[mythtv] "SOP: SERVICE 173" on qam cable...what is it? can myth use it?

[Daniel Kristjansson]

On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 23:43 -0500, Michael Freeman wrote:
> I was scanning around my comcast feed with my pchdtv 3000 when i
> locked onto something interesting...channel 93 had a ton of PIDs
> between 0x1000 and 0x1ffb (but no 0x1ffb entry).  Cracking this file
> open in a hex editor reveals a lot of things called "SOP: SERVICE"
> followed by what look suspiciously like digital channel numbers (for
> instance, 173 is ESPN HD here...and I saw a "SOP: SERVICE 173" packet
> in the file.
> 
> Anyone know what this means and if myth can be hacked to make use of
> it?

I haven't seen anything like this with RCN, but this is probably your
listings/guide channel. The Cable box tunes to that to populate it's
EPG, so it doesn't have to channel hop like we need to do to get ATSC
EPG data. It could be reverse engineered to provide the same data for
MythTV. Though there is probably already a standards document for it,
as this isn't top secret information or anything.

-- Daniel