Hi guys,

I already emailed Sid directly with this, but I'm reproducing the message here since it may be of use to others of you experiencing the same issue.

We think there is an issue related to the size of the search grammar generated when there are very large numbers of channels in the EPG, which is causing the voice recognition to stop working, as reported by some of you. We've managed to reproduce a specific scenario that is causing this, based on the debug files Sid sent us, and are working on identifying the exact cause.

In the meantime, we believe a workaround may be to reduce the number of days ahead that the guide is indexing (which in turn will reduce the size of the program search vocabulary).

To do this, edit Amulet.ini (in C:\ProgramData\Amulet Devices) and add this line to the [Guide] section near the end of the file:

SearchDays = 7

Before doing so, check the AmuletInfo.txt file and note the number of program titles being indexed. For Sid, it was around 14,000 (with the default SearchDays=14). Reducing the number of SearchDays to 7 should drop this total to 10,000 or less. If not, the number of SearchDays will be reduced even further.

To re-index the guide after making the change, type this in at a DOS command prompt:

"C:\Program Files\Amulet Devices\Amulet.Scanner.exe" /guide

(This only works if Media Center is running in the background at the time; otherwise, the re-index is deferred until the next time Media Center loads.) Normally, you would say "UPDATE GUIDE" to do this, but if speech recognition is broken, that's not an option of course.

After indexing completes, you can check AmuletInfo.txt again to see how many titles are now being indexed. Keep an eye on the LastScan entry as well, to make sure you are seeing the results of a recent index and not one from a day or two ago.

While not ideal, this may allow you to continue using Amulet's speech recognition while we get to the bottom of exactly what in the program grammar is causing the recognizer to break.

Eddy

I just had an instance of voice commands no longer working for unknown reasons, also. In my case, I'd put the PC to sleep last night using the Sleep button on the remote. All was working normally then. When I woke it up today the same way, it no longer responded to voice commands (but remote keys work fine). No on-screen error messages. Not sure if this is the same issue with the size of the program index, but I'll try Eddy's work-around.

Attempted to use the "Report a Bug" application to send the log files. Not sure if this has worked, as the application seemed to "hang" right after it said it was done compressing the logs. Eddy, please let me know if you didn't get them, and I'll attach them to this post.

...after I finished posting this (on a different computer) I went back to the HTPC and saw that the bug repost had completed successfully, so you should have the logs by now. For what it's worth, attached is also a copy AmuletInfo.txt. NOte that there are only 2927 program titles indexed. This attachment is hidden for guests. Please log in or register to see it.

I just tried to add the SearchDays = 7 line to my Amulet.ini and there wasn't a [Guide} section. I opened the AmuletExample.ini and copied it from there, changed the SearchDays from 14 to 7, updated the guide, but the AmuletInfo file still show the same number of programs and titles. Any ideas?

Make sure the guide re-indexing has completed. Mine dropped from ~14k to ~12k after I did that, made no difference in functionality (everything was still broken).

It finished for sure, just didn't reduce the number of items listed in the Info file.

cjbrown80 wrote:US TV has very regular schedules, so the number of distinct program titles on during a particular week is likely not too different to the number of distinct titles on across a two week period.

Reducing the Guide SearchDays setting to 3 or 4 days should give a more substantial reduction in the number of titles (for test purposes).

Tracking down the reason for this has been taking up a lot of our time here, but we're pretty close to having a fix now - thanks for your patience!

In the meantime, bug reports are always welcome using the Report a Bug tool, since the more samples of broken setups we have, the better we'll be able to validate any eventual fix before releasing it.

Note that when submitting a bug report, the report application will appear to freeze while sending the bug email. If this is a big email, with all media files attached, this might take a couple of minutes -- it will eventually get there though (or give you an error in the meantime).

Eddy