UK Freeview DVB-T EPG Problems

[martint123]

I am surprised not many other people in the UK are noticing problems - are they all using xmltv guides?

Yup - as I have other than freeview sources I just grab the lot with Birtles XMLTV from the Radio Times and map them to whatever the channel is named on dvb-t, dvb-s and from a Sky box.
The only problem is the restricted transmission times of some DVB-T channels, but it hasn't proved to be a real problem.

The only channel I get a dvb-t EPG from is the "red button" channels 301 and 303 which don't appear in anyone else's listing.

[trummel]

I am surprised not many other people in the UK are noticing problems - are they all using xmltv guides?

I tried to use the OTA EPG recently whilst the Radio Times data has been a little unreliable, but as I have DVB-T and DVB-S, it takes far too long to scan all of the channels and the results were mixed to say the least (the 6 minute issue identified in this thread seems to fit the symptoms). Birtles RT grabber (and the RT web site) seem to have settled down now, although I do run it without the cache as that seems to cause a problem from time to time.

I've also noticed an occaisional discepency between the program times on the EPG and the time on xmltvgui. I'm not sure which one to believe, so prefer to stick with one only, so I avoid the OTA stuff completely now.

On a BTW, some of the channels recently changed names, just to cause confusion. Most notably Five is now Channel Five.

[martint123]

On a BTW, some of the channels recently changed names, just to cause confusion. Most notably Five is now Channel Five.

Virgin 1 became Channel One recently - and oddly, Virgin 1 +1 became Channel One +1 a couple of days later !!

I'm not sure of the best way of handling these name changes - in gbpvr I edited the name in the database to make life easier.

[Lao Pan]

I finally got round to installing DVBGuide and producing an EPGUpdate bat file for freeview.

It scans just the PSB1 Mux (BBC SD) and gives a complete 7 Day EPG in just over five and a half minutes (default time is 600 secs but it seems to finish early when its got the lot)

[Reddwarf]

I finally got round to installing DVBGuide and producing an EPGUpdate bat file for freeview.

It scans just the PSB1 Mux (BBC SD) and gives a complete 7 Day EPG in just over five and a half minutes (default time is 600 secs but it seems to finish early when its got the lot)

That's correct, DVBGuide terminates if it detects that there are no more new data to grab. Still works excellent here