Schedules Direct fails to retrieve half of station IDs

[pendragonsound]

I have four sources of programming. Three of them have traditional line-ups (local OTA and two satellite subscriptions), and my recent migration to the SD EPG on Sage 9.1.4.676 appears to be working fine with those. I also have used Sage for years with my FTA (free-to-air) satellite dishes. Most of those channels have no readily available EPG, but a number of them do. With the licensed EPG on Sage 7, I was able to retrieve EPGs for those channels by finding the station IDs on Zap2It and entering them into "Setup Video Sources". For the remainder of the channels, Sage provided what appeared to be unique Station ID placeholders, which were all numerically less than 1000. That of course leads to "No Data" in the guide for those channels, but that is fine because we generally just watch them live.

With Schedules Direct, I have enjoyed only mediocre success in getting EPGs for the FTA channels. This is nearly a show stopper for us, because we record and watch the FTA channels with EPGs heavily. Previously I did not use a lineup for the FTA channels in Sage 7, because there is nothing that applies. My assumption is these channels show up across dozens of different lineups, and some may not appear in any lineup for all I know. The licensed EPG server pulled the EPGs by the Station IDs and that worked fine. My assumption was I had to force the SD EPG code to take over, and the only way I could do that was by selecting a dummy lineup and modifying it. The process I used was:

1. Exported my FTA channel lineup from Sage with the "Import/Export Channel Lineup" plugin.

2. In "Setup Video Sources", selected a dummy lineup using the SD service. I chose Juneau, AK OTA, because there were only a few channels in it. As expected, this deleted all my FTA channels.

3. Disabled all the Juneau channels.

4. Imported my FTA channel lineup back into Sage with the "Import/Export Channel Lineup" plugin.

5. Set the second tuner to use the same lineup as the first. Both of my FTA tuners now show "(sdepg)" in their "EPG Lineup" description, so I'm assuming that invoked the SD code in place of what was used before.

There were a few quirks with this because several of my original FTA channel names had spaces in them, which caused the plugin to truncate those names. I fixed these up manually to no longer use spaces. Regardless, the SD code pulled in EPGs for some of the channels way out into July, but for others it pulled in nothing. I know there is EPG data for the latter. In Sage those channels still have guide data through June 26, which was almost certainly pulled by the licensed EPG code when it was last active. I tried deleting the sdmd5* files to force a full EPG download, but that changed nothing. I also tried disabling and enabling the affected channels with no joy. Finally I re-enabled one of the Juneau OTA channels (KATHLD, Station ID 74625) and added a dummy channel (WETADT3, Station ID 32050). I had expected at least the Juneau OTA channel to work, but here I am 24 hours later and the guide for that is completely blank. Not even "No Data". The dummy channel has shown "No Data" from the start, but no EPG. Both of these IDs show current schedule data on Zap2It.

I took a quick look at the code, but not being familiar with it, I didn't spot anything that would obviously prevent me from doing what I want. In fact I noticed code that handled Station IDs added by the user, that were not in the chosen lineups. That got me to wondering if the Sage SD code is actually doing everything correctly, but Schedules Direct is somehow blocking me from requesting too many Station IDs not in the lineup(s) I selected, or because Juneau has so few channels, SD is capping the number of channels I can request for my FTA tuners.

There is a corollary, and that involves all of the FTA channels I have defined in Sage for which no EPG exists. Those channels have dummy Station ID placeholders inserted by Sage, which do not correspond to legal SD Station IDs. Is the Sage SD EPG code asking SD for those placeholder Station IDs, too? If so SD could be blocking me for requesting too many nonsensical Station IDs? As a desperate measure I have disabled almost all of my non-EPG FTA channels in an effort to get guide data for the few EPG channels we need, but that made no difference.

If this appears to be something I need to discuss with SD, please let me know. Otherwise if this is a Sage SD EPG issue, is there anything I can provide to help diagnose what is going on? If there is a better approach to what I am trying to do, please let me know. Thanks!

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by pendragonsound

There is a corollary, and that involves all of the FTA channels I have defined in Sage for which no EPG exists. Those channels have dummy Station ID placeholders inserted by Sage, which do not correspond to legal SD Station IDs. Is the Sage SD EPG code asking SD for those placeholder Station IDs, too? If so SD could be blocking me for requesting too many nonsensical Station IDs? As a desperate measure I have disabled almost all of my non-EPG FTA channels in an effort to get guide data for the few EPG channels we need, but that made no difference.

If this appears to be something I need to discuss with SD, please let me know. Otherwise if this is a Sage SD EPG issue, is there anything I can provide to help diagnose what is going on? If there is a better approach to what I am trying to do, please let me know. Thanks!

I never worked out if there was anything that would block you from downloading from station ID's that do not correspond with any lineups you have added to your SD account. The code is fairly close to the code used by WarlockRipper in intent and order of operations, so as you noticed it will try user defined station ID's. From what I have seen, the worse thing you can get from SD is the requested station ID returns an error just for that station ID. I have in a few rare cases seen one invalid program ID cause nothing to be downloaded, but I don't think I have seen anything like that regarding station ID's. If you enable JSON logging, we might be able to figure out what's going on.

[pendragonsound]

I culled my channel list temporarily to make this more manageable, and attached a zipped version of the sd_epg.log file. It appears the channels missing EPG data are receiving the following from the SD server:

"code":7030,"message":"You have requested a schedule which is not in any of your configured lineups."

which is perfectly true. Example Station IDs I've checked include 34135, 59155, 33453 and many others. The one curious thing is Station ID 74625, which is in the Juneau lineup I chose, doesn't appear to get this message, but so far still has no EPG listings in Sage.

My reading of this is I need to consult with Schedules Direct and see if there is anything I can do. What might be most helpful would be for them to offer a "null lineup" that would accept any custom Station IDs.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by pendragonsound

I culled my channel list temporarily to make this more manageable, and attached a zipped version of the sd_epg.log file. It appears the channels missing EPG data are receiving the following from the SD server:

"code":7030,"message":"You have requested a schedule which is not in any of your configured lineups."

which is perfectly true. Example Station IDs I've checked include 34135, 59155, 33453 and many others. The one curious thing is Station ID 74625, which is in the Juneau lineup I chose, doesn't appear to get this message, but so far still has no EPG listings in Sage.

My reading of this is I need to consult with Schedules Direct and see if there is anything I can do. What might be most helpful would be for them to offer a "null lineup" that would accept any custom Station IDs.

I have a feeling that error message is returned instead of at least returning the few stations that actually are in your lineup. That could be the source of some mysterious issues such as some stations never update even when there is data. The only solution here would be to try them one at a time when that error is encountered.

You can certainly ask for a "null lineup" but I don't think they will be able to accommodate you because that would enable you to download all of the stations with one account and potentially do something like start your own service. I realize you are probably are not this kind of person, but they certainly exist.

[pendragonsound]

This is turning into a headache of detective work, because what I'm seeing doesn't fit a simple puzzle. I've setup a few dummy channels and never seen guide data even after 24 hours. I've deleted them and setup everything the same again a day or two later and the guide data shows up immediately. I'm considering your suggestion of doing one channel at a time, but that could take weeks or months to sort out. I'm already a scoundrel for messing up the family's 'smoothly' running Sage system.

Of course it would be wonderful if SD had a complete FTA channel lineup, but that's probably asking for too much. I find many of the channels in existing lineups because cable/satellite companies and OTA stations redistribute them to their customers. Today I've been able to reduce the number of lineups I would need to get most of the FTA channels, but it's a painstaking process because it's all guesswork and hunches looking for providers in zip codes throughout the US. In several cases I know the Station ID, but I can't find any lineup that includes it (the PBS national feed is a prime example, Station ID 33453).

I will head over to Schedules Direct to see if they have any guidance or suggestions. A null lineup would be great, even if they limited me to, say, 100 channels. Or perhaps they could allow one to pull up to 100 channels not in the lineups. But I expect they don't want to do this level of accounting for each user.

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by pendragonsound

This is turning into a headache of detective work, because what I'm seeing doesn't fit a simple puzzle. I've setup a few dummy channels and never seen guide data even after 24 hours. I've deleted them and setup everything the same again a day or two later and the guide data shows up immediately. I'm considering your suggestion of doing one channel at a time, but that could take weeks or months to sort out. I'm already a scoundrel for messing up the family's 'smoothly' running Sage system.

Of course it would be wonderful if SD had a complete FTA channel lineup, but that's probably asking for too much. I find many of the channels in existing lineups because cable/satellite companies and OTA stations redistribute them to their customers. Today I've been able to reduce the number of lineups I would need to get most of the FTA channels, but it's a painstaking process because it's all guesswork and hunches looking for providers in zip codes throughout the US. In several cases I know the Station ID, but I can't find any lineup that includes it (the PBS national feed is a prime example, Station ID 33453).

I will head over to Schedules Direct to see if they have any guidance or suggestions. A null lineup would be great, even if they limited me to, say, 100 channels. Or perhaps they could allow one to pull up to 100 channels not in the lineups. But I expect they don't want to do this level of accounting for each user.

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

I don't think it would hurt to at least ask about a custom lineup. They do some some things under ZZZ for satellite. I don't recall FTA in there, but maybe you can make more sense of it than I.

[pendragonsound]

I came up with several suggestions for SD and posted that on their forums a few hours ago. It's still waiting for approval because I'm a new member.

One thing that might matter in the end is whether I could specify more lineups than content sources. SD appears to consider cases where one needs more than the four lineup account limit, which is where I am. That wouldn't get me all of the FTA channels, but certainly more than I have. However I'm not sure how I would set that up with Sage, because the code appears to enforce a one-to-one mapping for lineups and sources. I suppose I could make dummy sources with no enabled channels.

[EnterNoEscape]

Your situation is fairly unique and short of having the code scan through all of the lineups in your account trying to find the one that has the station we are looking up at the moment is not impossible, but it would add a lot of time to your updates.

[pendragonsound]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Your situation is fairly unique and short of having the code scan through all of the lineups in your account trying to find the one that has the station we are looking up at the moment is not impossible, but it would add a lot of time to your updates.

That probably would not be required, as it appears the SD server does this already when a schedule is requested for a Station ID. Some of my FTA channels get EPG information even though they are not in the Juneau OTA lineup I associated with them. I'm pretty certain these Station IDs appear in my other lineups (the satellite subscriptions). These channels aren't in my particular subscription packages, and I disable all of the channels I can't receive. But that only applies to Sage. The SD server doesn't know or care, and simply checks if the requested Station IDs appear in at least one of the declared lineups.

The twist is I could request SD to allow me to access more lineups than their normal limit of four. If I can find lineups where the FTA channels appear, conceivably this would be sufficient. However Sage is keyed to one-to-one mappings between sources and lineups, and there is no provision to have more lineups than sources. But I could define dummy sources. This is all very ugly. SD did respond last night and suggested I help them assemble a FTA lineup. I'm game to do the work, so I'll try that path for now.

[pendragonsound]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I don't think it would hurt to at least ask about a custom lineup. They do some some things under ZZZ for satellite. I don't recall FTA in there, but maybe you can make more sense of it than I.

I'm confused. How to I get to 'ZZZ'? Is this a lineup available through the Sage SD interface?