[mythtv-users] Automatic channel scans

[Mike Bibbings]

On 10/08/17 17:41, John Pilkington wrote:
> 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


I have looked a little deeper into the code in mythtv-setup (main.cpp 
and commandlineparser.cpp) it seems the wiki page has some information 
missing.

 From the quick look I am seeing command line options  related to --scan :

--frequency-table
--input-name
--FTAonly
--service-type


I will run some tests, but first I have to setup a test system with dvbt 
tuners.

Mike