[mythtv-users] UK: Sky channel number fixer?

[Robert]

On Wed, December 3, 2008 3:14 pm, Mike Perkins wrote:
> Nick Morrott wrote:
>>
>> I'm really hoping to look at this over my Christmas break for the
>> XMLTV lineups project. I've been saying I'm going to do this for a
>> while, but through illness, finishing the house, and University, I've
>> not yet gotten around to it.
>>
>> The intention is to interface the lineups project so that it will work
>> with XMLTV grabbers, allowing TV platform lineups to be imported into
>> end-user applications with up-to-date channel numbering. It should
>> allow matching against existing scanned channels based on DVB
>> name/service ID, analog channel number, and URL in the case of IPTV,
>> and allow the importing of channel lists for providers such as Sky and
>> Virgin where a user cannot 'scan' for channels but must manually
>> configure them.
>>
>> For MythTV it is possible simple scripts which scrape a site
>> (Wikipedia for example) for the current channel lineup and update the
>> database with updated channel numbering. I'm hoping that the XMLTV
>> lineups project can allow this to happen automagically whenever the
>> grabber is run.
>>
> One of the things that always catches me out, probably because I don't do
> it
> often enough, is that I go through the process others have described of
> scanning
> and editing the Freeview channels, and then discover that when I run
> Mythfilldatabase for the first time that it's chewed everything up.
>
> This is because tv_grab_uk_rt amongst others relies on a file
> <sourcename>.xmltv
> to determine which channels to process. This text file *has* to be in step
> with
> information in the channels table. If it is not, i.e. because you have
> edited
> the channels table, random extra channels get created - which then results
> in
> another cycle of editing and deleting.
>
> Since each line of <sourcename>.xmltv is a simple 'channel <xmltvid>'
> statement,
> it would be possible to have this file generated automatically as a
> temporary
> every time mfdb runs, using the data from the channels table. This would
> ensure
> that the grabber always pulls exactly the information required, and would
> take
> out the possibility of channel mismatch (at least in that respect).
>
> I did look a long time ago about proposing (and coding) such a patch to
> the mfdb
> code, but (i) I got ill and (ii) my distro upgraded to 0.21, so I don't
> currently have any sources, and it never happened. But from what I
> remember the
> changes required would all be in one source file, and not very complex.
> Any
> possibility you could have a look, Nick?

Hmm, yes I forgot about those <sourcename>.xmltv files in my description
of adding channels previously!  (and I usually do when I add channels). 
It certainly would be nice if these were auto-generated from the
mythconverg database.

Robert.