United Kingdom
Started on: 08-01-2012
last update: 08-01-2012
Summary: To make Freeview/DVB-T channel scanning and management more like a STB and avoid the need to use TV Server config to do these tasks.
Area: TV, Usability, Configuration
Description: Currently, because TV Server has to be able to cope with multiple providers, such as Freesat, it is unable to manage Freeview/DVB-T channel scanning and management (including deleting no longer broadcasting channels) as well as a STB.
I don't know how many MP users there are in the UK (and other countries where DVB-T is the main/default broadcast method) who also use other providers, but I would imagine there's quite a few who, like myself, only have DVB-T USB sticks or PCI cards. There may also be a large number of such people currently using other HTPC software, such as Windows Media Center, SageTV, MythTV, etc, who have been put off, or may be put off, MP because of the complications with DVB-T channel scanning at the moment (although I don't have any experience with those apps, so don't know if they're actually any easier. Even if not, making MP more user-friendly than everything else can only make it more attractive!)
Rather than complicate TV Server config with extra settings or create a separate version for DVB-T owners only, my suggestion is to have a separate app which only handles Freeview/DVB-T channel scanning and management, including creating groups and adding/deleting channels to/from them and moving the position of channels in the groups. Ideally this app should be a full-screen large GUI style program that can be operated by a remote, very much like MP itself.
I'm not sure how similar/different Freeview and DVB-T used in other countries are, so it may be that there needs to be a setting for this, to alter the apps behaviour as required. For the rest of this post, I'll just use Freeview to refer to both.
I don't think there's any problem with scanning whilst TVService or MP is running, but I believe it can't be done from MP itself. So I would suggest that a menu item in MP launches the Freeview app, putting MP into the background until the app is closed.
I found a rather handy little app called ScanChannelsBDA_UK that grabs channel information and writes it to a log. I've attached the output from v2.4.5.1 and a v2.6.3.0 modded for SageTV as described here ScanChannelsBDA for SageTV - SageTV Community The source code is available to download from there as well.
Hopefully this app could be used in some way to reduce the amount of work needed to develop the Freeview app, with whatever information MP needs from what is grabbed extracted and pushed into MP's TV database. I imagine the database may need to be modified slightly to make room for extra information that TV Server currently doesn't use, but perhaps there's already plenty of space for that.
Once the scanning has finished, the Freeview app should display a "Channels list", with up/down arrows and a delete button at the end of each line, much like MP's Music Playlist, to allow for channels to be repositioned or deleted. This would work by clicking OK when one of the arrows is highlighted, which would "pickup" the channel and then it can be moved up/down using the navigational pad on the remote. Clicking OK again would "drop" the channel at the current position. Clicking OK on the delete button would display a prompt asking if the user was sure before deleting the channel.
On this page there would also be a New Group button, which would create a new group (after prompting for a name) with all the channels in it and the user can then go to the tab for that group and delete the ones they don't want in it. Alternatively, OK could be used on the "Channels list" tab to highlight/unhighlight channels and only the highlighted ones would be added to the new group, but I'm not sure this would save the user much time or effort compared to the other approach and would no doubt involve substantial extra coding.
On each group tab, there would be the same ability to reposition and delete channels as on the "Channels list" tab. Of course, if a channel is deleted from that tab, it would be removed from any groups it had been added to as well. There should also be a "Delete Group" button on each group tab, to delete that group after prompting to confirm.
On the "Channels list" tab, there should be a "Restore previously deleted channels on scan" checkbox, which would cause any previously deleted channels to be added back into the list on the next scan. Even if this is unticked, if a user has deleted a channel and on the next scan the app detects a channel with a different name on that PID/SID, it should add that channel and then the user can determine for themselves whether it's the same channel with a new name and delete it if they wish. The list of deleted channels could be stored in a file in the Freeview app's folder, to compare against the data from the next scan to determine whether a particular channel should be added or not, avoiding the need to store this information in TV Server's database.
Unfortunately my graphical skills are probably worse than my coding skills, so any attempt to make a mockup would entail me trying to find similar things to what I had in mind and cutting and pasting them in the style of Frankenstein and would look pretty rubbish. I'll try and work out how normal people do mock-ups some time
Anyway, I'm aware that there's only a limited number of devs working on the TV side of MP, but hopefully my ideas might appeal to them or someone else who can code and has more time and thinks the work necessary would be worth it in the end.
last update: 08-01-2012
Summary: To make Freeview/DVB-T channel scanning and management more like a STB and avoid the need to use TV Server config to do these tasks.
Area: TV, Usability, Configuration
Description: Currently, because TV Server has to be able to cope with multiple providers, such as Freesat, it is unable to manage Freeview/DVB-T channel scanning and management (including deleting no longer broadcasting channels) as well as a STB.
I don't know how many MP users there are in the UK (and other countries where DVB-T is the main/default broadcast method) who also use other providers, but I would imagine there's quite a few who, like myself, only have DVB-T USB sticks or PCI cards. There may also be a large number of such people currently using other HTPC software, such as Windows Media Center, SageTV, MythTV, etc, who have been put off, or may be put off, MP because of the complications with DVB-T channel scanning at the moment (although I don't have any experience with those apps, so don't know if they're actually any easier. Even if not, making MP more user-friendly than everything else can only make it more attractive!)
Rather than complicate TV Server config with extra settings or create a separate version for DVB-T owners only, my suggestion is to have a separate app which only handles Freeview/DVB-T channel scanning and management, including creating groups and adding/deleting channels to/from them and moving the position of channels in the groups. Ideally this app should be a full-screen large GUI style program that can be operated by a remote, very much like MP itself.
I'm not sure how similar/different Freeview and DVB-T used in other countries are, so it may be that there needs to be a setting for this, to alter the apps behaviour as required. For the rest of this post, I'll just use Freeview to refer to both.
I don't think there's any problem with scanning whilst TVService or MP is running, but I believe it can't be done from MP itself. So I would suggest that a menu item in MP launches the Freeview app, putting MP into the background until the app is closed.
I found a rather handy little app called ScanChannelsBDA_UK that grabs channel information and writes it to a log. I've attached the output from v2.4.5.1 and a v2.6.3.0 modded for SageTV as described here ScanChannelsBDA for SageTV - SageTV Community The source code is available to download from there as well.
Hopefully this app could be used in some way to reduce the amount of work needed to develop the Freeview app, with whatever information MP needs from what is grabbed extracted and pushed into MP's TV database. I imagine the database may need to be modified slightly to make room for extra information that TV Server currently doesn't use, but perhaps there's already plenty of space for that.
Once the scanning has finished, the Freeview app should display a "Channels list", with up/down arrows and a delete button at the end of each line, much like MP's Music Playlist, to allow for channels to be repositioned or deleted. This would work by clicking OK when one of the arrows is highlighted, which would "pickup" the channel and then it can be moved up/down using the navigational pad on the remote. Clicking OK again would "drop" the channel at the current position. Clicking OK on the delete button would display a prompt asking if the user was sure before deleting the channel.
On this page there would also be a New Group button, which would create a new group (after prompting for a name) with all the channels in it and the user can then go to the tab for that group and delete the ones they don't want in it. Alternatively, OK could be used on the "Channels list" tab to highlight/unhighlight channels and only the highlighted ones would be added to the new group, but I'm not sure this would save the user much time or effort compared to the other approach and would no doubt involve substantial extra coding.
On each group tab, there would be the same ability to reposition and delete channels as on the "Channels list" tab. Of course, if a channel is deleted from that tab, it would be removed from any groups it had been added to as well. There should also be a "Delete Group" button on each group tab, to delete that group after prompting to confirm.
On the "Channels list" tab, there should be a "Restore previously deleted channels on scan" checkbox, which would cause any previously deleted channels to be added back into the list on the next scan. Even if this is unticked, if a user has deleted a channel and on the next scan the app detects a channel with a different name on that PID/SID, it should add that channel and then the user can determine for themselves whether it's the same channel with a new name and delete it if they wish. The list of deleted channels could be stored in a file in the Freeview app's folder, to compare against the data from the next scan to determine whether a particular channel should be added or not, avoiding the need to store this information in TV Server's database.
Unfortunately my graphical skills are probably worse than my coding skills, so any attempt to make a mockup would entail me trying to find similar things to what I had in mind and cutting and pasting them in the style of Frankenstein and would look pretty rubbish. I'll try and work out how normal people do mock-ups some time
Anyway, I'm aware that there's only a limited number of devs working on the TV side of MP, but hopefully my ideas might appeal to them or someone else who can code and has more time and thinks the work necessary would be worth it in the end.
