Great News!

[Furbag]

I'm hoping no news is good news knowing that my 70yr old mother is some 80miles away, I'm hoping they will have been able to fix the dial up side of things or I'm going to have to drive down, re-image a drive and drive back

You did say she is 70 miles away and not 700 right? So being a good son I'm sure that you must see her at least once a month?

I actually see her about once a month......but thats cos she comes to me (I'm not silly) its 80 miles not 70

But if you really do only see her once a year despite being only 70 miles away I think all you will need to talk her through on the phone is adding a dial prefix code in the Tivo menus followed by re-running Guided Setup.

Thats what I'm hoping

Suspect I will have to pay a visit TBH, its just when, works totally manic currently, plus other commits means I'm stuffed for the next 8-10 weeks

Furbag

[krayzeekev]

What I haven't seen any clarity on so far is whether any of our Season Passes or Wishlists will carry over from the Tivo EPG data to the AltEPG service as when I changed my platform from Freeview to NTL Cable and back to Freeview and later from Freeview to Sky Digital on the same box my Season Passes always carried over from one reception platform to another.

If all my Season Passes and Wishlists have to be created again from scratch it will be a bit of a bore although obviously worthwhile in the long run to have my Tivo still working.

I presume all your SPs will be worthless. Some WLs may work depending on what kind they are. Title matches would be ok, for instance because they're just textual matches. But the SPs refer to the tivoid's of the database series entities they refer to. And the new data will have new id's. The reason it's not a problem when switching from Freeview to Cable is that it's the same data source assigning the same id's to the same shows. If you create a whole new db from scratch, then every program and series is brand new.

[Pete77]

Does the fact that analogue RF channels are no longer received mean that it's not possible to get an input from a set top box via RF? I currently have Sky though scart and freeview though the aerial - I've tried to set this up with altepg but no signal is received from the freeview box

Neither the internal Tivo RF analogue program source or dual tuner program source options (also using the RF input for the secondary source) are currently supported by the AltEPG project sadly.

The Internal tuner is not supported on the basis that all RF broadcasts on Channels 21 to 69 will have been switched off by April 2012.

[mesaka]

Does the problem with 2 tuner sources mean the 4 digit radio channels and the 3 digit tv programmes solutipn on sky cant be used with the new epg? That wild be a shame.

[Pete77]

Does the problem with 2 tuner sources mean the 4 digit radio channels and the 3 digit tv programmes solutipn on sky cant be used with the new epg? That wild be a shame.

No the radio channels will all be reverted on to a single Sky program platform along with the tv programs by the AltEPG. So there will no need to hook up your Sky box by both SCART and RF in order to record the radio channels as was previously necessary.

However at present the AltEPG test service seems to require you to do a Clear and Delete Everything which makes it a non starter for me until that requirement changes. This is both due to my thousands of existing thumbs and couple of hundred Season Passes and Wishlists and several hundred recordings on my Tivo hard drive.

[gcobb]

However at present the AltEPG test service seems to require you to do a Clear and Delete Everything which makes it a non starter for me until that requirement changes. This is both due to my thousands of existing thumbs and couple of hundred Season Passes and Wishlists and several hundred recordings on my Tivo hard drive.

I am like you with a large number of SPs and recordings. Unfortunately, we are not going to be able to preserve season passes. I did try (see some of my other posts) but have not been able to make it work.

However, I am testing the use of Guided Setup instead of Clear and Delete Everything. It seems to work (although it deletes all the SPs) and I intend to support it and try to fix any problems (it is what I will be using myself). We will still recommend that people do a Clear and Delete Everything if possible (i.e. if they do not need to preserve recordings) as it has a lower risk of hitting problems than just doing a Guided Setup.

I haven't tested wishlists or thumbs to know what is the impact on them.

[poppadum]

Does the fact that analogue RF channels are no longer received mean that it's not possible to get an input from a set top box via RF? I currently have Sky though scart and freeview though the aerial - I've tried to set this up with altepg but no signal is received from the freeview box

Neither the internal Tivo RF analogue program source or dual tuner program source options (also using the RF input for the secondary source) are currently supported by the AltEPG project sadly.

It wasn't an intentional decision not to support dual sources. It's possible that the dummy antenna lineup is somehow interfering with RF input from a STB, so if it's not working, it's something I'd like to look at getting working (once the really important stuff is done).

No the radio channels will all be reverted on to a single Sky program platform along with the tv programs by the AltEPG. So there will no need to hook up your Sky box by both SCART and RF in order to record the radio channels as was previously necessary.

The problem with the Sky radio workaround is that nobody outside of Tivo inc seems to know exactly how it works. So at present, radio channels on Sky are not supported because we can't use channel numbers with a leading zero. They are however supported on Freeview, Freesat and Virgin Media.

I'm hoping that by replicating the SKYRADIO lineup from the official service it can be persuaded to work. That's another thing for us to look at once the core service is up and running. Another potential problem: I have a feeling that the altepg image was not originally a UK image, so I'm not sure whether the Sky radio workaround will even be present on that image.

[krayzeekev]

I haven't tested wishlists or thumbs to know what is the impact on them.

Thumbs will be interesting. If you are retaining the same mfs id's for genres then they could be quite useful in that regard. Plus actors and directors if the names match. But as far as thumbs relate to individual series/programs, the id's are going to be different so no chance there.

Similar for wishlists. If you genre id's are the same, genre wishlists will work. All the textual wishlists, like title matches for "*rugby*" or something like that should work.

[randap]

I gather that we will lose SPs when moving to the altEPG. Assuming I back up my SPs via TiVoWeb in advance, will I be able to reload them back into the new EPG? Or am I missing something?

Paul.

[Pete77]

I gather that we will lose SPs when moving to the altEPG. Assuming I back up my SPs via TiVoWeb in advance, will I be able to reload them back into the new EPG? Or am I missing something?

Unfortunately not as the TMSIDs for the same programs in the AltEPG will all be different.

TCM2007 seems to have taken a unilateral decision that it will in his view be much easier for us to all to have to recreate all our Season Passes and imposed this view on his fellow AltEPG project members even though TCM2007 of course no longer uses a Tivo himself.

[Brother52]

TCM2007 seems to have taken a unilateral decision that it will in his view be much easier for us to all to have to recreate all our Season Passes and imposed this view on his fellow AltEPG project members even though TCM2007 of course no longer uses a Tivo himself.

Whilst I agree that this is a little inconvenient, on a positive note it gives me the ideal opportunity to sort out my (somewhat rambling) SPs and weed out the obsolete ones!

[pengbo]

TCM2007 seems to have taken a unilateral decision that it will in his view be much easier for us to all to have to recreate all our Season Passes and imposed this view on his fellow AltEPG project members even though TCM2007 of course no longer uses a Tivo himself.

Can a one time conversion program not be done then? or couldn't the ID's be kept the same as far as possible?

[Pete77]

Can a one time conversion program not be done then? or couldn't the ID's be kept the same as far as possible?

The program ids in the new data source are permanently different so there would have to be a permanent conversion table to keep the old TMSIDs attached to the old Season Passes supported.

Having given up his own Tivo several years ago unfortunately I don't think TCM2007 places the same value as you or I on that Doctor Who or Top Gear season pass that has continued to work without amendment for all of these last few years.............

[pengbo]

Probably true. Do we have the format of the Season Pass table/list etc... ?

Actually instead of looking here I should just install my damn cachecard and start poking about.

[Pete77]

Probably true. Do we have the format of the Season Pass table/list etc... ?

Actually instead of looking here I should just install my damn cachecard and start poking about.

gcobb also seems to be actively involved as one of the AltEPG developers and appears a lot more sympathetic than TCM2007 to the idea of some conversion algorithm or other to keep existing Season Passes working.

My advice would be to keep using the old Tribune EPG till it stops and then see if the AltEPG project has come up with any kind of conversions script for Season Passes by that time. However I am sure you will need to have your cachecard working by then in order to take advantage of such a script.