[mythtv-users] Automatic channel scans

[John Pilkington]

On 10/08/17 14:46, Mike Bibbings wrote:
> On 10/08/17 13:13, John Pilkington wrote:
>> On 10/08/17 12:19, Mike Bibbings wrote:
>>> On 08/08/17 19:01, Jeff wrote:
>>>> It seems to me that there are changes to the channel line-up on Astra
>>>> something every couple of weeks. Mostly I don't notice until recordings
>>>> start failing, and then I don't have the necessary block of couple of
>>>> hours to do anything about it, and so I end up running mythtv-setup
>>>> perhaps every 18 months.
>>>>
>>>> Would it not be possible to achieve something like automatic channel
>>>> updates by having a job run, say once a week or once a month, which
>>>> performs a scan when the backend is not being used (e.g. in my case,
>>>> before it is shutdown), compares the results to the previous scan, and
>>>> then presents the differences to the user?
>>>>
>>>> e.g. 'New channel "XYZ" found on Input 1. Add/Ignore?'
>>>>       'Channel "XYZ" moved to frequency/sid/... Update?'
>>>>
>>>> Is this feasible?
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone else think this is a good idea?
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>>
>>>> Jeff
>>>>
>>> Yes, it is a good idea and is probably feasible with some changes to 
>>> mythtv.
>>>
>>> mythtv-setup already has the capability to perform an automated scan 
>>> and either apply immediately  or save it for later use, see 
>>> https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Command_Line_Channel_Scanner
>>> However, as far as I can tell this automated scan does not work for 
>>> DVB-S/S2, hence changes to mythtv.
>>>
>>> I was thinking of something along the lines of comparing current 
>>> channel setup with automated last scan and just identify something 
>>> has changed, the user would then use mythtv-setup manually, to either 
>>> rescan existing transports (with search for new transports selected) 
>>> or import the automated scan results.
>>>
>>> Mike
>>
>> That wiki page lists a lot of DB tables which don't appear here
>>
>> https://code.mythtv.org/doxygen/group__db__schema.html
>>
>> I tried  [mythconverg]> describe dvbt-ofdm-uk ;
>>
>> and got an SQL syntax error.  mythtvsetup --help doesn't show anything 
>> I can identify with it.  Does it exist?   I did try to use a saved 
>> scan once, with DVB-T, but got nothing useful.  The scan hadn't been 
>> made with this tool, though.
>>
>> John
> 
> Those are not mythconverg DB tables, they are just instructions , within 
> mythtv_setup code and associated libs they get split (at the -) and 
> processed so the command line channel scanner knows what to do.
> 
> Mike

OK, I found some related code in libs/libmythtv/frequencytables.cpp, but 
attempts to run it just show me

$ mythtv-setup --scan dvbt-ofdm-uk 1 DVBInput --scan-save-only
Received '1' but unassociated arguments have not been enabled

mythtv-setup version: master [v30-Pre-v30-Pre-3-g538f99e] www.mythtv.org
(and yes, the version number is eccentric)
followed by the usual result of
mythtvsetup --help

I have tried:
mythtv-setup --scan
mythtvsetup --scan
mythtv-setup --scan dvbt-ofdm-uk 1 DVBInput --scan-save-only
mythtv-setup --scan dvbt-ofdm-gb 1 DVBInput --scan-save-only
and various others
but

mythtv-setup --scan-list

did print a plausible-looking list of past scans.

Any suggestions?

John