Please help with HDHR & MP channel scan! (1 Viewer)

hamaholic

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November 10, 2009
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I have been working with this on/off for two weeks without success. I cannot get the single most important (to me) feature of MP working: watching tv with program guides. I am using the HDHomerun with the latest firmware and Schedulesdirect. The problem I find is that I get inconsistent and wrong channel identification.
A)The HDHomerun application correctly scans and identifies most of the channels both off-air and Clear QAM.
B)When I scan the HDHomerun tuner 0 in MP (set to digital antenna on the HDHomerun), it comes up with all the channels it found. Many are unknown and I edited them to agree with my SchedulesDirect lineup, or deleted them.
C)When I scan the HDHomerun tuner 1 in MP (set to digital cable on the HDHomerun), it picks up many channels but they are all "unidentified-{frequency-sub-channel}".

I can never get the EPG to populate the cable channels and I get errors because they are not mapped to a card. When I look at the properties of my channels, I find many problems:
1. The clear QAM channels are incorrectly identified as type ATSC, rather than DVB-C (although they are 256QAM).
2. Sometimes I have digital cable channels identified as "Analog" type, although the HDHomerun does not have an NTSC demodulator.
3. I get various mixtures of the above, when I rescan, or delete and rescan the channels.
4. The program guide sometimes populates the channel names and guide contents, sometimes not. I can't find any repeatability to the process.

Can someone please describe a WORK FLOW to get this configured properly? For example:
1. Scan all antenna channels.
2. Scan all cable channels.
3. Let the guide update
4. Combine channels
5. Edit channels to list as desired.
6. Map channels to groups.
7. ...

I would like to find a process that works consistently so that I can end my two week frustration trying to use this really attractive product! I think the confusion and problems come in the order of steps 3 through 6, but maybe there's something else wrong, as well.

Thanks for any help given!
Dean
 

hamaholic

Portal Member
November 10, 2009
6
0
Home Country
United States of America United States of America
MP + HDHomerun + SchedulesDirect EPG

This is from memory, so you may have to think a bit as you implement the installation...

To get the EPG working with MediaPortal 1.0.2 HDHomerun, and Schedulesdirect.

1. Uninstall MediaPortal, picking the option to drop the database.
2. Re-install MediaPortal. Apparently, there are some problems with updating the channel lists in the database that prevent you from succeeding with anything but a fresh database.
3. Scan your 1st HDHR tuner (the one with _0 in the server list) for channels (in my case "Digital Antenna")
4. From the TV Server config, identify the channels you want to keep. Name them as listed in your source for EPG info (schedulesdirect, in my case). Delete channels you definitely don't want. Make sure any channels you want are listed in the SchedulesDirect lineup corresponding to the tuner mode you are scanning (ATSC or QAM).
5. At this point, I created a group called "Off-Air" and moved all these channels into that group. (So I could easily identify which ones were off-air VS cable at a later time).
6. Scan your other tuner (the one with _1 in the server list) for channels (this was "Digital Cable" in my case).
7. Tortuously, ardously identify and name each channel in your digital cable list. The name should be the same as that of your EPG source (in my case, schedulesdirect.org). Other sources I used to identify the channels were:
A) Watching the channel for ID.
B) The Silicondust lineup server.
B) The schedulesdirect lineup server.
C) Other TV guides, etc. so that I could find the watermark/logo to identify the channel.

8. Add a group and move these into it (I called it "Clear QAM".
9. Under the manual setting, stop, then start the TV server. Start up MediaPortal and confirm all the channels are there and working. Exit from MediaPortal.
10. AFTER you get this working, and ONLY AFTER, install the schedulesdirect EPG plugin for the TV server.
11. Enable the plug-in, and configure it.
A) Let it add the channel numbers, if you wish.
B) Do NOT let it use the options to add new channels if they appear on your EPG source.
C) Do NOT have it delete any it doesn't find.
D) I usually check the box to update the EPG the next time the server starts.
12. Again, stop, then start the server.
13. Wait 5 minutes, then start MediaPortal.
12. You should see some, if not all, of the program guide filled in, as well as the channel numbers added to the channnels (as you configured in the EPG plugin).

These steps ended a month of frustration trying to get the channel ID and EPG working with MP/HDHR/SchedulesDirect. I hope it saves you time. I can't guarantee this will work for you, but it's what I remember worked for me.
 

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