[mythtv-users] Freeview & Freesat combined (UK DVBT & DVBS)

[Mike Holden]

Nick Morrott wrote:
> On 16/03/2009, Andre Newman <mythtv-list at dinkum.org.uk> wrote:
>
>>  Is there some accepted wisdom as to the best way to configure the cards
>> or
>> prioritise them that works well in the UK? Does is all work beautifully
>> if
>> you use uk_rt, if so I'll give it another go. How do others use this?
>
> Channels which are the same across different platforms
> (analog/Freeview/Freesat/Virgin) need to have the same callsign and
> xmltvid for the scheduler to treat them as the same. They should also
> ideally have the same listings information to allow
> subtitle/description matching to work effectively - I think that
> Freeview and Freesat share listings information for core channels so
> this should work well if you decide to use the EIT data in lieu of
> uk_rt.
>
> If you are having problems with uk_rt listings, it is more likely that
> it is not configured optimally for your setup. Once configured you
> should be able to leave it to retrieve listings automatically using
> either mythbackend or by running the grabber in a cron script.

The only problems I've had with uk_rt is the occasional change of xmltvid
when channels change their names (eg five USA, Blighty, G.O.L.D, Eden etc)
and they get new xmltv ids which need manual intervention. Subscribing to
the xmltv mailing list means I get notification of most of these to allow
me to change over in time. I keep meaning to write some code to look at
the incoming channel list file and compare it to the last one to flag
changes, but haven't got round to it yet.

I have a mixed Freeview and Virgin cable setup where I use xmltv for any
channels available, and use EIT for the rest, mainly radio. As Nick said,
it's best to use the same listings source for all instances of a channel.
There is a "cross source listings" option somewhere in the myth setup
which may help here, but I have never needed it because cable has no EIT,
and I don't use the cable box for any channels that I can get through
freeview (I deliberately disable them because multirec gives me enough
tuners that I never need to use the cable box to record a program that
would otherwise be a conflict).

The other thing to watch out for to avoid duplicate recordings is in your
duplicate matching settings in the recording schedule. Make sure you use
"match subtitle THEN description" rather than the default "subtitle &
description", as this can barf when programs have no episode title, just a
program title.

I think most of your other queries have been answered by others, but just
to reiterate - make sure that "substantially the same" channels need to
have the same callsign. For me, that means that BBC Two North West on
terrestrial has the same callsign as BBC Two on freeview and cable, and
all is well.

Re your channel rescan issue, I recently went through this on Freeview,
and decided to update the callsigns that I used to match the ones that
Freeview supplies, so now I use "BBC ONE" rather than "BBCOne" for all
channel sources for example. The other option is to write a script to
update the channel table in the database after each rescan, which would be
straightforward enough.
-- 
Mike Holden

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