[mythtv-users] Easier way to reset live tv start channel?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 01/02/2012 10:11 AM, Ronald Frazier wrote:
> Every now and then someone in our house will be watching live tv when
> the signal gets screwed up (ie: bad signal sent by the cable company).
> For instance, right now, PBS has been screwed up for a half hour. The
> problem is, when the channel goes bad, it kicks you out of live tv.
> When you then go to re-enter live tv, it tries to resume the last
> channel, but since that channel is broken it just kicks you out to the
> menu again in about 5 seconds. In the mean time, the frontend is
> unresponsive, so you can't change the channel to try and select a new
> one before it kicks you out.
>
> The only solution I've found to this is to go into mythweb, edit the
> settings table, and change the host-specific value for DefaultChanid
> (which, of course, requires knowing a valid value for another channels
> chanid), and then restarting the frontend. This is doable for me
> (though not exactly convenient), but is obviously out of the question
> for my wife when I'm not around.

You can use mythtv-setup to edit the start channel for the input(s).

> Does anyone have a better way to deal with this problem (and no,
> avoiding live tv isn't a valid answer)? About the only thing I can
> think of is to create a new menu entry in my menu theme (I use a
> custom menu theme, so that's not an issue) which executes an external
> script that modifies the database settings table directly and then
> restarts the frontend. Not very elegant, but is there another option?

What is supposed to happen is you attempt to start Live TV and it's 
unable to tune a channel, it should pop up a dialog saying we should 
have gotten a lock by now (wording should probably be improved over 
current to make it a bit friendlier/less techy, too), then it offers you 
the chance to switch to a different channel.  This has been in and out 
of working order--probably more out than in--for quite some time, and 
the best approach would be to fix this.  That way, your wife or anyone 
else--including visitors--would be able to figure out what's going on 
and how to get to a working channel.

Mike