Jessica,

Last post for me for the moment, but here in Australia we don't have an official Microsoft Guide Service, so we are stuck with third party guide hacks, that whilst professional (IceTV) are having issues with what seems to be a bug in Media Center in Windows Vista.

The problem we are having is that intermittently and for no apparent reason, some of the channels that were previously showing in the guide disappear.

Best place to get more info is over on the Australian Media Center Forums.

It would be really appreciated if someone could jump on this quickly - there are more and more people in Australia being effected and I think it would be in MS's best interest to show us some love :)

Thanks,
Shane.

Do you know who in Redmond the Aussies are talking to?

It does sound to me like our background scanning could be causing a problem by dis-associating channels from guide data when we scan information about the channels. I can follow up with whoever here is already working on this - is it possible for you to ask who it is on my team? (I'm guessing my team...if it's not, that would be even weirder.)

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Jessica,

Thanks so much for looking into it - it is a rapidly growing issue for more and more users.

In answer to who we're dealing with, one of the guys on the Aus forums (Keith) is dealing with Mike Hayton if that helps.

Regards,
Shane.

Yes, and I got a long PM from someone else detailing the problem. I'm going to see what I can find out - maybe there's a way to turn off what we call "opportunistic scanning," which could be causing the problem. I'll get back to you with what I learn.

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Jessica,

Thanks so much for taking the time to help here. There's more and more people being effected every day and if you can make a fix happen that would be appreciated.

I look forward to your update on what you find.

Regards,
Shane.

Well, I learned that we're not doing that background scanning in Vista anymore, so that doesn't sound like the problem. I haven't had a chance yet to sync with the developer you're talking to on the Australian forums, but I'll look for him today.

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Jessica

Have you had the opportunity to look at the ehglid logfiles supplied 7 days ago - to the outsider, it certainly appears that some kind of background scanning is definately occuring... sometimes every hour !

To the untrained eye - it certainly appears that on certain days for whatever reason some channels are determined to having newer subchannels - and boom - thats when it mucks up... Of course these channels have not actually changed.

Call it oportunisic or background or whatever - but something is certainly scanning and doing things in the background.

As scritch has reported, more and more people are getting this problem - and it affects 32 / 64 bit - but only dvb-t users. I am seeing more and more people dumping Vista and returning to MCE2005 because of this - its only a matter of time before bad press eventuates - given the members at Australian forums.

The contact person and details I sent thru with the previous pm - I know is currently on holidays, and I understand the priorities and pressures within the MCE team at present - but if you need to obtain the data I have sent through, so that a programmer in the scanning team can urgently look at the issue, PM an email address and I will gladly send through the logfiles again.

 

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Impact

Just by way of lending some weight to this I must say that I am extremely dissappointed with my Vista experience so far. I know that we don't have an official EPG in Australia but I still think I wouldn't bother if there wasn't some way to get one working and right now it's virtually a "no-show". As a long time user of XPMCE I had hoped that the upgrade would be painless and I now find I've pretty much wasted my money on Vista until such time as this issue is resolved. OK so if there's some way I can help by supplying logs or other then please let me know.

Jessica

Greetings from down under,  as others have said this problem is driving us mad here in Australia  please please can we have some progress on this issue?

rgds Damon

I don't know the current status of this issue; I'll try to find out today.

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A couple of days later so I thought I would do the 'bump' before someone else does...

 

Jessica if you need the logfiles supplied and further info, PM where to send them, and it will be on its way to you. Although if you check with the previous contact at Microsoft who received this info - they should be back from their holidays today (friday)

 

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Impact

Yup, I just talked with him. Look, here's the deal. We're not support, we're product development. The other person you're talking to is doing the right thing - it's just going to take some time, because we have to fit in any investigation we do in between our assigned work. So I hope that we're able to find something out soon, but we don't have anything to share yet.

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Jess,

Thanks for the update - we do appreciate the work you are doing.

If any of us are coming across as pushy at all, it's not personal - just due to the fact that being in Australia we've gotten used to being in the difficult situation of being early adopters (even faster than the US in some cases) but stuck with the fact that our market size is the equivalent of a microbe on the butt of a flea, so therefore get very little prioritisation in the worldwide scheme of things. (If you watched the Heroes Episode .07% the other night you'll have an idea about how looking at things as a percentage of a market can still effect alot of people).

If you could let us know if there is a support ticket, tracking system or other avenue to chase on this without hassling you, please let us know.

Thanks,
Shane.

Hello Guys,

Just to let you know, IceTV have got a fix for the disappearing channels. I have been using it for a while with no issues.

Bert from Melbourne.

Bert,

I think you might be referring to the Discovery Services issue that they work around in PIMP by the setting "Fix Registry Keys When Changed", which has subsequently been fixed by Microsoft in MS Hotfix KB935685 as per details here.

This is different from the issue being discussed here, where Channel 7 and SBS intermittently disappear from the guide and may or may not get replaced by something else.

Thanks,
Shane.