[mythtv] [PATCH] Channel preset hack

[Matthew S. Hallacy]

On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 08:34:31PM +0200, Ben Bucksch wrote:
> Such statements are really enraging and a perfect example of the 
> stunning American arrogance.

Thank you.

> First, America is not "the rest of the civilized world" nor do you have 
> a right to ask 300 million European to change their habits. BTW, it is 
> not civilized at all to not respect other cultures, just because they 
> are different.

I doubt all 300 million europeans will be using mythtv.

> Second, I don't want to join you. I press 7 when I want to have Pro 7, I 
> do that since 10 years and I am not going to press "SE21" now and "E46" 
> in a few months after the channel changed the frequency. This is 
> ridiculous for me. ARD ("first German TV") is on button 1 on almost all 
> German TVs since 40 or 50 years, and any TV-related equipment where this 
> is not the case (unless the user wishes so) is broken. ARD = 1. In UK, 
> BBC1 = 1, no matter if antenna, cable, satelite, DVB, HDTV or whatever.

That's fine, what you fail to understand is that you can map (via frequency
tables) a channel *NUMBER* to a frequency, nobody cares if you're trying
to watch BBC1 or MTV, I realize that you have a horrible equivalent of the FCC
as can be seen here:

(Cable television networks only)

Channel     Freq Range (mhz)
E2		47-54
E3		64-61
E4		61-68
S01		68-75
S02		75-82
S03		82-89
S1		104-111
...
S9		160-167
S10		167-174
E5		174-181
...
E12		223-230
S11		230-237
...
S41		462-470

It's no wonder that people don't want to have any idea what channel it
really is, most of the population can't grasp the concept of '0' being
before '1', and certainly can't grasp the difference between 'S01' and 'S1'.

What I would suggest is that you have the station identifier as whatever
it is over there (such as BBC1) and the channel number something sane.

Broadcast television (Antenna) _is_ sane, and does have a (semi)regular
numbering scheme (2-12, 21-69). 

> 
> Frankly, for *me*, the American system is wasteful and immature. It was 
> surprising for me to learn [1] that Americans don't know presets and 
> that they don't even want them. But I accept that you prefer the 
> American system as long as you accept that European expectations are 
> different and no worse.

Wasteful? How? It's exactly like your broadcast television numbering standards,
except different frequencies. Presets? We can grasp the concept of MTV being
channel 43, and the next channel being SciFi on channel 50 without any
(active) channels inbetween.

> 
> Third, I explained in my post with the patch why the current system 
> doesn't work at all. Without the patch, the EPG is the only way for me 
> to switch to some channels.

I would complain to the people you're paying your television tax to, another
thing us silly americans don't have or want.

> So, can we please stop the ignorance and stabbing and just let the code 
> do what each user group expects?

If something can be produced that isn't described as a hack by the author, yes.

-- 
Matthew S. Hallacy                            FUBAR, LART, BOFH Certified
http://www.poptix.net                           GPG public key 0x01938203