[mythtv-users] Jason Beck's QAM guide Now on the Wiki

Fri Feb 3 18:31:08 UTC 2006

Daniel Walton wrote:

>On Fri, 3 Feb 2006, Dylan R. Semler wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>- atscscan found 337 entries and so far I can lock onto everyone I've tried with
>>>azap but I can't get mplayer to play any of them.  I've only tried about a half
>>>dozen so I may just be unlucky but is it normal to be able to lock onto a
>>>channel but not play it (it says it can't find a video stream)?  I downloaded
>>>and compiled the latest version of mplayer but still no luck.
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>This is normal.  Most of the channels you get will be encrypted, meaning
>>that a signal is being transmitted at that frequency (so azap does lock
>>on it), but it's encoded in a way that only the cable company's tuner
>>boxes can decrypt.  You should at least be able to find your broadcast
>>channels (NBC, CBS, FOX,...) coming in clearly over the cable and if
>>you're lucky a few others.  You'll probably also get a bunch of music
>>channels that aren't encrypted but mplayer and mythtv don't handle these
>>well (I'm guessing because they only contain a few frames of video for
>>each song).
>>I wrote a very very crude bash script that calls player to determine if
>>a channel is encrypted or not.  I hesitate to post I'm not a programmer
>>and it'll need to be modified to fit each computer it runs on.  Let me
>>know if you really want it though.
>>    
>>
>
>Please do, tuning 337 by hand will take me a while :)  I wrote a quick script to
>convert my channels.conf file from:
>
>[0002]:549000000:QAM_256:18:16:2
>[0003]:549000000:QAM_256:20:21:3
>[0004]:549000000:QAM_256:25:26:4
>[0005]:549000000:QAM_256:28:29:5
>
>to
>
>ch500:549000000:QAM_256:18:16:2
>ch501:549000000:QAM_256:20:21:3
>ch502:549000000:QAM_256:25:26:4
>ch503:549000000:QAM_256:28:29:5
>
>that way I could do "azap -r ch500".  Maybe I can combine our scripts and post
>the end result to the wiki.
>
>Daniel
>  
>
Alright, I've attached the script.  It starts off by running atscscan 
and creating a channels.conf in the ~/.azap directory so make sure that 
the ~/.azap folder exists.  It then renames the [000#] entries at the 
beginning of each line in channels.conf to try###, (similar to what you 
have done).  Unfortunately you renamed yours to ch### which will break 
the part of the script that checks the channels with mplayer, as it 
assumes the channel names are of the try### format.  To make things 
easier for you I would suggest starting over with this script.  If you 
want though, you can comment out the part where it scans and rename your 
channels.conf file to fit my convention.  Anyways, when it's all done 
you should have a channels.conf file with only valid channels.  Oh, and 
so you don't get confused, it renames the successful try### in order so 
you don't have to jump from say try3 to try35 or something like that.  
Maybe that just added to your confusion.

I've commented out the last section that automatically adjusts the mysql 
database because it doesn't seem to be consistent with what everyone 
else is saying needs to be done.  I've found that one can have fully 
populated program information about the dvb channels found from this 
scan by simply editing the channels table (no need to touch the 
dtv_multiplex table).  The only hitch is after the channels found by 
this script are added to the table, you must adjust the mplexid, name, 
and chanid fields for each channel.

Make sure to read the top part of the script as it contains some more 
info/limits about it.

Post if things are not working, although I'll be pretty busy until this 
evening.

Dylan

>  
>
>>>- atscscan didn't reveal channel names for any of the 337 channels.  I take it
>>>this is info that my cable company isn't sending.  If I call my cable provider
>>>what additional field of info should I ask them to transmit so that I can get
>>>the channel names?  Time Warner Cable will probably just laugh at me when I ask
>>>but it can't hurt to try :)
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I didn't get channel names either.  I went ahead and manually put them
>>in which is not too amusing.
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Daniel
>>>
>>>On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Steven Adeff wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>I've finished my initial writeup of Jason Beck's guide to the Wiki, it
>>>>can be found at:
>>>>http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Adding_QAM_Channels_For_HDTV_Tuner_Cards
>>>>
>>>>I'd appreciate it if everyone that has used it, along with Jason
>>>>himself to go over it and fix things up, etc. Before making any
>>>>drastic changes though, please bring them up in the discussion area
>>>>for the article and give it at least a day for people to respond.
>>>>
>>>>Thanks for the help everyone!
>>>>--
>>>>Steve
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>>>>mythtv-users at mythtv.org
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
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>>
>>    
>>
>
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