[mythtv-users] DVB re-scan and XMLTV EPG?

[Philipp Hahn]

Hello,

I recently relocated and finally had to reset the DVB scan and channel
setup. I dreaded that moment, because in the past I always lost the
information about xmltv IDs and channel icons - This time I lost them
again, so I'd like to ask what I'm doing wrong or where I didn't grasp
a concept yet:

I live in Germany, use DVB-C and get my electronic program guide
(="Video Source") from epgdata.com through XMLTV's "tv_grab_eu_epgdata".

1. What is a "channel lineup"? If my understanding is correct, it's the
"numbering" of channels. From my experience, in Germany there is no
fixed line-up and a station - for example "Das Erste" - is on channel X
in city 'x' and on channel Y in region 'y'. That lineup is provided most
often on paper or as PDF, but there exists no electronic version.
In the past I always re-arranged the channels so that "Das Erste" is
always on channel number '1'.

2. As the "Channel Name" and "Channel Callsign" don't match the names
fom epgdata.com, they're not associated with each other automatically.
So I end up editing all channels and have to assign the right xmltv ID
to get the EPG working.
This is further complicated by the fact, that the same channel is
sometimes included multiple times in different transport streams with
slightly different names, that is "Das Erste", "Das Erste HD", "ARD":
They all provide the same program, but are allocated 3 programs in
MythTV and I have to manually merge them to at least have the same
"Channel Callsign", so that the scheduler can pick the best transport
(when recording multiple programs as the same time).
In the past I always did that using SQL directly, because it was no fun
to update 60+ channels each time I had to do a re-scan.

3. Same for the channel icons: That information is always lost and I
have to re-assign the correct icons.
Doing that with SQL directly is my time saver, as
<http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Networkiconmap_table> and
<http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Callsignnetworkmap_table> are always empty
for me.

3. My feeling is that the MythTV developers are from "North America"
mostly and there the EPG providers like DD and SD also provide that
additional data and therefore they never have to fiddle around with
xmltv IDs and therefore "deleting all capture devices and do a re-scan
just works".

4. Can the EPG data provided internally within the DVB stream be used to
augment the EPG data provided externally from epgdata.com? The last one
provides better description, but is only updated once per day and as
such is prone to time changes caused by major events.
<http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/User_Manual:MythTV_structure#Video_sources>
talks about "Transmitted guide data (EIT) can also be used as ... a
supplement to the other sources if it is available.", but what does that
mean exactly?

Thank your for your time and that great piece of software called MythTV.

Philipp