[mythtv-users] Satellite users and DataDirect Lineups (was Re: Scheduled Recordings Vanished)

[Michael T. Dean]

On 09/17/06 00:43, Michael Halcrow wrote:

>On Fri, Mar 03, 2006 at 07:21:12AM -0600, Michael Halcrow wrote:
>  
>
>>>TMS said they would try to get a user-preferences feature that
>>>allowed users to specify how to handle new channels, but haven't
>>>done so, yet (2 years later I still have hope).  I know what you're
>>>going through, though.  As a DISH network subscriber, I've had to
>>>change my lineup literally hundreds of times over the last 2 years
>>>(every time any local channel from any market area in the country is
>>>added to DISH, it's added to my lineup--even though the FCC won't
>>>let me subscribe to a non-local "local" channel).  IMHO, it's a
>>>small price to pay for the quality of data I get from TMS.  :)
>>>      
>>>
>>Sounds like a job for WWW::Mechanize! :-)
>>    
>>
>My annoyance level has finally reached a point where I just hacked out
>something that works.
>

(Sending to the list for others' benefit--and thanks, Mike H., for the 
reminder to let users know of another great reason to upgrade to 0.20)

As of MythTV 0.20, you can just pass the argument 
"--remove-new-channels" to mythfilldatabase and any new channels 
provided by DataDirect will not be added to the MythTV database and will 
be removed from the DataDirect lineup (meaning data for those channels 
is not sent in future downloads).  To see how beautifully it works, 
after running mfdb with the argument for a couple of weeks, search your 
mythfilldatabase log file for "Not adding channel".  (Summaries of how 
many channels are removed can be found by searching for "channel(s) from 
lineup".).

Examples:

2006-04-26 18:48:03.275 Not adding channel Inter Plus (DISH) (INTERPL).
2006-04-26 18:48:22.031 Removed 1 channel(s) from lineup.

where the first message is "Not adding channel <channel name> 
(<callsign>)." (DISH actually has "(DISH)"--with parens--in that 
channel's name.)

Specify the argument in the frontend settings under General somewhere 
around page 5:

mythfilldatabase Arguments
Any arguments you want passed to the mythfilldatabase program.

I use the options "--no-delete --remove-new-channels" (to keep 7 days of 
past listings data and to ensure I don't get new channels added to my 
database).

I've been happily using th "--remove-new-channels" since April 24 and 
haven't had to manually change my DataDirect lineup a single time--in 
spite of DataDirect's trying to change it many 10's of times in those 5 
months.  :)

Mike