[mythtv-users] Ignoring certain channels from certain inputs

[Mark Greenwood]

On 20 Oct 2012, at 12:01, Simon Hobson wrote:

> Mark Greenwood wrote:
> 
>> > Script it. You need to go through the effort of setting up the script once (and updating it every time they mess about with channels), but it makes rescans a lot quicker.
>>> There are several pages on the Wiki for channel editing scripts - one of them should give you a base to start from.
>>> 
>>> As to ignoring the weak transmitters - don't do a full scan, but either from a clean start scan a specific frequency and tick the box (whose name escapes me) to find related transports. Once you have all the transports you want, then do a "Scan existing transports" and it will only pick up the channels you want from your main transmitter.
>> 
>> Well it's nice to know that it's possible, but I'm not sure I have the patience. My TV tunes itself in 2 minutes flat and orders the channels in a sensible order. I think I'd be happier, rather than creating a workaround script, if I started looking at the channel scanner code and making it significantly more intelligent. Anybody like to point me in a starting direction?
> 
> Sensible by who's definition ? I'm fairly certain that if you asked a random selection of users what order they want, you'd probably get more answers than people you asked !
> I can do a rescan in a couple of minutes - the slowest bit is working out what channels have appeared, and what has disappeared. Don't forget you also need to update your listings grabber (I use the RT feed) as well.

In the UK, DVB signals include channel numbers, so by 'sensible' I mean 'following the channel order as defined in the signal'. Mythtv appears to ignore this. A rescan on my myth box takes 15 minutes, then I have at least 2 copies of each channel so I have to work out which one is the best for each channel then set a channel number and delete the others. But then because I've set my own channel numbers but myth invents new ones when I rescan (e.g. 4283 for BBC1..huh?) I get loads of duplicates as well. It's a nightmare. It also doesn't take account of the signal strengths of the channels it finds, whereas my TV will choose the best signal for each channel and discard any duplicates, hence I only get one BBC1 and it's on Channel 1, instead of 3 of them randomly distributed across the channels like I get with mythtv. (The first scan, I had BBC1 on channels 1, 46, and 4283. Where did it get those numbers from? The only one that gives a decent picture is the one on 4283 so it should have chosen that one and thrown the other 2 away).

Like I say, I live in a low signal area with three transmitters nearby. I'd like myth to do what my TV does, because it's repeatable, sensible, and easy and proves it's possible to automate all the hours of effort I put in today. I'm happy to code it too. Or at least try to.

> 
> This is (more or less) the script I use :
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Database_editing_script

Thanks for that, I'll have a closer look at it when I have some time.

Mark

> 
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> Simon Hobson
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