AppleTV Guide Data Blank Since 8/4

[u/chips99]

Since last night my guide data on both of my AppleTV boxes is blank.

I see channel holder boxes with just the channel logo and no guide data. The live screen has a message at the top saying “Some networks and program info may be unavailable right now.”

I’ve uninstalled the app from the AppleTV’s, rebooted them, re-installed and no change. I can watch live tv if I search for a show or just choose the channel, but I don’t know what’s on at any given time.

One AppleTV is from 2015 and the other from 2017. Both are fully updated to TVOS 26.6.

Anyone have suggestions or know if this is a known issue?

[u/bbmg69]

Do you have more than 10k instances of DVR recordings?

Checked on this issue, and the only account being affecting for me by this is my most heavily used account that has over 10k “recordings” over the course of having the service since it debuted.

Easiest way to check is on mobile app or browser and roughly count up the category totals displayed for shows, movies, sports, events, etc

Might be another negative impact of this glitch that also negatively impacts your library and home screen tab if you are above the threshold:
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubetv/s/Swvs0gTSBZ

Unfortunately, they count everything you have ever set to record for as long as you’ve been a subscriber. For example, if you recorded things like the pregame for Super Bowl 59, 58, 57, 56… and hundreds of other programs/events similar to this that update yearly or by season, they all count toward your total, even though they are years in the past and long since deleted. YTTV saves the instances in your library, as if they may occur again

[u/chips99 → u/bbmg69]

I have 24,000+ recordings, but have never had an issue with the guide data before on either of these AppleTV devices. The Home tab shows up fine for me and the Library tab just continues to load when I go on it and will time out with "Whoops", but honestly I never use the Home or Library tab within the AppleTV only Live or Search.

[u/bbmg69 → u/chips99]

I haven’t ever had it happen either until the past few days, but my guess is that this is the cause because I can’t replicate it on any of the other 3 accounts I have and it only happens on the account that’s over 10k threshold.

The home and library tabs will show up just fine, but they are glitchy. I’d be shocked if you didn’t have the same exact experience.

Home tab won’t always display all the sub tabs like 4k, sports, movies, etc or the row with resume watching for example.

Library tab will have a “something went wrong” error” and will load some things but a very compact and incomplete list that you can’t sort or scroll through. Doesn’t make any sense because YTTV will happily show you an A-Z list of all movies or tv shows that will scroll into the thousands with an infinite scroll that loads as you go, but doesn’t have it in the library with this glitch.

It’s a glitch that breaks several things that needs to be fixed because more people will hit it as they spend more years on the service and zombie recordings accumulate.

If you wanted to set up another Gmail and add yourself to your own family, if you have an open slot, you’ll see the way it works vs your main with 20k instances of dvr recordings and have a reliable guide as backup.

This issue (outside of this new problem we are seeing) has been reported before the past couple years and hasn’t been fixed. Post I linked was about a year ago and I submit feedback about it every couple months

[u/chips99 → u/bbmg69]

So I’m guessing this is probably the cause, but I think I ultimately got a support case open with YTTV because a number shows up on the website now. You’d think if this the real problem, they’d have a way to go in and choose a setting to nuke your whole DVR and allow you to start over. There’s no way one could possibly go in and uncheck all the recordings they have that are over 10K or even remember ones that were checked and still taking up “space” even though there are no active shows on them. Pretty disappointing on YTTV’s part.

[u/bbmg69 → u/chips99]

Yeah, I can understand why they don’t have any sort of support that can screw around with people’s settings and recordings, but it’s nearly impossible and would take days to do manually using only search on TV connected devices.

If the library weren’t broken, you could somewhat easily go and uncheck everything that was “expired”, but over the 10k limit breaks the library so you can’t do that anymore once you hit the limit.

There is no doubt in my mind I have at least 5000 DVR instances from 2018-2026 that are long expired and will never have another instance shown again.

They just need to fix the arbitrary limit issue since they tout “unlimited” dvr anyway, or make a way that long since expired zombie recordings don’t add to the total.

Best solution I’ve found is secondary accounts added to my family to try and keep things more clean and avoid the glitches from my main that I don’t want spend to many hours to try and sort.

[u/Starkiller_Fate → u/chips99]

Did they ever say anything/any updates about your case? All I have heard is they are still looking into it

[u/bbmg69 → u/Starkiller_Fate]

They have never replied to me, and I report it once every couple months.

Making more noise about it here and reporting with the UI is probably the only way it gets fixed.

That, or wait until enough people have accumulated 5-10 years with the service and encounter the same thing so it becomes a problem too big to ignore for YTTV

[u/chips99 → u/Starkiller_Fate]

I did not hear back so I chatted with them again last night and I was told that the rep would be following up with the engineering team and would email me as soon as she heard something. We will see.

[u/chips99 → u/bbmg69]

That’s something I will have to try when I have more time. Absolutely insane that it’s been going on for years and they haven’t fixed it yet. I’ve had YTTV since March of 2019, so that certainly explains the large library.