It appears the holidays may not be so happy if you’re counting on your Windows Media Center PC to continue recording all of your favorite television shows! As we discovered while trying to manually add a recording (see screenshot) and confirmed via Microsoft Connect, there is something preventing Windows Media Center from getting guide data past the 26th of this month. Head on over to the Connect article to file your comment, and if you’re having the same issue make sure you click the link indicating that you can reproduce the bug. We’re also trying to contact Microsoft to get a quicker response.
Update 4:46pm ET: Microsoft has commented on this Connect article (same issue, but different post) the following:
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. This has been escalated to our data providers.
That’s an interesting comment from Microsoft though as Zap2It’s, which is Microsoft’s guide data provider, website shows guide data through January 2nd.
Update 12/23/2011: It appears as though Microsoft and Zap2It have figured out the issue. Guide data has returned! Just as it has always worked, you won’t need to do anything to update your guide listings. The listings will be downloaded automatically for you, if they haven’t been already. If you haven’t received updated listings yet you can manually force an update. From the Media Center home screen go to Tasks > Settings > TV > Guide > Get Latests Guide Listings.
Source: Microsoft Connect
Thank you for this!!!! I have been working with @microsofthelps on twitter.. They did respond intially. Hopefully, they can fix before Monday or else my wife may kill me.
Guide data stops at 7pm Dec. 26. I am in Eastern time. Interesting the data shows differently in the two time zones. There is a comment that a user in PST shows 7pm cutoff also. So it is programmatic and not from lack of data. I posted this information on the MS site. Thanks for the tip.
Anyone want to start a “End of Media Center Guide” countdown clock?