[mythtv-users] Digital channel ordering

[Nedim Cholich]

Thanks Mike.

On 9/5/07, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
>
> 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".


Channel number. I guess the problem is that channel number is not really a
number but alphanumeric so 102#2 comes before 21, for example, which is not
how it should be.

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

I saw these two, but there doesn't seem to be any conclusion. Some of the
ideas thrown there sound good though.

> 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.


I realized all this. Same channel number for different channels was not
behaving correctly in both frontend and mythweb.

At the end I came up with the following scheme. Number all the channels
using DD.D pattern. So my analogue channels would be 02.0, 03.0, 45.0 etc.
My digital channels would be 02.1, 04.1, 04.3 etc. And the callsigns for the
digital channels are different as in WNBC (analogue) and WNBCDT (digital).
This way both frontend and mythweb sort channels properly. The true
duplicates between analogue and digital source would have the same number
and callsign so that backend can have more options when recording. The idea
of having four recording sources is slowly sinking in and it's awesome :-)

Am I going too far? How are other people dealing with this?

>  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


Thanks again.
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