[mythtv-users] 0.21: hdhomerun: how to record UHF HD on #1 (OTA), VHF on #2 (via cable/QAM)?

Greg Woods greg at gregandeva.net
Sat Jan 9 20:20:53 UTC 2010


On Sat, 2010-01-09 at 14:52 -0500, Peter Watkins wrote:

> Problem #3:
> Schedules Direct will only let me create one listing source for local 
> HD broadcasts

They should be showing one lineup for OTA and one for cable. So you use
one of those to define the source for your antenna tuner and one for
your QAM tuner. The tricky part is getting the channels to match up.
Naturally they have different channel numbers;  for instance, here in
the Denver area, the local CBS affiliate (KCNC) appears in the OTA
lineup as channel 4.1, and in the QAM lineup as channel 654. The way to
get them to match up properly is to make sure the XMLTVID numbers match.

As a rule, the OTA scan should "just work"; everything in the channel
table will be set up properly if you just scan for channels.
Unfortunately, if your cable provider is like mine (and like most of
them in the US apparently), when you scan for QAM channels, you get
channels but few of them have callsigns or XMLTVID values. There is no
way to avoid having to set all these by hand, and the only way I know of
to figure out which channel is which is to tune them in Live TV. This is
a royal pain, no doubt about it. Once you know which channel is which,
you can set the callsign and XMLTVID using the Channel Editor (from
mythtv-setup or press the "e" key while tuned to the channel in LiveTV).
You can also put them directly into the channel table if you are
comfortable with MySQL. 

This is what I do and it works well. In my case, when all my tuners are
working, it's even more complicated because I also have analog versions
of many of the same channels for my PVR-500 tuners. These in fact really
are different channels, because they are SD versions and they do have
different XMLTVID's. But if you are wanting to match HD OTA and HD QAM,
they should have the same XMLTVID.

Once the XMLTVID's match up, you should be able to run mythfilldatabase
and it will give you matching guide data for the QAM and OTA versions of
the same channels. Which tuner gets used first for channels that are
available on both is determined by the order you define them when you
set them up.

--Greg






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