The Freeview Wales OTA Broadcast lineup has been fixed and Channel 4 is now available on channel number 7. Please go through setup to check the matching of channels and re-enable channel 7
Thanks @sa2000 I now have the correct local channels all populated correctly first time.
A related issue though, any ideas why I canât record this programme as shown in the video (zipped up in the attached file)? I thought a screen capture was the easiest way to demonstrate the problem. This happens frequently and I can find no pattern. I try to record something and it just refuses to add it to the recording schedule. If I try to do a series link then it says no future episodes found. Itâs really bugging me! I donât know if itâs a guide issue or a Plex issue. I recorded previous episodes of this series using series link until it suddenly decided there were no future episodes.
plex_record_attempt.zip (20.8 MB)
I would need server logs with debug logging enabled beforehand to investigate. (I do have a backlog - will look into it together with the others)
See
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201643703-reporting-issues-with-plex-media-server/
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/
Please indicate what was being attempted and when when logs are captured and zip uploaded
Do you have any other episodes in your library?
Plex guide is labelling it wrongly as S1E5, When it should be S3E3, if the guide has mislabelled a previous episode as S1E5 this would look like a duplicate
Ahaa yes you are correct thank you. The previous weekâs episode has been labelled as s1e5 too so that explains that one. Itâs the guide data being pants again.
Itâs a mystery where the data comes from
Freeview has it as Ep3, the Channel 4 website has S3E3
Not sure how they work out the next episode is S1E5
Go to hear it solved why yours wasnt recording 
, though a proper fix would be nice
Season and Episode numbers are wrong for Have I Got A Bit More News For You and Still Open All Hours on BBC ONE in the UK:
Have I Got A Bit More News For You on BBC ONE at 23:05 on 28/10 is S58 E3, not S58 E6 and
Still Open All Hours on BBC ONE at 20:00 on 25/10 is S6 E2, not S5 E9
Yes,I just tried it again to be sure.
No HD channels found.
Where do they get the episode numbers from?
X Factor S6E3???
As far as I am aware there has only been 1 other celebrity series of the x factor, so nowhere near 6 series and if it is following the regular series number there have been 15 not including the celebrity one.
It is all well and good all these being corrected, but if the original sources are always going to be wrong⊠Itâs never going to be accurate enough for it to be reliable.
The Freeview OTA guide is not proprietary - it is documented and in international standard formats, but that does not mean a piece of software trying to do the whole world works with it.
There are actually two sorts of âguideâ on the Freeview OTA broadcast. One is the "now next"which should be always right as it is interleaved with the TV broadcast (so you always get the right info if you ask for it). The long term guide (typically 8 days) is broadcast on less frequently (but in times measured in minutes not days) which is why on a Freeview box it can take a few minutes to populate the whole guide.
As far as I can tell the HDHomerun only seems to use âNow/Nextâ data from the broadcast steam, with the rest I assume coming from the internet somewhere.
Corrrect, Freeview is not proprietary.
I have a Freeview EPG script somewhere, but it lacked certain useful info (new/repeat, I think) to be useful.
[edit: clarifcation]
Still seeing problems with the Guide data. Especially around season/episode numbers as others have mentioned, plus episode descriptions for some soaps bearing no relation to the episode (Home & Away for example seems to describe episodes way in the future rather than the current one!)
This has been reported in the past but not fixed
The current date is used so you will always get the Aus details (except friday when it doesnt air in Aus)
Monday should have a date of 10/09 or S32E166, but instead it just has a date of 28/10
yup, looking through the guide today I saw a lot of them.
@sa2000 - I thought the providor was pro-actively checking these now?? It feels worse than before (for series/episode problems).
I think the DVR has gone the same way as many of the new features added
Starts off with good intentions, and looking promising, then just gets left to rot
1 Like
Having only been using the Plex DVR for about a month, I have to say the EPG issues all seem very reminiscent of the bad days of Windows Media Center. Lotâs of little bugs in the software that make for lots of user annoyance and then lots of issues in the guide data itself because it comes from a third party and is then managed by someone not resident in the UK.
In essence, any guide trying to be maintained by a company not resident in the market (even with a local agent providing the data) is hugely difficult.
My suggestion: do what Windows Media Center did in the end, and what every commercial Freeview box on the market does: abandon trying to keep an internet updated guide in sync. Instead put an agent in place on the server that reads the OTA guide data in the broadcast stream. That way you not only get guide data as good as there is (there will still be problems as EPGs are notoriously poorly maintained, but you will be no worse than any other box), but you will also get real time updates as the guide changes (so that for instance when a programme overruns and Freeview update the guide, you will get it without waiting for a scheduled update which is probably too late).
Commercially it probably makes sense too: you no longer need a contract with a UK EPG supplier and do not have to have people updating the guide with errors - that will offset the one off cost of writing the agent to read the OTA EPG data.
3 Likes
I would agree, but the HDHomerun (for example) only provides 24 hrs of OTA EPG.
As they say on adverts: other tuners are available⊠most of which provide access to the broadcast stream and the EPG.
That would make me permanently remove Plex DVR
The OTA EPG is equally as bad as the Plex one
For my use, I want an EPG that provides accurate/useable Season/Episode info, neither Plex nor OTA provide this
Then what are your options? All the internet provided EPGs are pretty poor - certainly no better than the Freeview OTA one, and they all lag more than the Freeview one. The Sky EPG is a bit better maintained (but still far from perfect) and that is not open or exposed so not usable on anything but Sky kit.
The problem is deep and not something I think Plex - or any other end user equipment provider - can really solve entirely on their own. I do think they could do better, but ultimately an EPG is only as good as the meta data it gets fed and that is often very poor.
