Sony Bravia TV EPG "no event information" on freesat

[Solway]

Sony Bravia TV EPG "no event information" on freesat

Hi guys

Been trying to contact Sony via their web email support. the page endlessly loops on trying to send, no matter on what broswer i use. 😕 so here i am...

anyway

I have a Sony bravia TV KDL-42W805A.

I have recently cancelled my Sky package. so have been using the builtin freeview (aerial) for TV, which is all working fine.

However, i have decided to remove the freeview aerial and use the built in freesat tuner with existing Sky dish.

I can get over 800 channels with freesat. and the signal quality/strength is at the max. no issues there.

The issue im having is:

the EPG does not populate with information. all i get is "no event information". it will only appear once i view a channel. but im not flickering through 800 channels just to get the information to load

Because this don't load, it make the EPG completely useless

What am i doing wrong?

PS. the TV is not connected to the internet (yet) but has latest firmware update i think.

[Deezell]

What really pi@@es me off is the tag at the start of this thread which says 'Solved'. It isn't. Solved. 

[Deezell]

The link from the big green 'Solved! button is ludicrous. It's a nine year old post, which has no relevance to the models from 2021 onwards wirh the problem being discussed here. Advice to select menu items which don't exist is unhelpful. Is the moderator of this thread asleep? Or stuck back in 2015?

[royabrown2]

@Deezell 

Setting ‘Solved’ is the prerogative of the Original Poster. We have seen them choose one of their own posts, an irrelevant post, or a solution so wrong it makes you blink and stretch your eyes. And sometimes a relevant post that actually does contain a solution.

But you have put your finger on two issues that matter here; it is never a good idea to resurrect a nine-year-old thread, and it is never a good idea to add a new problem to a thread marked ‘Solved’, as people will go “Oh, that thread’s solved, no need to bother replying”.

Posts on Solved threads should be restricted to “*****, that’s not the answer, this is” and “Thanks, that worked for me too” 😛

[Deezell]

Its a 2014 thread but was continously active in 2022 when I posted, and still is, testament to the endurance of the issue over several generations of TVs. 

I didn't know the OP could create the SOLVED banner, misleading as it applies to a virtually obsolete pre 2014 model. My set, or Freesat, will be obsolete before its resolved.

[rooobb]

The issue in any case is not related to the TV (any TV) but to the way the EPG data are filled by the broadcaster. In previous year there was a big difference between UK and Italy and in UK any broadcaster spread the whole EPG data in every MUX while in Italy only the specific EPG data for the MUX channel were filled (so you had to walk through every MUX to get the data like you see now in UK).

This happens with any TV brand that I have (sony, panasonic, samsung) except LG that get the EPG data feed from internet (and you can see that they fill also the channel logo) 

[Deezell]

FWIW, this is a post I made in January on this subject in an identical thread in AVForums.

I think the problem lies in the fact that under the DVB specification, the broadcast satellite has a dedicated PID (data Packet IDentifier), which carries the 7 day epg for all broadcasts. Standard DVB equipped TVs will look for this standardised Packet address. 7 day epg should follow. However, on the Astra satellite, which carries all sky's encrypted content as well as all FTA, it's long been the case that SKY took this PID for their own purposes and encrypted it for their own and FTA channels. So you can only get FTA 7 day epg from this PID if you have a Sky box. Freesat uses a proprietary off Standard PID and data stream, so only licenced boxes and TVs can recover the data. Its small wonder TV manufacturers can't be arsed to include it, or make it work properly when included, as the EBU/ETSI standards were and are implemented on their European market tvs, only to be subverted by Sky all those years ago. Freesat was a sticky plaster solution, and a commercial one that required funding to run, plus extra fees for TV manufacturers. Who know, maybe when Sky fups off from Astra, as they announced, the PID will be released to provide 7 day epg on the standard satellite tune. 

Here's a link to the thread.

https://www.avforums.com/threads/no-tv-guide-epg-when-using-freesat-with-sony-tv.2444058/page-7#post...

[royabrown2]

@Deezell 

I don’t know if Sony actually had Freesat in 2014, but the OP said Freesat and then exactly described raw satellite tuning, with its Now and Next, but no other EPG.

And the thread went downhill from there 😢

Sony made one or two abortive attempts to support Freesat later, and maybe even some successful ones; but if it doesn’t say Freesat on the tin (specification), then it hasn’t got Freesat in the tin, and any DVB-S tuner it may possess won’t provide the proprietary Freesat EPG with its carefully curated list of channels.

This thread is notorious for failing to make this distinction, and I can only shake my head in wonder as I gaze at the tuning menu on my LG TVs, which offer me the clear choice of the calm waters of Freesat, or the howling gale that is the uncurated satellite spectrum.

[Deezell]

I'm not concerned about 2014, I joined this live thread in 2022,at which time  Sony had (re?)introduced  Freesat on their i or j series Android TVs, and had a rolling upgrade for previous models going back to 2018 or thereabouts. I bought an H series in Jan  2021, the Freesat upgrade popped up soon after. "No event information " exactly describes the Freesat experience. Tuning was perfect, no blind scan, just a very quick pull of the metadata from the Freesat pid on Astra and it was up and running, channels sorted and numbered, genres populated, and 7 day EPG filled up gradually. The problem was or is that the EPG then diminished a day at a time until the 7 days were up. Nothing anyone tried got it to recover, though some set owners said theirs worked consistently. My only solution was to disable/delete Freesat EPG, and then enable and configure all over again. This restores the 7 days, and the countdown commences. An odd side effect, or perhaps a clue to the problem, is that the generic Astra Satellite scan EPG,  the unsorted abyss that you fearfully describe, seems to harness the Freesat information, sorting the channels and using the 7 day EPG, while at the same time retaining all non Freesat FTA channels in its list, which in itself is useful. Sony's attempt to implement Freesat is obviously flawed, and the symptoms are not the same for everyone. There's speculation that the  YouTV container messed up Freesat, lots of theories, but some owners are unaffected, even with older sets that received the upgrade rollout, while spanking brand new sets sold this year exhibit the problem, almost randomly it seems. I've had it on two sets, my original 2021, and a mid 2022 warranty replacement (faulty back-light). One poster on AVforum replaced twice, to no avail, retailer even gave him a free Freesat PVR to access the EPG. I'm not that bothered, I've 7 day EPG on my Terrestrial Irish channels, and I can use my ancient Linux sat tuner to check Freesat listing, it works over the Internet rather than a pid data download from the actual Satellite. 

[royabrown2]

@Deezell 

So my hypothesis would be that the Sony TV tunes in the Freesat channels, and then says “My work is done”, and doesn’t update the EPG nightly, as it should.

And a test would be to retune it, and see if that restores the 7-day EPG or not, even if it starts missing upcoming days again.

[Deezell]

Yes, but I found that just rescanning wouldn't restore the EPG data, I had to delete the Freesat EPG in the setup, by disabling it in channel setup, leaving just standard  satellite EPG and digital (aka terrestrial) EPG. Then go back to channel settings and add it in from scratch.  Others have tried factory reset of the TV, but that's too drastic,you lose your WiFi setup, BT, app passwords, etc, and some say it still doesn't make Freesat behave.