[mythtv-users] DVB-S channel scanning gets stuck

Steve Hill steve at nexusuk.org
Tue Jul 29 09:12:52 UTC 2008


On Mon, 28 Jul 2008, Ian Clark wrote:

> I think it starts at a random number and works up, I spent a long while
> rejigging mine (so 1 is BBC1 etc etc.) but that did involve some crazy SQL at
> some point.

Looks like it uses the service IDs (which appear to be crazy 16 bit 
numbers :).

> Problem is i'm in Leicester on one of the oldest cable segments (used to be
> diamond cable round here.) and it's not really up to all this new fangled
> digital stuff, so they tell me it's not availabe in my area.

My parents are on an ancient Diamond Cable segment (Nottingham) and their 
digital TV signal is pretty ropey - breaks up and freezes fairly 
regularly.  I keep telling them they should get Virgin to send someone to 
fix the problem (probably just needs an attenuator or something on the 
back of the box...  come to think of it, I've got an attenuator kicking 
around so I might try putting that in-line next time I visit them).

> When I get my own place (which may actually happen sometime if house prices
> keep falling.) I'll probably end up with DVB-T as most of the stuff I want to
> watch is on there, although this freesat stuff looks interesting too.

Unless you want a channel that is free to air on DVB-T but not on DVB-S 
(e.g. Dave), I'd suggest going for DVB-S - more channels, some HD stuff 
and the main 4 channels are free to air (Five is reportedly going to 
switch to free to air before the end of the year and the reorganisation of 
the satellite transponders that's going on at the moment indicates this 
may well be happening quite soon).

> Hey, you never know, by that time Sky might've woken up and actually allow us
> to legally buy a CAM module for a DVB-S card. (I hold out little hope here.
> :(((( )

I very much doubt it. :)
I'm not entirely sure what the legality of third party CAMs and SoftCAMs 
for decoding VideoGuard is - they all require a valid viewing card, so 
they don't give you access to anything you don't already subscribe to, but 
they are almost certainly against the Sky T&Cs and may well be considered 
"circumvention of an effective copy protection mechanism" by the EU 
copyright directive.

  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence



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