[mythtvnz] Scanning DVB-S and DVB-T from scratch

[Stephen Worthington]

On Wed, 7 Sep 2011 10:32:11 +1200, you wrote:

>
>Greetings all
>
>The last time I did a full scan of DVB-S was in 0.21 and for DVB-T was in
>0.22 which means, as you can imagine, that I'm missing quite a few
>channels.
>
>I'm quite willing to invest an evening or 2 doing it all again from
>scratch but would like to know if there are any shortcuts or gotchas in
>0.24.1.
>
>For example
> * I use the Freeview XMLTV grabber but will that pair the channel to ID
>for me or is it still a manual process
> * is there a recommended channel numbering (I'll want to avoid clashes
>with Sky channel numbers or maybe use the Sky rather than Freeview
>numbering)
> * The regional channels - do they still exist (Southland, CTV, Stratos
>etc) in the DVB world?
> * what is the status of radio - both DVB-T and DVB-S. Does it work now?
>(it was pretty useless the last time I tried).
>
>All input gratefully received :)

I am afraid that I have been adding channels manually since my initial
setup.  I do not believe that the tv_grab_nz-py grabber is any better
at doing the initial setup than it was when you last ran it.  It might
be easier to get someone in your area to give you a current SQL dump
to work from, as my recollection of scanning is that it is a difficult
business to get the channels set up right for EPG after a scan - there
is a lot of manual work.  If I need to change channel setup in a major
way, I normally save an SQL dump and then edit it using an SQL text
editor, then reload the edited dump.  I also have a script for adding
a new channel from an edited .sql file.  The MythWeb page

  http://<your mythtv ip>/mythweb/settings/tv/channels

is also useful for twiddling settings.

Do not forget that you need to manually update the .xmltv control
files for your tv_grab_nz-py scripts when adding or removing channels,
otherwise they will not get EPG.  I use two different versions of
tv_grab_nz-py, one for FreeviewHD and one for Sky, using two different
MythTV sources.  So I have FreeviewHD.xmltv and SkyNZ.xmltv files to
update.

I have all my Sky channels set up with the channum as the Sky channel
number plus 1000, so that I do not have any clashes with FreeviewHD
channel numbers.  The maximum FreeviewHD channel number I have ever
seen was 999.

Stratos is now available on FreeviewHD, at least from Whariti.  It is
not really a regional channel, so I think you will have it too.
Whariti also has some "ghost" channels (tvCentral, TV Rotorua,
Info-Rotorua) which show up in a scan but have no real transmissions.
These are for regional channels that are broadcast for real in nearby
areas.  I am not sure why they need to show up on Whariti too.

There are also some "service" channels on FreeviewHD that are used for
updating set top boxes and various other things.  Currently I can see
"Freeview -- Panasonic Blu_Ray SSU" on the TVNZ multiplex and "MHEG IC
Test Channel" on the Kordia multiplex.  These channels come and go
from day to day as needed and need to be ignored in your channel
setup.

DVB-T radio channel support has not changed AFAIK - it does not exist
in MythTV.  I do use the radio channels occasionally from my Windows
box which is running MediaPortal.

Let me know if you want me to do some SQL dumps for you (presuming
that you are OK with doing SQL).  I can do DVB-T and Sky, but not
DVB-S (I do not use that - I only use the DVB-S2 card for getting EIT
EPG).