[mythtv-users] Recovering when zap2it screws the pooch---a warning & some questions

f-myth-users at media.mit.edu f-myth-users at media.mit.edu
Wed Jul 19 20:00:33 UTC 2006


    > Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 15:24:12 -0400
    > From: "Michael T. Dean" <mtdean at thirdcontact.com>

    > On 07/18/2006 10:27 PM, f-myth-users at media.mit.edu wrote:

    > >Today, I deleted and re-added all my channels via mythtv-setup, which
    > >-would- have worked fine, apparently, except for one small detail I
    > >failed to notice at the time---zap2it has -severely- blown it on half
    > >of the -rest- of my lineup!

    > Ummm.  That might not have been completely DataDirect's fault...

    > >The OTA channels (2,4,5,7) all got moved into the 30's.  The stuff
    > >that normally hangs out in the 30's got moved to another place.

    > DataDirect may have changed the way they were reporting information and 
    > Myth has just made a change for it ( 
    > http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/1848 -- Daniel is still working on 
    > getting the digital channel changes fixed).

I might have been confusing when I said "OTA", since I meant "the
over-the-air SD ANALOG channels".  Does that ticket address analog
channels or only digital ones?

I'm just using analog SD here.  DD has two listings for my cable
provider, one of which is for those with cable boxes, and one
without.  The one for those -with- cable boxes has the correct
mapping of channel numbers to callsigns, but unfortunately includes
channels one can't get without a cable box.  The one for those
-without- cable boxes -should- have the same mappings for the
non-cable-box channels, but that got changed at some point recently
and now looks completely messed up.

(And no, I can't use the listing for "with cable box" for everything,
because I -do- have -one- such box, and its composite-out is connected
to composite-in on one of my tuners, and that way Myth knows that
shows that must go through the cable box must be tuned by commanding
the box and by switching to that particular tuner composite-in.  I
use the "without cable box" listing for all the rest of the (RF)
tuners, which are connected directly to the cable feed.  If there
was some way of telling Myth "you may only use -this- tuner for
-these- channels, but all the rest are fair game on any tuner",
I could use the cable-box-only DD info and drop one lineup, but
as far as I know, that's not possible.)

So I think this really is DD's fault unless I'm totally
misunderstanding something.  Shouldn't their lineup info
in the modifications-page match what I see directly off
my cable?  I sure think so.

    > >Several other channels are either missing or wrong.  But the channels
    > >I'd -originally- been complaining about were in the right place, so I
    > >didn't notice until -after- I flushed everything and reran mythfilldatabase.

    > >Second, the questions:
    > >(a) Is there some easier way of recovering?  I think editing the
    > >    freqids to rearrange my channels might be relatively straightforward,
    > >    although an enormous hairball because there are about 20 channels
    > >    misplaced.  (If I hadn't flushed & re-updated, there would have
    > >    been fewer out of place, but...)

    > It's only 20 channels.  :)  Do it this way.

Yeah, I may have to.  If they fix the listing, I can just dump all my
channel info via mythtv-setup and regrab them from DD, so hopefully I
only have to do this foolishness once.

    > >(b) Do current Myth versions make it easy to track what's going on wrt
    > >    lineup changes, e.g., by making deltas available from one update
    > >    to another?  (I'm running 0.18.1, so I'm not totally up on this,
    > >    though I've noticed code that seems to, e.g., turn off newly-added
    > >    (at zap2it) channels automatically when they pop up in listings).
    > >    [The TiVo is kind enough to warn you about lineup changes, so it's
    > >    possible to see if they're real or the result of a screwup; I'm
    > >    not so sure about Myth.]

    > Daniel has the start of a frontend-based lineup editor (which could be 
    > the start of a frontend-based "Do you want this new channel" 
    > functionality, ...).  We still have a way to go, though, and it probably 
    > doesn't make it high on developers' TODO lists because most developers 
    > have their lineups already configured.

Makes sense.

    > >I'm strongly considering writing a little wget-based script that just
    > >fetches my various lineups from the labs.zap2it.com site once a day
    > >and diffs them against the previous day---that way, if they rearrange
    > >anything, I'll have a chance in hell of noticing it before it leads to
    > >a week of missed recordings, or whatever.  [And if they fix it---I
    > >sent them a long bug report, complete with the entire table of channel
    > >numbers & callsigns my TiVo uses for the same feed, which are
    > >correct---I'll find out without having to remember to check daily and
    > >will know to -un-fix my Myth assignments before they cause trouble.]

    > Please don't write the script (and add to the strain on DataDirect's 

...though this thing would be checking my labs.zap2it.com page, which
presumably isn't quite the same as what happens when one actually
downloads from datadirect.webservices.zap2it.com, and it would be
fetching precisely one page/day.  But I guess as long as I'm the
only one running it...

(Btw, I noticed, when I was in mythtv-setup, that every time I so much
as -touched- any of my lineups, it tried two downloads, the second of
which was to the "Myth Plus" service and which got two "unauthorized"
responses in a row, unlike the normal fetches that mythfilldatabase
does.  What's up with that?)

    servers).  It would be better to get a lineup editor in place as well as 
    new channel/changed channel/removed channel notifications, etc.

Oh, yes, it surely would be.  In fact, in an ideal world, such a
lineup editor would allow one to make a "virtual lineup" one could
then associate with an input just like a real one, so one could say,
"take channel N from lineup A and assign it to my virtual lineup
V".  Then, as long as DD has a particular channel -anywhere- in
its lineups, one could associate it with the right "real" lineup.
It would allow me, for example, to make one lineup called "my
cable box" and associate only the encrypted channels with it,
and another called "RF feed" and associated only the cleartext
channels with it, while fetching only -one- lineup from DD,
namely the one for the cable boxes.  Right now, I have to fetch
-both-, while turning off all the cleartext channels on the
for-cable-fox feed and turning on all the rest on the other
feed---and still lose, because that other feed currently has
half of its channels listed in the wrong place.

Such a virtual lineup would probably also help people with other weird
setups, e.g., they want to get one particular channel out of a lineup
in some special way through some special tuner for whatever reason
(interference?  special decoder?), etc.


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