[mythtv-users] QAM channels through my TV (but not my tuner)

[R. G. Newbury]

ICMan wrote:
> R. G. Newbury wrote:
>> Tom Lichti wrote:
>>   
>>> ICMan wrote:
>>>     
>>>> was really high for every channel.  I think this might be because I am 
>>>> in Toronto, and Rogers encrypts all its QAM channels, even for regular 
>>>> digital cable.  (CRTC sucks!)
>>>>       
>>> Not strictly true. Most of them are encrypted, but I can tune in about 
>>> 40 or so of the time shifted 'regional' (CBC, Global, City, CTV, etc 
>>> from the East and West coast) channels through QAM. It does help with 
>>> scheduling as many shows are repeated at numerous different times than 
>>> EST primetime.
>>>
>>> Tom
>>>     
>> We need to be semantically correct here. Rogers broadcasts 72 analalog 
>> channels and about 424 digital feeds on the cable setup. About 30 of the 
>>   digital feeds are Qam256 encoded digital streams. These are not 
>> encrypted. We can get them by parsing the frequency and the serviceid 
>> (pid). About 60 more feeds are QAM256 encoded audio only feeds. If you 
>> tune with azap and play the feed with mplayer you get quite good stereo 
>> (of course). The rest are encrypted feeds for which you need an STB.
>> And yes there are about 5 each of CBC, Global, CTV and City TV spread 
>> across the country, so that you can grab the 'ear;y show' from Halifax 
>> or the 'late show' broadcastfrom Victoria  of the same show. Especially 
>> useful on CTV which partners with ABC. (Can't remember when I last 
>> recorded something from CBC.)
>>
>> Geoff
>
>>   
> Hi Geoff.
> 
> Can I pick your brain?  I would like to find the 30 QAM digital TV 
> feeds, AND the 60 QAM audio streams, and I would like to manage them 
> through MythTV as a single interface (I will soon have lirc working, 
> then the box is going beside the TV).  Do you live in Toronto?  Can I 
> pay you in beer?  ;-)
> 
> S

Jeez, just because I'm a lawyer you think you can pay me with just beer? 
No. I require Ron Anejo Anniversario or Myers Planters Punch Rum, with 
tonic!

I live in Clarkson, Mississauga, and get the Rogers Mississauga feed. It 
differs slightly from the main Toronto feed in the analog channels and I 
would presume also differs in the digital channels, but I suspect that 
that will not be a great problem.

Finding the streams is not too difficult. Go to the support page at 
pchdtv.com and download the latest dvb-apps tarball. The wiki has some 
pages about doing this too. Then use atscscan and the 
us-Cable-Standard-center-frequencies-QAM256 file to scan the stream and 
produce a channels.conf.

You then use azap and the channels.conf to tune a stream. You use 'cat 
/dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 > test,mpg' to save the stream, and you use 
mplayer to play test.mpg.

It is also possible to use mplayer with -vid x -aid y to tune a stream. 
This sometimes works for me and sometimes does not. I think that this 
depends on whether I am still using azap to tune a particular stream on 
that frequency. I think I may have stopped axap, when this worked for me 
(leaving the tuner tuned to the correct frequency, but not extracting 
any particular stream: mplayer then did that bit.).

This works for audio streams too.

I can only see this working inside Mythtv if you define channels 
(through zap2it) for the audio streams. Then you could tune them as if 
they were video channels. How that would work with the scheduler, I have 
no idea..

Contact me off-list if you like. I will be glad to assist if I can...

Geoff