http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/187662/ShowThread.aspx#187662

Is there any specific reason why the user does not get to choose when epg and the mcupdate download?  I have tried to change the epg download time by modifying the service, but I either the next day, or the next reboot, the service reset back to its original time.  Any help?

Well, I can explain why it was done the way it was done.

We pay for network bandwidth, right, and something about how we pay is based on the heaviest-use hour of the day. So by randomly spreading out the EPG download, we ensure that people aren't all picking "midnight" or "3 a.m." or whatever people would choose - we felt like randomly generating the time would provide a more even distribution than allowing people to choose.

We might change this in the future; I'm not sure. I know the guide team has thought about that. And I believe that there's a tool somewhere that allows you to change the EPG time - though I don't advocate doing it, of course. :-)

cearly:

Is there any specific reason why the user does not get to choose when epg and the mcupdate download?

Why do you want to customize the time?  Is the EPG update starving other applications of bandwidth?  (Are you experiencing an associated lag spike in an online game, for instance?)

I can see where things might be problematic if your Internet connection is dial-up, and uses your main phone line.  Even so, I don't see that the end result differs much from how a stand-alone TiVo would behave.

Yes, I'm a dinosaur still using dial-up.  For some reason even dsl is still expensive in my area.  Really this has been a problem with my wife, she needs to use the phone and the guide is downloading.

I've tried the app for the 2005 mce, but the service resets on next reboot.

Okay...I'll see what I can find out. I've noticed that on my main work PC - where I never watch TV, but I once set up Media Center with a tuner - it connects around 3 p.m. to download guide data. I thought we only did that between midnight and noon, so I'll find out what changed in Vista.

I learned something new. In Vista, the download time is given to us by the guide download server, so it changes (within a range) every day for the next day. So it's not changeable by you (unless you want to change it daily - which I guess you could do with a script or something).

Anyway, we're looking at different ways to do this for a future release.

As always, thansk Jessica for the information.

I really hope that this is going to be changed!

I am fed up of beign woken up by my system kicking in at 6am due to the fixed time on the scheduled task !!!!!! Let the customer decied the timings.

This is the final straw,  that willl lead me to go back to XP MCE

Well, okay, I know in XP you can hack it to change the download time and it would stay fixed every day, but we didn't really take away functionality from the user when we made the change in Vista to get the next scheduled time from the server. Anyway, I think the Guide team does want to make this user-configurable at some point.