[mythtv-users] Culling my MythTV channels

[Stephen Worthington]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2021 17:55:01 -0700, you wrote:

>On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 1:27 PM Simon Hobson <linux at thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> If you change mode to channels then you can specify what channels you want
>> to fetch. But instead of manually maintaining a list - let the computer do
>> it for you ;-)
>>
>
>Thanks - I ran across your post and script earlier in my research and will
>consider using them.  They seem like the most elegant and efficient way to
>deal with channel management.  Appreciate the additional examples as well!
>
>But right now I'm just struggling with the big picture, like I'm not even
>sure if mythfilldatabase is even needed with xmltv/json.  I guess it is
>since 'mythfilldatabase --only-update-channels' is the only way I know to
>get updates, but then it re-adds any channels I've deleted or hidden.
>
>I've been using myth for 12 years now and been able to keep everything
>working and updated (though I've always struggled a little with the various
>ways to control lineup - SD website, mythtv-setup, mythweb).  But I still
>lack a basic understanding of how this xmltv grabbing is supposed to work
>with SD, JSON grabbers, mythfilldatabase, mythbackend, and all the various
>config files.

Mythfilldatabase runs the grabbers for each source, then takes the
xmltv format data provided by each grabber and puts it in the
database.  So you need to configure mythbackend to run
mythfilldatabase, or do that externally, as I do from a cron job. Then
you need to configure each source to tell mythfilldatabase what
grabber to run with what options.

If you have an xmltv file on disk, there are also options to get
mythfilldatabase to read that file and insert it into the database.  I
do that in virtual machines where I am testing something - I copy an
xmltv file from my main MythTV box and manually run "mythfilldatabase
--sourceid <x> --file -xmlfile <xxxx>.xmltv".