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

[f-myth-users at media.mit.edu]

    > Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 22:06:09 -0400 (EDT)
    > From: f-myth-users at media.mit.edu

    >     Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:48:53 -0400
    >     From: "R. G. Newbury" <newbury at mandamus.org>

    >     > I have never said that this was a Myth bug, although you may have
    >     > been trying to say that.  I'm saying that the one of my lineups at
    >     > labs.zap2it.com was only slightly wrong (two misplaced channels)
    >     > and, around when they fixed that, they broke more than 1/3 of the
    >     > rest of the channels in that lineup.  The other lineup for that
    >     > provider has been right all along.
    >     > 
    >     > Hence my Subject: line.

    >     So what happens if you go to zap2it and create a brand new account 
    >     (using a different e-mail address, if possible) and select a zipcode 
    >     next door to your actual zip and select the same cable co?

    >     Do you still get a screwed up listing?

    > Yup.  I just tried that, since my city actually has two zipcodes
    > associated with it.  Both are identically screwed up on the lineup
    > that assumes you're not using a cable box, and identically okay on
    > the lineup that does assume you're using a cable box.

    > So what I might do is have Myth grab one zipcode's "good" lineup
    > for its RF inputs (with the encrypted channels disabled from that
    > lineup), and grap the other zipcode's "good" lineup for its cable-box
    > inputs (with everything that isn't encrypted disabled), and leave it
    > at that, at least until DD gets their act together.  I'm hoping that
    > having two different UserIDs configured in my Video Sources page in
    > Myth will work (e.g., that DD won't try -not- to serve two different
    > UserIDs with the same IP address---which would probably blow up any
    > configurations that had two Myths behind the same NAT box, anyway).

FWIW---I just tried this experiment today, and it worked fine.  I'm
now pulling listings for the RF inputs from one zipcode's for-cable-boxes
listing, and listings for the cable box from the adjacent zipcode's
for-cable-boxes listings, and the selected channels for each listing
at zap2it are mutually exclusive (the set-union of them is the
complete listing, minus those channels I don't care about at all,
and the lineup I'm using for the cable box is the one that has only
the encrypted channels checked).

I had to do so as two different Zap2It users, but Myth is happy to let
me configure that, and Zap2It is happy to honor the retrieval requests.
This doesn't change the load on their servers at all, of course,
because I'm still retrieving the same number of lineups---except for
adding a user to their database, and making me have to fill out an
extra survey every three months.

Obviously, either getting Zap2It to fix their lineup, or getting Myth
to allow me to create two lineups from a single one, is the better
solution, but this'll work until one of those two others changes.

    > Of course, this is suboptimal in a number of ways (for starters, I'll
    > have to fill out the damned surveys -twice-!).

    > What I'd -really- like to be able to do is to use the one "good"
    > lineup twice; there's no reason Zap2It has to know which channels
    > are assigned to which of my Myth inputs, but I don't see any easy
    > way of making a virtual lineup in Myth that says "hey, split this
    > lineup in half and put some of its channels -here- and some of them
    > -there- so I can have them tuned & connected differently."  If I'm
    > missing some way of doing this, somebody please let me know!

    > (I can't try this anyway for at least 3 hours because the backend will
    > be otherwise occupied until then; then I have a couple multi-hours
    > windows tomorrow.)

    > [I spent a while dinking around in the "channel" table with phpmyadmin
    > this evening, since I have automation that cares about the filenames
    > being written out, etc, and wants those to match the physical channels
    > ---hence just editing the channel numbers & freqids in mythtv-setup,
    > while adequate for Myth, still had problems wrt breaking the -rest- of
    > my automation.  One of the things I discovered is that changing the
    > chanid field has very far-reaching consequences; that damned thing is
    > in a dozen tables.  Multiple by a cyclic permutation of 20 wrong
    > channels from DD and it's a giant hairball---too much to get into.]

    >     A screen shot together with a screen shot from your cable co might help 
    >     wake up DD. Somewhat.

    > Well, maybe.  In my initial bug report, I spent 3-4 paragraphs
    > explaining all the things wrong with the lineup, mentioned that
    > the -other- lineup for the same zipcode & provider was fine, and
    > also included a table dumped directly from a TiVo on the same
    > lineup to demonstrate that other vendors had it right, too.

    > No idea if it'll help, though.  I sent mail; I don't know if
    > complaints in the forums are acted upon at any different rate,
    > but it's a whole lot more inconvenient to post a detailed bug
    > report in a web form, so I didn't bother.