[mythtv-users] ATSC not finding tables on full scan - Help!!

[Yeechang Lee]

Myth Tv <mythtv at haiderkazmi.org> says:
> The problem I am having is that I am unable to scan for HD channels
> off air on MythTV.

[...]

> The Full channel scan shows the card status as "Signal Locked",
> however it says "no tables" on those locked channels.

Believe me, I sympathize; see
<URl:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/234946#234946>,
for example. I agree that the current ATSC scanning method is broken
(and so is the channels.conf import feature; I never could get that to
work). Here's what I did to finally be able to pull in all the OTA
channels I wanted after about nine months of suffering with just two,
FOX and UPN/The CW:

a) I got a longer coax cable. Even though I already knew that the
   location and orientation of my little indoor antenna (I have used a
   Silver Sensor and the aforementioned $20 Radio Shack
   circle-in-triangle model with ultimately similar results in terms
   of number of channels pulled in; I prefer the former because
   there's less to fiddle with) made a difference to reception, I had
   never bothered to see what would happen with a longer coax cable
   than the 3' one that came with the antenna. Being able to move the
   antenna around only a few more feet from the capture card made a
   colossal difference.
b) The above got me a few more OTA channels with a full ATSC scan in
   mythtv-setup. However, I still had to manually insert other
   channels' frequencies with the mysterious and baroque Transport
   Editor (an example of one for the San Francisco bay area is at
   <URL:http://linuxgazette.net/118/knaggs.html>).[1] I then rescanned
   just the ATSC channels I was interested in.

[1] Note that the ATSC channels MythTV uses currently does not match
the figures available at labs.zap2it.com. See
<URL:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/236643#236643>;
note that Zap2it subsequently reversed this change, causing yet more
confusion amongst the populace.

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US