Over-The-Air EPG in the US has nearly no data?

[drzwave]

I have a 2nd NPVR setup using a Win7-64 computer and a Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Dual and got the channel scan to work fine (trick was to disable the Win7 firewall).
My vacation home has cable and I have that functional so I figured I'd also get it working here at my main home.

But I don't have cable here. I cut the cord last year and installed an antenna since I am close enough to metro Boston to pick up a reasonable number of channels.

But now I am trying to get the Electronic Program Guide to work.
I was hoping the major networks would broadcast the data but looks like only 2 or 3 channels (out of 17) have any data at all and even then it is only for the next hour or two. Not particularly useful.

So my question is: In the USA, do the networks broadcast the EPG data or do I have to use xmltv or is my setup screwed up somehow?

The cable companies wipe all the EPG in the stream so I use XMLTV at my other house but it appears there is very little data to start with!

How are others in the USA with an Antenna doing the EPG?

[mikeh49]

Schedules Direct is the best solution for the US. It's $25/yr though. There is a free trial. I use it and it is rock solid. Others use MC2XML to get the data from the WMC provider, I think, which might be a little dodgy. As you discovered, broadcast EPG data is useless. Apparently, much better in other parts of the world.

[Zeb]

Yes, and if you can't get XMLTV listings for a particular channel, in most cases you might as well set that channel's EPG Source to None. Regarding firewall, it's really no big deal to add exceptions for NextPVR.exe, NRecord.exe and NDigitalHost.exe.

[dshoup]

Mikeh49 hit the nail on the head. I have used both Sched. Direct and MC2XML for over-the-air tv listings in the United States. I am currently using MC2XML and it works acceptably, but I will have to re-configure things once every 10-20 months as something will change and I'll start to have channels that do not have data. It is a small annoyance for free, but then $25/yr is all it would take to eliminate the frustration (I did not ever have problems when I used Schedules Direct).

[poor_red_neck]

I too was having EDB issues, so decided to do some reading on XMLTV options. I was not willing to pay $25 for a directory listing. I also couldn't get MC2XML to work.

I found Zap2XML along with a free account at Zap2it.

Its a simple command line utility. zap2xml -u username -p password

I then created a batch file to execute that command, and scheduled that batch file to run every 2 days (zap2xml will pull 7 days worth of content in for me).

Only downside is there is no "additional" description data, but as long as I get titles I'm happy.

It then creates a xml file in whatever directory the exe file was in. Point NPVR to that file and you're done! I was up and running in 10 minutes.

[bisonfan]

I use mc2xml. Per a review of the xml file, they pull from zap2it.com. No account is needed with zap2it.com

[Optimus Prime]

I have been using NextPVR for about 6 months, and are still having issues with US OTA EPG. But I have a question - when I install on a fresh machine, I get good, OTA EPG for about week, then it starts going away.

Why am I able to get good OTA EPG on a fresh install, but not on an existing install?