[mythtv-users] mythtv, SchDirect XML and channel numbers

[Tim Draper]

I'm not sure where to start looking for this, so figured you guys can point me in the right direction.
I've noticed that E4 (UK channel) has changed transport and required a rescan from mythtv-setup. easy enough, but then i find there's a load more channels that have appeared or changed which are not covered in my alterChannels.sql script.

every time i rescan i typically find the same thing - channels have moved,EOL'd or new services and trying to align them to freesat channels based on an internet search is very tedious and usually met with conflicting info as you find new & old channum's etc.

Similar thing with XMLTV alignment - have to run the SD grabber to output a .xml file to then lookup the xmltvid, update sql script, apply and finally mythfilldatabase. theres got to be a better way!?!
so far, i've spent the last 3/4 of a day manually going through my .sql file to update and correctly set name,channum,xmltvid and callsign.

how do you guys handle this? feels like i'm making this far harder than it should be, especially with the channum and xmltvid matching. There must be an automated way as practically any broadcast tv option you buy off-the-shelf automatically handles channum assignment when you scan so it knows BBC1 is ch1 (or 101 for sky/freesat afaik), ITV is 3 (or 103) etc. Most don't have/are connected to the internet so it must be something that either comes down the aerial or an internal solution on the tv/stb.