All the regional Free to Air TV guides for Queensland, Australia are incorrect. Something has changed in the last month or so which has removed all channels from 2 major Australian broadcasters which means that 40% of the guide is missing. The channel mappings are also now incorrect because all channels which no longer have guide data are disabled by default. This is an absolute f#cking disaster!!!
I use the “Freeview - Wide Bay” data set. It used to be 100% correct but now missing all ABC channels and SBS channels. If I select to use “Freeview - Brisbane” the missing channels are recovered but the specific regional channels are no longer accurate. This means that almost all of my DVR recordings have failed and can’t be setup.
Come on Plex staff… can someone please sort this out? Obviously GraceNote has stuffed this up.
I am not getting much value from my Lifetime Membership.
Can you explain in more details the issue you are having? Is it that the tuner is no longer picking up the channels you are looking for or has the guide changed and no longer has channels that use to be provided? Can you provide me the zip code you are using so I can check the data?
I am only talking about the TV Guide data here. The TV tuner works perfectly and receives all available channels. The problem is solely related to the guide data provided for my location. I even went to the trouble of deleting my tuner device and re-configuring from scratch.
My location is Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia. The postcode is 4670. The correct guide for my location is “Freeview - Wide Bay”. As I indicated (thought I was pretty clear), something has changed in the guide data received for this location in the last month (which has caused all of my recordings to fail).
The capital city in my State is Brisbane and If I select this guide (“Freeview - Brisbane”) all channel data is present and correct (for Brisbane), but as far as I can see, all regional guides (all the ones I checked) are now missing all channels from the ABC and SBS broadcasters (about 40% of channel data).
It appears that the regional guides now only contain the specific channel data from their respective channels only where we have a difference between our location and the capital city channels. Any channels (guide data) which we share with Brisbane are now missing in our local regional guide.
I hope that clarifies the issue a bit more.
So… yes, the guide has changed and is now missing channels which used to be provided.
I’m in Brisbane and use Ice TV for my PVR’s. They also have a cheaper Plex only subscription. It has a 30 day free trial too. Might get you past Gracenotes issues.
Further discussions from other locations in Australian with the same problem:
This has rendered my recording schedule useless also. It was working perfectly up until last week, now all SBS and ABC channels are unable to be mapped to the guide here (Toowoomba, Queensland, 4350).
I have already done the ICE thing. Was a subscriber for many years prior to their near collapse ( a year or two ago). Regardless, this was all working before and I want it fixed and working again otherwise why did I pay for a lifetime Plex pass. Sorry but the fact that ICE is a potential source of an alternative TV guide does not interest me (but thanks for jumping in). In fact you and I have already had this exchange on another thread. Do you work for ICE? Your suggestion here is redundant and not helpful in solving the problem.
I see my thread has been added, so am going to chime in… at first i thought it was the guide which is the problem, however it seems (to me) that the problem is with the mappings (now if they are derived from the guide, then the problem is answered)… the mappings are missing channel info for ABC and SBS frequencies… I found that whilst located in South Coast NSW to get correct mappings (regardless of channel data which appears to be consistent anywhere in the AEST time zone) I have to select Ballarat (Vic) … this I thought was just since the last upgrade only… but I cannot confirm.
The tuner (HDHomerun connect) has all channels… in fact in my situation (my location) I can see both Wollongong and South Coast transmitters …but of course can only select one or the other… identical channels, but different frequencies in the mappings (neither of which have ABC or SBS for the last two weeks) which are both affected by solar radiation at different times of the day… in both mappings since the last update… all sbs and abc channels got nuked… why the f*** do you have to nuke something working? Can’t you at least test and leave working systems alone?
The ONLY reason I committed to a life-time plex pass was to use the TV/DVR functionality. Now that I can’t even use that (guide data missing, dates in wrong format), I think it is time to ask for a refund.
It’s now been two weeks since I posted this issue and no sign of anything being done. Someone at Gracenote made a uninformed decision about a month ago which resulted in two of the major TV networks being removed from the Australian regional TV Guide data which they supply to Plex. The problem has been confirmed. Why does it take so long for something which would appear to be a simple quick fix (all the data is there… just needs re-mapping)? No wonder the world is stuffed! Nobody cares about anything anymore.
I have had correspondence with Plex billing and Gracenote since my last post here. Let’s just say that this has been (and still is) a very frustrating experience and the response from plex staff has been polite but bordering on incompetent. Two days ago I asked for a refund of my lifetime membership citing the issue we are discussing here as the reason, and hoping that my request may move things along a little. As a result, someone in accounts obviously asked someone in support how this issue was progressing. This sparked two email threads from two different departments in response (accounts and support).
Both were frustrating… accounts not providing enough information initially regarding the amount they would refund and then someone from support confirming that they had just updated their ticket with Gracenote to now include the additional information that I had sent through 2 weeks ago after previous correspondence with support. The really frustrating thing here is that the information they had requested 2 weeks ago was all in this thread and on my original post (from a month ago) which they obviously did not bother to read properly. In any case, it almost confirmed that the original ticket they lodged with Gracenote was missing the very information which we had provided here and required to help rectify the issue.
It’s actually incredible and yet it seems this sort of stupid apathy and incompetence has become the normal mode of operation everywhere in business. I have come to expect failure… as sad and pessimistic as that sounds.
I’m only missing SBS and it’s a channel I probably watch the least so it’s not at the “cancel my Plex Pass” stage, for me yet, especially as I still have a week left of the 30 day free trial of IceTV, which incidentally works perfectly.
I also tried a free XMLTV provider, Freepg, but you get what you pay for there, looking at the XMLTV raw code that both IceTV and Freepg provide it seems that IceTV is configured specifically for Plex while the Freepg code is configured for something else, most likely Tivo as it is mentioned a lot on they website. There re obvious differences in the 2 XMLTV feeds. Freepg seems to work on only a small number of channels, funnily one that does work is SBS.
Ability to set different EPG sources for individual tuners would solve this issue for me without needing to use a paid EPG provider, there is a feature request for this that I have voted for.
