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

[Steven Adeff]

On 2/3/06, Dylan R. Semler <dsemler at macalester.edu> wrote:
> 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!

nice, I'll look over it later and see if I can make it more
"universal".  Also, someone opened a trac ticket recently to fix the
channels.conf import in mythtv-setup, so that along with what we can
develop this script into may be all thats needed until the internal
channel scanning gets fixed.

--
Steve