Brian's Brain

It's time for another end-of-week story of eventual amusement, although for a while I was more than a bit frustrated trying to figure out what was going on. As I've previously explained in my long-running 'Thin-Air ATSC (and NTSC)' series, I'm using a Dell laptop running Windows Vista Ultimate thereby containing Media Center capabilities as my digital TV reception and time-shifting PVR platform (in a TiVo- or ReplayTV-reminiscent fashion, for those of you more familiar with the example product names versus the overall product category acronym).

Two Wednesdays ago, the 9PM recording of Lost from local ABC affiliate KOLO didn't end up appearing on my computer's hard drive as anticipated. The next evening's scheduled capture of Ugly Betty was also DOA. All of my other scheduled recordings were still showing up just fine, and when I peered at Media Center's Program Guide I quickly figured out what was going on. Check out the screenshot below of the WebGuide browser interface to Media Center that I snapped for Microsoft a few days later, in the process of debugging the problem:

Why this was going on wasn't nearly as clear. I'd had so many KOLO-related problems in the past:

• An incorrect primary physical channel configuration in Media Center, along with
• Sub-par signal strength coming from the station's primary transmitter, and finally
• No Media Center cognizance that in my particular zip code location a local translator broadcast would therefore actually be the stronger signal option

that my initial reaction was to blame the Reno channel for the problem. Perhaps, I thought, due to the recent Daylight Saving Time transition or some other factor, KOLO was no longer feeding Microsoft with correct programming information. But then a writeup in Engadget tipped me off that Microsoft was having a more systemic issue:

Information sharing and subsequent speculation on The Green Button forum came up with the idea that all of the affected stations were those who'd decided to turn off their analog television transmissions on or prior to the original February 17 FCC-decreed date. However, this didn't mean that all stations who'd already shut down NTSC were affected. This twist had me confused at first, since I was still getting program guide feeds just fine for other nearby NTSC abandoners like KRXI and KNPB.

By means of historical background, realize that until the Windows Vista version of the program, Media Center required that a television signal-receiving PC running it contained an analog TV tuner...even if this particular tuner never got used by the PC owner. Windows Vista builds containing the OEM-only TV Pack update, as well as systems running the Windows 7 beta, weren't exhibiting the 'no data available' glitch with ATSC-only stations. The consensus belief on The Green Button, therefore, was that Vista (apparently still containing some analog TV-centric remnants in the code base)-and-prior ATSC channel assignments in Media Center were indirectly getting program guide details from the corresponding NTSC channels...and that when NTSC consequently went away, so did the ATSC information.

As it turns out, conjecture was close to reality:

Hi all,

As reported, some Windows Media Center users experienced guide data missing for certain channels in the Windows Media Center Guide in Windows Vista. The channels were for a limited number of analog transmissions that were recently shut-off by local broadcasters. We are currently rolling out a solution, and expect the problem to be resolved by end-of-day today.

Some of you may already find that the data is now available. If it hasn't been updated automatically, you can also try a manual guide download. You can do this by going to Tasks --> Settings --> TV --> Guide --> Get Latest Guide Listings

To quench the technical minds that will inevitably ask me what the cause was:

In versions of Windows Media Center pre TV Pack, the ATSC channels were mapped to the Analog counterpart of the Antenna channels for their data. Since some of these channels were recently switched off by local broadcasters, our provider removed them from the Antenna lineups. We were able to go to our provider and have these channels added back in, thus the mappings are valid again.

Going forward, we are working on a long-term solution to prevent future disruption of this data.

If you have any specific questions about this issue, feel free to drop me a PM. I will try to post back here once I can confirm that this is expected to be resolved for everyone.

Microsoft sincerely apologizes to those who were inconvenienced.

It took a few hours for the fix to trickle down to whatever server I'm accessing, but late this afternoon my third manual program guide update attempt was successful in restoring KOLO's dataset. So I guess you could say I'm Lost again...

Thus ends another cautionary case study tale of the potential peril in relying on a third-party provider for your service data. Happy weekend, all.