[mythtv-users] UK DVB Tuning Nightmare

[Christopher Kerr]

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:17 PM, Fluf <fluffkinuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Heya all,
>
> I seem to be banging my head against a Myth brick wall.
> I'm in the UK with reception from around 11 frequencies, giving me around 90 channels, many of them repeated.
> Four of those frequencies are weak, and I'd like to delete / forbid them.
> I'd like to keep all the duplicates of channels for the other 7 frequencies just in case I can find 2 programs on the same freq / mux at times and record both.
> Easy huh?

Huh? Explain again why you want the duplicates? Multirec will allow
you to record from multiples channels on the same mux without needing
duplicate channels....

> Nope. I can't run a full UK channel scan in mythtv-setup because my DVB dongle gives I2C errors and needs a reset after about a dozen scans, esp if it hits a weak signal and gets scrambled data. It's fine for scanning strong signal frequencies. So that's the "preferred" method binned. [I can't find the UK full channel scan list to edit it to the frequencies I actually want either and cheat like that].
> I can't use a generated channels.conf file and import it, because for some reason Myth won't find EIT data for imported channel.conf channels.

If you know the frequencies of the muxes (from an externally generated
channels.conf) just do a tuned scan?

> I can enter the frequencies I want in myth-setup .. channel edit! YAY! Hope!!?
>
> For one thing. If I set up my transport list, then do a single scan of one transport, it finds more information (including other frequencies to scan), than if I ask it to scan all known transponder frequencies. This worries me. But heigh ho. Lets go. The best I've managed so far is...
>
> Setup generic "Auto" transponders for the 7 frequencies I want.
> Scan each transponder in detail, individually and add all of the channels found including duplicates each time.
> [If I don't add all the channels, the new found transponders don't get added to the list!!!]
> Go back to the channel list and delete all channels.
> Repeat for next frequency.
> Finally. Go back and delete the found bad transponders, and delete the generic auto transponders that now have more precise information at the same (or offset) frequencies.
> Delete all the channels ... again ..
> Now I can do a scan of all known transports, add the channels and pray.
>
> Finished? Nope. In doing this, my channelscan_channel table now has 14322 rows. I doubt that's a good thing ... My channelscan_dtv_multiplex table now has 711 rows. So as far as I can tell, when I hit delete in mythtv-setup on a transponder or channel list, it doesn't actually get deleted.
> Some of the channels I've got still don't get EIT data.
> I'm still not sure if making a duplicate channel invisible stops Myth from recording from it, because nothing in the docs seems to mention that.
> The docs don't tell me if deleting a transport will also delete linked channels either.
> It looks like the backend is sort of working, but sometimes it will now start to record, then silently fails, presumably because it's found the program on a channel that no longer exists. My current best option on that seems to be wait a week or so and see if the schedule data recovers.
>
> All I want to do is ... Tell it the 7 good freqs. Scan the 7 good freqs. Use all of the good program feeds from the 7 good freqs. IE. Have 2 x Film4 both pointing at Film4. One from each mux. Yet this seems impossible using mythtv-setup and I can't begin to fathom what the database should look like for that configuration.
>
> So. VDR? Freevo? Or use dvblast or some other external streamer to Myth that I can actually control? Because I'm about to give up on Mythtv's tuner entirely as a joke.

Marking a channel invisible prevents it being used by the scheduler,
yes. That's the whole point of the option being there....

The stuff about huge tables sounds like you may have found a bug,
though.....multiple rescans when I was having trouble with one
particular channel never caused that.

To be quite honest, I have absolutely no idea how you've made it this
hard - pretty much every MythTV user in Australia and NZ is using
DVB-T, and none of us have a problem with the channel scanner.

- Chris