[mythtv] DVB Development - Code for help in debugging

Sun May 23 13:40:33 EDT 2004

I got a few email from people willing to take a look at what I have written.  If you are
interested please compile this stuff and send me some results, or post them here if there is
something you see in error, or something that others might benifit from.

I won't comment much here other than say this code is still in development, and is a very hacked
up version of dvbdate.  Most of the functions that are currently called would be integrated into
dvbsections, and a few into dvbchannel.

This code does a current transport scan, pulls a list of transports available on the network, and
pulls the complete guide available to sdtout.

Please read the readme.txt file I included as it has some more useful information.

Taylor Jacob

-----

I would certainly get involved in the debuging side of it. I dont know  how free I am going to be
to add features. But I am happy to help how i  can

> I JUST sent you an email about the exact same subject, before I  checked the dev list.  I have a
> bunch of routines I have been working on to do NIT/SDT/EIT/PAT/PMT  scanning for integrating into
> Myth that are 99% complete.  I am actually a few days away from  placing it into
> dvbsections/dvbchannel.  I already have written some code for setup to  create virtual inputs for
> diseqc switches that I had planned on rolling out to make satellite  setup a bit more logical.
>
> I appoligize for not keeping people up to date on what I am working  on, but its been hard to find
> time to work on it.  I also am going to be out of town for work, and  then vacation and possibly
> have limited Internet access for the next 3 weeks starting Monday.
>
> I have written most of functions just from the ETSI specs, and have  the values populated into
> QValueList objects that could be re-usable not only for scanning, but  automaticlly tuning to a
> service, and removing the need for the dvb_pids table.  I attempted to  take some code from VDR,
> but the adaptation time seemed longer than it was worth.
>
> My code is mostly still in a hacked up version of dvbdate that I have  been building everything
> from as a base.  If you are interested in taking a look at what I have  email me, and I will be
> glad to share.  Most of the time has been spent learning about QT, and  all the nice objects you
> can create which is what I dump the tables into.  I was thinking that  some of the objects would be
> dual purpose.  For example the PMT QValueList will be used for tuning  a service, but also will be
> useful as part of the service scanning feature that needs to be added  into setup very badly.
>
> Please look in your personal inbox for what I already sent you.
>
> I am going to make the assumption that you and I are the only people  really interested in taking
> this large task on since I have asked numerous times on the list for  help testing code, and I have
> only received 1 email from someone who would help me.
>
> I do have the EIT scanning code already done (outside of myth), and  with the limited availablity
> of EPG in North America all of my tests look positive.  I can dump 2  days of guide data for around
> 300 channels in about 25 seconds.
>
>> Giddiup!
>>
>> Pretty general subject, I know. Basically what I want to bring forth  is who is
>> working on what feature, because there has been some people that have  claimed
>> to be working on features like autopid, scan and epg. However I have  not seen
>> any further mails about this subject, and I'm wondering about wether  these
>> features is in progress or not?
>>
>> I've been working a little on a parsing library for dvb tables and descriptors, so that
scan/autopid/epg features can be implemented  with very
>> simple code on top of this parsing library/code. This code is
>> essentially
>> developed for another project, but it has no external dependencies, is released under the gpl,
and so is easily portable into for example  mythtv.
>> Now, if nobody is working on the forementioned features, I would like  to
>> import this library into mythtv, and base all other dvb features upon  it.
>> This would however require a final restructuring of the dvb database parameters, as the library
handles parsing of dvb tables from the dvb  network
>> it would be cleaner to make the internal storage in mythtv like what  is in
>> the network. This adds another dependency if you want to call it  that, in
>> that all tuning information will be stored in a binary format, and  will not
>> allow easy editing without thoroug knowledge about the inner workings  about
>> dvb descriptors. When this is done it will contain features such as  autoscan
>> with empty tables, which will try to do a step by step tuning (if no  direct
>> source is configured). Once the dvb code gets a lock on a frequency  it will
>> start scanning for other channels available from the network
>> information
>> table. When channel tables are filled the code will enter an update  state, so
>> that every time a channel is tuned into, it will, in the background,  reload
>> and check the information in the database for consistency. Any new  channels
>> will be added and channels that is no longer existing in the dvb  information
>> will be removed, and only tv channels will be treated in this
>> process, in
>> other words any channel that does not have at least on audio pid and  one
>> video pid will be treated as bogus. What basically the autopid  feature will
>> do is pick the highest pids from a prioritylist of languages, so that  tv
>> channels will always be output with your default languange if it  exist or any
>> other available language if not (english beeing a preffered language  if no
>> other is set or found, this could also be made a configurable). On the subject of epg, I have
not been able to extract anything other than  now/next
>> information about the current program/other program on the same  transponder.
>> I know for a fact that vdr does this without a hitch (but also has a dependency xmltv just in
case), and I have not looked at how vdr  gathers this
>> information. If anybody knows how to gather epg data from a satellite  or
>> other dvb source, I would greatly appreaciate the contribution, and  use more
>> time on this project than I have done in the last months.
>>
>> If there is anything in here you belive that I have come short to  think of, or
>> have anything to add/clearify to this statement, please reply to this  post to
>> the mythtv-dev at mythtv.org list and not to my personal e-mail account, plainly because my e-mail
used on this list has been so cluttered  with so much
>> spam that I rearly catch any personal e-mails at all (why don't  someone fix
>> this bug?).
>>
>> --
>> Kenneth *
>>
>> * Looking forward to the day I can contribute to the Linux Community!
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>>
>
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