[mythtv-users] Digital channel ordering

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Wed Sep 5 07:21:20 UTC 2007


On 09/04/2007 08:52 PM, Nedim Cholich wrote:
> I was lucky to have tone of digital channels on my cable (QAM) when I moved
> so I got the HDHomeRun recently to complement the pvr500 I already had in
> the system. For the last couple of days I was going through the ordeal of
> mapping channels to their real numbers/names.
>
> Back when I had hd2000 I remember digital channels showing up correctly in
> FE. Like, 4 WNBC comes before 4.1 WNBCHD etc. Now I have channels sorted
> seemingly in random order. The SD channels are sorted fine, but digital
> channels are all over the place. I triple checked my ordering preferences
> and for the life of me I can't figure out what logic FE is using to sort the
> channels. I tried numbering digital channels like 4.1 and 4#1.
>   

What do you have specified for "Channel ordering" in the frontend
settings?  Options are "channel number" and "channel name".

See, also,
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/283568#283568 and
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/283790#283790

> The only thing that worked properly was giving digital channel the same
> number but different call letters, i.e. 4 WNBC, 4 WNBCHD and different
> xmltvid. Then they showed up together. Is there any problem with having
> different channels have the same channum?

If they are different channels, then really they should have different
channel numbers.  The purpose of the channel number is to allow you to
tell Myth which channel to tune when watching LiveTV.  If you have 2
channel 4's, Myth doesn't "know" which one to tune, so you end up going
to the "closest" one.

If you change the callsigns so they are different, you're telling Myth
you want to treat the channels as different channels--i.e. you want to
be able to specify that a recording should happen on one or the other
channel, allowing you to record a show in high def or in standard def. 
So, in following, they should really have different channel numbers.

If, however, they both have the same callsign, then you can specify the
same channel number.  Using the same callsign says Myth should treat the
channels as the same (i.e. "this channel" rules apply to either).  Using
the same callsign /and/ same channel number says that only one "channel"
should be listed in the EPG (since they are identical--though if content
is different, Myth (SVN trunk) will notice and show you both--but IIRC,
0.20 isn't quite as good at that).

Note, however, that Myth will generally work regardless of how you set
channel numbers and callsigns.  That said, there will be "issues" with
some configurations, as you describe below.

>  Is there any other way of doing
> this? To make things worse Mythweb is behaving differently and using this
> scheme makes digital channels disappear in the listing (they are still there
> in the channel lineup). I guess Mythweb only uses channel numbers and since
> there are duplicates, it removes the new channels.
>
> Is the problem coming from the fact that channum in the db is varchar and
> not a number, so 'order by' doesn't work as expected
>   

First post linked above.

Mike


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list