[mythtv-users] unable to add new channels from Schedules Direct lineup

[Don Lewis]

On  8 Aug, Ronald Frazier wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 10:29 PM, Don Lewis <dl-mythtv at catspoiler.org> wrote:
>> No such luck with sourceid 4, though.  For some reason it just doesn't
>> want to create any new channels.  If I manually create a missing channel
>> in the channel editor and just fill in the channel number, the grabber
>> will fill in the rest of the information, but it doesn't seem to want to
>> create any new channels from scratch.  This is pretty painful because
>> there are now something like eighty missing channels ...
> 
> I believe that how mythfilldatabase updates the channels depends on
> what sort of card it's assigned to. With an HDHomerun, you can't just
> grab the channels from schedules direct. You generally need to do a
> channel scan to get the proper info filled in. Now, I'm not sure how
> the Prime is setup in myth, but I was thinking it just used the same
> recorder class as a regular HDHomerun. If that's the case, then
> mythfilldatabase probably doesn't know how to distinguish a regular
> HDHR from a Prime, and thus it figures it better not add the channels
> because it won't have all the necessary info.

I didn't know it was that smart.  I was always very wary of hitting that
butten when editing the input connection for my old HDHR.

The two cases are handled by the same code and mythbackend figures out
the tuning method on the fly by the contents of the channel record.
There should probably be a flag in the database for the HDHR tuner that
indicates whether it has a CableCard.  I wonder if there's a way for
mythtvsetup to figure this out.  Some sanity checking for consistency
would be even better.

> I'm not sure what method you'd thus have to use. You could try
> assigning the source to another type of recorder, updating the
> channels, and then assigning it back to the Prime recorder. I can't
> say whether that will fill in the necessary fields or not. It might
> screw them up and you'd have to delete the source and start over. I
> really don't know. Does the scan option actually do anything on a
> Prime when the cablecard is installed?

That sounds like a reasonable workaround.  I'll give it a try during
tomorrow's maintenance window.

I'm using the same input source that I used to use for firewire
recording.  In both cases the only thing needed for tuning is the
virtual channel number.  I can temporarily add the firewire recorder
again to update the channel table.  I'm getting pretty tired of doing
the delete all and add new dance, though.

I'd be very surprised if the scanner did the right thing.  I'm pretty
sure that it will try to do a clear QAM scan, which as near as I can
tell will actually find all the clear QAM channels even though a
CableCard is installed.  At least that's what my experiments with the
hdhomerun_config scanner seem to indicate.  That's probably worth a
warning for the unwary ...