[mythtv-users] Recovering when zap2it screws the pooch---a warning & some questions

[f-myth-users at media.mit.edu]

    Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:48:53 -0400
    From: "R. G. Newbury" <newbury at mandamus.org>

    > 
    > I have never said that this was a Myth bug, although you may have
    > been trying to say that.  I'm saying that the one of my lineups at
    > labs.zap2it.com was only slightly wrong (two misplaced channels)
    > and, around when they fixed that, they broke more than 1/3 of the
    > rest of the channels in that lineup.  The other lineup for that
    > provider has been right all along.
    > 
    > Hence my Subject: line.

    So what happens if you go to zap2it and create a brand new account 
    (using a different e-mail address, if possible) and select a zipcode 
    next door to your actual zip and select the same cable co?

    Do you still get a screwed up listing?

Yup.  I just tried that, since my city actually has two zipcodes
associated with it.  Both are identically screwed up on the lineup
that assumes you're not using a cable box, and identically okay on
the lineup that does assume you're using a cable box.

So what I might do is have Myth grab one zipcode's "good" lineup
for its RF inputs (with the encrypted channels disabled from that
lineup), and grap the other zipcode's "good" lineup for its cable-box
inputs (with everything that isn't encrypted disabled), and leave it
at that, at least until DD gets their act together.  I'm hoping that
having two different UserIDs configured in my Video Sources page in
Myth will work (e.g., that DD won't try -not- to serve two different
UserIDs with the same IP address---which would probably blow up any
configurations that had two Myths behind the same NAT box, anyway).

Of course, this is suboptimal in a number of ways (for starters, I'll
have to fill out the damned surveys -twice-!).

What I'd -really- like to be able to do is to use the one "good"
lineup twice; there's no reason Zap2It has to know which channels
are assigned to which of my Myth inputs, but I don't see any easy
way of making a virtual lineup in Myth that says "hey, split this
lineup in half and put some of its channels -here- and some of them
-there- so I can have them tuned & connected differently."  If I'm
missing some way of doing this, somebody please let me know!

(I can't try this anyway for at least 3 hours because the backend will
be otherwise occupied until then; then I have a couple multi-hours
windows tomorrow.)

[I spent a while dinking around in the "channel" table with phpmyadmin
this evening, since I have automation that cares about the filenames
being written out, etc, and wants those to match the physical channels
---hence just editing the channel numbers & freqids in mythtv-setup,
while adequate for Myth, still had problems wrt breaking the -rest- of
my automation.  One of the things I discovered is that changing the
chanid field has very far-reaching consequences; that damned thing is
in a dozen tables.  Multiple by a cyclic permutation of 20 wrong
channels from DD and it's a giant hairball---too much to get into.]

    A screen shot together with a screen shot from your cable co might help 
    wake up DD. Somewhat.

Well, maybe.  In my initial bug report, I spent 3-4 paragraphs
explaining all the things wrong with the lineup, mentioned that
the -other- lineup for the same zipcode & provider was fine, and
also included a table dumped directly from a TiVo on the same
lineup to demonstrate that other vendors had it right, too.

No idea if it'll help, though.  I sent mail; I don't know if
complaints in the forums are acted upon at any different rate,
but it's a whole lot more inconvenient to post a detailed bug
report in a web form, so I didn't bother.