update. On EST the update is usually at 9:25pm. If there's no data it tries at 5:25am, 8 hours later. The times are UTC, so they changed on 11/1. I wake up every morning, turn on the TV and check SI. my Program Information To: (PIT) always has a day added. TE3 is what you see. I have two of those. One has it's dead day on Tuesday and one is on Wednesday. It's been a month or more, but I would sometimes get TE4 data on my TE3. It's easy to spot since there's all the TBA at the end. It will get fixed it a day or two. BTW, a running thread on updates: Daily Guide Updates

The update that changed things is 21.9.7.v7 back in April. 21.9.7.v7

BTW, the last line of SI is your TSN.


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## EdwPowers (Apr 15, 2002)

JoeKustra said:


> A service connection is not how my TE4 gets a guide update. On EST the update is usually at 9:25pm. If there's no data it tries at 5:25am, 8 hours later. The times are UTC, so they changed on 11/1. I wake up every morning, turn on the TV and check SI. my Program Information To: (PIT) always has a day added. TE3 is what you see. I have two of those. One has it's dead day on Tuesday and one is on Wednesday. It's been a month or more, but I would sometimes get TE4 data on my TE3. It's easy to spot since there's all the TBA at the end. It will get fixed it a day or two. BTW, a running thread on updates: Daily Guide Updates
> 
> The update that changed things is 21.9.7.v7 back in April. 21.9.7.v7


That leads me to what my next question was going to be. And that is if you knew what release changed it. I guess all I can do is what to get a new release.

But it was after April when I switched to TE4. I wonder why I haven't gotten a newer release. Is there a way to request an new release?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

EdwPowers said:


> That leads me to what my next question was going to be. And that is if you knew what release changed it. I guess all I can do is what to get a new release.
> But it was after April when I switched to TE4. I wonder why I haven't gotten a newer release. Is there a way to request an new release?


I was afraid you were going to ask that. Here's the problem. TiVo's CS people are idiots. Your software version displays the current release. But the items in SI are not matching. You could ask TiVo to load the latest SW. You could lie and tell TiVo you are running a previous release and hope their servers are too stupid to notice. There are KS codes that should cause the latest software to load also, but that's a long shot. The software is stored on the motherboard so even changing the drive wouldn't help.

TiVo Kickstart Codes and Information


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

JoeKustra said:


> I was afraid you were going to ask that. Here's the problem. TiVo's CS people are idiots. Your software version displays the current release. But the items in SI are not matching. You could ask TiVo to load the latest SW. You could lie and tell TiVo you are running a previous release and hope their servers are too stupid to notice. There are KS codes that should cause the latest software to load also, but that's a long shot. The software is stored on the motherboard so even changing the drive wouldn't help.
> 
> TiVo Kickstart Codes and Information


You should check what the HD Menu (Hydra) software version is. If that's the same, then I would say that the new program data downloaded is something that can be toggled on and off on the server side, similar to some other features like pre-roll ads.


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

typical Tivo/Rovi

the basketball games on FOX today and tomorrow are not showing in the guide for my local FOX (yet zap2it and titantv are correct) yet the 3 other FOX affiliates that are in Minnesota (and yet Tivo decided to out in the channel list) show properly


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

morac said:


> You should check what the HD Menu (Hydra) software version is. If that's the same, then I would say that the new program data downloaded is something that can be toggled on and off on the server side, similar to some other features like pre-roll ads.


The last page of his SI is identical to mine.


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## EdwPowers (Apr 15, 2002)

I've decided that I am not a glutton for punishment enough to call CS about this. Afterall, My Roamios are acting the same in this manner as they have for the six years that I have had them. Maybe it was just weird about the timing that I did convert to TE4.

I wonder how many others are in the same situation as me.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Funny one today. 12:05pm had The Tonight Show filling out the block that was supposed to be The 700 Club. The content was The 700 Club. My 1P made it record.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Looks like another 2020 mistake is going away. As of Wednesday no more Season 2020 for repeating news-like programs. They seem to have their initial broadcast date at the end also, but not always.

Watch your 1P manager.


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

JoeKustra said:


> Funny one today. 12:05pm had The Tonight Show filling out the block that was supposed to be The 700 Club. The content was The 700 Club. My 1P made it record.


For the last month or so only on Saturdays on my local NBC instead of NBC Nightly News it says "SNL" with the same info as the "encore" version that is on at 9PM CST


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## Mr Tony (Dec 20, 2012)

last nights synopsis of Fallon made me shake my head. Guess we're back to adding adjectives again in the description (plus the fact his guest wasn't Sienna Miller)

_Funnyman Jimmy Fallon interviews British-American actress Sienna Miller. Former Oasis frontman and now solo artist Liam Gallagher gives a stunning song performance._


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