[mythtv-users] All BBC channels are gone

[Simon Hobson]

Thomas Boehm wrote:

>It looks like the digital switchover starts today. I might be a bit
>daft, but am I not using digital already?

The switchover goes in several stages - we went through it some time 
ago, once again the North West (Winter Hill transmitter) lead where 
others follow :-)

Up until yesterday you'll have been getting a limited number of 
muxes, at low power, that will have been shoehorned into the spectrum 
at frequencies chosen to minimise interference with existing analogue 
channels.

The first step they do is to turn off BBC 2 on analogue to free up 
it's frequency - and replace it with one digital mux. That's why you 
need to rescan now to get all the channels back. I vaguely recall 
that this mux carried the main analogue channels meaning that people 
could switch to digital (ie drop analogue altogether and not have to 
keep switching analogue-digital) without losing anything.
 From http://help.digitaluk.co.uk/display/4/kb/article.aspx?aid=8168
>	*	At around midnight, the analogue BBC Two service and 
>the existing digital BBC services will be switched off at the 
>Crystal Palace transmitter and its fifty four relays.
>	*	The remaining analogue services, BBC One, ITV and 
>Channel 4 will continue to be available but may be subject to 
>interruptions.
>	*	The existing digital services broadcast from the main 
>Crystal Palace transmitter will remain on-air but are subject to 
>breaks in service.
>	*	Digital television services will be restored 
>throughout the day.

After a couple of weeks (giving people time to sort themselves out on 
digital) they will turn off the rest of the analogue and bring up all 
the digital muxes on their permanent frequencies. You will need to 
rescan again when this happens.
 From http://help.digitaluk.co.uk/display/4/kb/article.aspx?aid=8169
>	*	At around midnight, all analogue services will be 
>switched off and will stop broadcasting permanently.
>	*	During the day, new high powered digital services are 
>launched. Find out when your services will be available.

After that, you should be up and running with the permanent muxes.

For us, there then followed a seemingly never ending stream of minor 
channel changes (mostly replacing content (eg Men & Motors) with yet 
another shopping channel) - each requiring a rescan :-( Hopefully by 
now all that is more or less settled, there'll just be minor changes 
as channels come and go.

You might want to take a look at 
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Database_editing_script
edit the script to your own tastes, and you'll find it becomes much 
easier to rescan and reset your channel lineup.

Also, be aware that if you can get signals from more than one 
transmitter, you'll need to do a bit more work.
Either :

a)
Delete all channels and delete all transports. Manually scan only one 
frequency (you'll need to find the frequency of one main mux on your 
preferred transmitter) - this should pick up the other transports 
from that transmitter. Then "scan existing transports" to get all the 
channels.

b)
Manually delete transports from transmitters you don't want to use. 
Then scan existing transports.

-- 
Simon Hobson

Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed
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