Hi Richard,

At present Im waiting for SWMBO to leave the damb thing alone...4 hours now!!...so I can have a bash at trying EPGn...however, in this time ive been looking at the variious taps available on toppy.org and looking further into mystuff and eit2mei.

@Nigel..this is what I was trying to explain..in order to get a decent overview of each tap ive had to wade through literally hundreds of posts on each tap thread to try to get a comparison and find which ones i would need to get the same results as mystuff and eit2mei. As such Ive lost the will to live..lol I know the info is there but 51 pages of eit2mei just does your head in! I appreciate that a huge amount of effort has went in to maintaining the site and ive no doubt that any info required will be available somewhere, but to the uninitiated who haven't been following the threads from the beginning, it can be a bit daunting.

Richard..after reading the mystuff manual theres some really good options there i would like to keep and i dont think EPGn addresses these. Ive no doubt as Ang says installing additional taps could acomplish this, but like Ang, I dont really want to install too many taps at the moment. I like your idea of setting 2 control timers to populate the EPG. But I get the feeling as I work away from home 6 months of the year , SWMBO would forget to put the toppy on standby every evening and the EPG data would run out making me and the toppy unpopular!! Imgoing to have to look into this further and decide from there. At present im trying to get my head round this eit2mei .ini file....like how to find it and what the hell is the activation key and how do i find it!!!!!!!! Seems rather complicated, although it does mention that the default settings are normally ok for most people, i just like to tinker and see how things are configured.

I really appreciate your guidance and taking the time to help me. Ill let you know how i get on after eastenders finishes on BBC3! ..lol

Cheers
Paul

Just to be clear no version of eit2mei has ever needed to be put in standby to do a scan.

The issue is that you need to load the new EPG data into MyStuff. This can either be done manually from the MyStuff setup menu, or by putting the Toppy into standby so MyStuff reloads it when you next startup. Some people like to automate the latter by the use of watch timers.

MyStuff loading new EPG data automatically is on the list of future enhancements. In the meantime if you leave your Toppy on 24/7 just remember to manually load the EPG data into MyStuff.

The activation key brings up the eit2mei configuration menu. By default this is the Recall key, but you can change it if you want.

I appreciate you are suffering from information overload so I'd suggest making a one line change to eit2mei.ini and seeing how that works out. The change is to add the following to the [Control] section

PowerOffAfterScan=2

Then you just leave the Toppy on. After the overnight scan happens eit2mei will put the Toppy into standby and when you next switch on MyStuff will reload the new EPG data.

As long as the Toppy is in daily use this is all you need. If you like MyStuff you'll want to go on and setup watch timers to handle holidays etc but for now I think the above will be sufficient to see if MyStuff is for you.

Post deleted after reading DXs which gave better explantion than mine
Richard

Fantastic DX30,

Now that sounds absolutely perfect. I am truly in awe of everyones knowledge and patience.

Definitely trying that first.

cheers for the heads up on the "recall" key...now where's the toppy manual so i can find which key is the "recall" one..lol
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Ah the one to the left of 0

Thanks
Paul

We have another member who can spell definitely, guys. Nobody can accuse us of dumbing down.

I'm completely bemused by all this - but no doubt, with time, it will all become clear.

Back to a very basic question:
The Topfield comes out of standby to perform a sheduled recording (and takes over the TV - grrrr). What happens if you are watching, for instance, BBC1 and it is sheduled to record ITV1 and Five at the same time? As I discovered yesterday evening, it asks you what you want to do (as it doesn't have three tuners). Fair enough, but what about if you are not there?

Also, is there another way of stopping it taking over the TV apart from removing pin number eight in the scart cable (I have a top notch quality and expensive scart lead which I am loath to mutilate by removing pin number eight).

Thanks all.

1) I'm sure it defaults to changing to ITV or Five if you haven't answered the prompt. Best to have it in standby when you're not watching anything.

2) Unless there is some way to stop your TV reacting to Pin 8 then no unfortunately. Perhaps use an el cheapo SCART until the issue has been resolved (hopefully the next firmware).

Thanks Russell but after it's completed a recording it stays on (not in standby). So what happens if you are away for a few days and there are more sheduled recordings whilst you are away?

It returns to standby after a recording, if it was in standby before - UNLESS you have used the remote control during the recording, in which case it assumes you're there and would be a bit put out by it suddenly switching off if you're watching.

You can use the sleep timer to tell it to turn off after the recording anyway, if you have been watching.

Nigel.

When it finishes recording it goes to standby if it was in standby when the recording started. If was on it stays on.

If it was on while it started recording but you want it to go into standby when it finishes - press standby - a dialogue box comes up with something about cancelling recording - do not touch anything. Just leave the box on screen and go to bed whatever. It will turn off a few minutes after the recording finishes.

Richard

Edit or do it the legit way as Nigel describes but both do work.

Ah; forums are often like that.

But did you not simply look in the TAP library pages, where there's a description of each TAP via it's More info link?

Or is the issue that there's not enough detail on those pages for each TAP, and so you felt you had to use the forums to find out instead?

I'd like to pin that down because, while we can't alter what's in the threads, we can change the descriptions in the library, if we have an idea of where those may be failing people.

Nigel.

I did say that I might be wrong as I have not kept up with eit2mei!

But reading your further posts and other helpful beings' posts, it is Mystuff, not eit2mei that would need to be restarted and that's why I needed to have the Toppy in standby overnight. I'm usually not the last to turn things off and it just wasn't happening. Now, the option to set eit2mei to go to standby after it's done its gathering would have done the trick, but I suspect that has been developed since I tried the tap combo.

But at least I was partly right - something in that combo needed to be put in standby to work.

I will revisit Mystuff at some point, but it's actually been quite nice NOT to be playing around with TAPs every weekend. If Mystuff suddenly had the rounded, shaded look of UK TAP project TAPs, I'd certainly go back to it... but I was told that's probably never going to happen...

If you are not there, the problem won't occur, will it? You'd not be watching BBC1 so the box would just record ITV1 and Five..

The questions about changing channel time out if you don't do anything, so recordings will happen automatically.

Nigel.

Thanks all from a Topfield newbie.
I'm learning as I go along!