[mythtv-users] HD Homerun virtual tuners and cableco QAM channel remapping

[lists.md301]

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 10:41 AM, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com>wrote:

> On 04/03/2012 09:36 AM, lists.md301 wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure this is a bug, per se, because this is a very special corner
>> case.  But I wanted to put it out there and ask if anyone else has seen it,
>> and if there are any steps I could take after a mapping change deal with
>> this situation.  I think the Perl script is a great thing, and I know the
>> author suggests that running it a 3am and letting it do an update
>> potentially keep you from losing recordings.  I'm thinking that if a user
>> has virtual tuners defined, it may have other issues.  Thoughts?  As I have
>> to finish my taxes (for myself and my mother) this week, intersecting with
>> myth not-recording time, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to experiment
>> with this in the coming week to get a handle on what's going on.
>>
>
> The short answer is had you used a supported approach for updating your
> channel (and related) information and restarted the master backend, all
> would have worked.  This is exactly why we don't support direct DB editing
> of the data.
>
> Our intention for the future is to make the supported approach even easier
> and more reliable (and, perhaps, even semi-automatic, eventually) so
> there's absolutely no reason for users to feel they need to do it manually.
>  <http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users>


Thanks for the reply, Mike. I understand the risks of using an unsupported
method. I brought this to the list because I suspect I'm not the only one
doing it.  I don't expect the developers to support me (or anyone) in doing
things against design.  However, I suspect that for at least some of us who
are doing unsupported things, it's because we are long-time users (for me,
since 0.13) who resorted to doing these things because on older versions,
it was the only way to do them when certain functionality was new, or do
them reliably.   (I remember mucking with a channels.conf file and the DVB
scan utilities when I first got an AverMedia A150 digital QAM card.)

I would ask the follow up question about where exactly I can find
documentation on the supported approaches.  I did a brief search of the
wiki, and did not find anything very detailed:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hdhomerun#North_America_Digital_Cable
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Frontend_Channel_Editor
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Adding_QAM_Channels_For_HDTV_Tuner_Cards
http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.1

It seems that a mythtv-setup channel scan (as described in the hdhomerun
page), in combination with the frontend channel editor, appears to be the
supported method.  But as I understand things (and I admit my knowledge is
lacking here), both appear to have complications/down sides, reconciling
any PSIP identification with cable company virtual channel assignments
(from SchedulesDirect), the details of which are not mentioned in mentioned
in the docs I found.  Maybe the minimal updates to existing channels makes
it less intrusive than I'm thinking.  I've been reluctant to attempt that
in the past, for fear of trashing things and having start from
scratch--it's that unclear to me.  (Of course that was also back before
database backup/restores were so easy as they are now.)  That's why the
Prime Perl script is so appealing.  Anyway, if there's another doc source I
didn't find, could please direct me to it?  (If I end up figuring this out,
I'd be happy to update the wiki with a concise, detailed summary of how to
deal with this situation.)

Please don't take my questions as criticism of any developers about the way
it is.  I'm just trying to give real-world feedback from an end-user.
Thanks for setting me straight.  It sounds like you're headed in the
direction I'd like to see on this for when channel mappings need to be
updated.
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