Sky IT / UK / UK Freesat EPG (4 Viewers)

[sjb]

DJBlu/miroslav22: I have another question if you have the time.
Sky Australia seem to broadcast duplicate channel data in the BAT. You get the same nid/tid/sid/channel number with 2 different Sky channel numbers, one of which is correct. The only bytes in the channel info that I couldn't work out are at the end after the type (which seems to have values straight out of the DVB standard). There's 2 bytes there that don't seem to be flags, maybe a link ID. I'm talking about the B1 descriptor here by the way.

Do you have any info on these bytes?

Just for your info the app this is for is a CSharp Windows utility that I Intend will eventually support all the known formats of EPG. It currently does EIT, MHEG5 and OpenTV and produces an XMLTV file. It's available on Sourceforge (EPG Collector) and the code will be Open Source. I also intend to document all the formats so that they are generally available and not hidden away in the code of people like you and me. So any help you can give me will help the DVB community not just MP users.

And thanks for your help so far - it's appreciated.

Steve

 

[DJBlu]

DJBlu/miroslav22: I have another question if you have the time.
Sky Australia seem to broadcast duplicate channel data in the BAT. You get the same nid/tid/sid/channel number with 2 different Sky channel numbers, one of which is correct. The only bytes in the channel info that I couldn't work out are at the end after the type (which seems to have values straight out of the DVB standard). There's 2 bytes there that don't seem to be flags, maybe a link ID. I'm talking about the B1 descriptor here by the way.

Do you have any info on these bytes?

This is the Channel Description, the information that pops up if you are not subscribed to that channel, it is encoded in huffman. B1 is the sync byte, The second byte is the length of the description.

I'll take a look into your project and will add some stuff if I can.

 

[sjb]

Sorry, my description wasn't very clear.

The BAT section has a list of transport streams and each transport stream has a list of descriptors.

One of those descriptors has an ID of B1 which is where I am getting the info to link nid/tid/sid/channel ID/Sky channel number. At the end of the descriptor there is a service type and then 2 bytes that I can't figure out.

I thought they might be a clue to how I can differentiate between the duplicate channels with different Sky channel numbers.

Maybe you don't get the channel info the same way?

 

[DJBlu]

Sorry, my description wasn't very clear.

The BAT section has a list of transport streams and each transport stream has a list of descriptors.

One of those descriptors has an ID of B1 which is where I am getting the info to link nid/tid/sid/channel ID/Sky channel number. At the end of the descriptor there is a service type and then 2 bytes that I can't figure out.

I thought they might be a clue to how I can differentiate between the duplicate channels with different Sky channel numbers.

Maybe you don't get the channel info the same way?

Do you have regional Channels?

In the UK we have channels such as BBC1 Wales, BBC 1 North West. These are allocated Channel 101 based on the viewers location.

If you take a look at the Region Codes in the file in my signature you will see all the regions we have in the UK.

If I remember rightly the first byte is the Bouquet which the channel belongs to and the second is the region.

Say you have BBC1 A, BBC1 B, BBC1 C

These will all belong to lets say "Entertainment" which is Bouquet ID - 01 but BBC1 A belongs to region A so the following will put BBC1 A at the top of the list

B1 01 01 - This will tell the sky box that BBC1 A is sky number 101 and the others are 901,902 etc

If you live in region B

B1 01 02 - This tells the sky box to use 101 for BBC 1 B, and 901 for BBC1 A etc

There are channels that have no region limitations which get a standard 0xFF byte

If you set a filter to look for all the channels that belong in "Region 1" and have the standard byte you will get your full channel lineup for that region.

I do not know if Australia has regional channels or not. I can try with a copy of the TS Stream I have here. If I get time I'll take a look into it.

EDIT

Just looked into it and it looks like you have ABC1 which is a regional Channel.

I'll run a few tests and come up with the regions.

There are the following Bouquet ID's The first 2 bytes of the Bouquet Loop

25184
25185
25186
25187
25189
25190

And the following are the Region ID's The 3rd byte from the B1 byte

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
21
22
26
31
33
37
129
131
133
135
140
141
142
144
130
132
134
136
137
138
139
143
145
146
147
149
150
154
159
161
165

If you set your code to filter for Bouquet ID 25184 and Region ID 1 & 255 you'll see what I mean.

I have just scanned my file I have here with

Bouquet ID - 25184
Region ID's - 255,37 and 127(Seems to be default for Setanta Sports)

And got the following Channel Line Up

View attachment Channs.txt#

Hope this helps.

 

[DJBlu]

View attachment TSWriterRC4.zip

Attached is a copy of TSWriter.ax with a new method of Huffman Table selection.

This is a lot faster than other releases, as I have changed it a little.

I have taken out the quick search and numbering as I believe these were at fault for the crashes. I will look into getting the quick search into the SVN at a later date.

This file will update your EPG only. It will add the classifications to films and add the categories.

Copy all files into your TV Server directory.

EDIT

This should work for Australians now, can someone please test and get back to me.

 

[wonkyd]

View attachment 63964

Attached is a copy of TSWriter.ax with a new method of Huffman Table selection.

This is a lot faster than other releases, as I have changed it a little.

I have taken out the quick search and numbering as I believe these were at fault for the crashes. I will look into getting the quick search into the SVN at a later date.

This file will update your EPG only. It will add the classifications to films and add the categories.

Copy all files into your TV Server directory.

EDIT

This should work for Australians now, can someone please test and get back to me.

Guide working well here in the UK on RC4. Thanks DJBlu

 

[Jay_UK]

Hi there,

Can you please confirm....With this "release":

1) Sky EPG grabbing is present
2) "quick scan" functionality is not present
2) Sky channel numbering is not present
3) Group by category/provider is present

Many thanks,

J.

 

[DJBlu]

Hi there,

Can you please confirm....With this "release":

1) Sky EPG grabbing is present. TRUE
2) "quick scan" functionality is not present TRUE
2) Sky channel numbering is not present TRUE
3) Group by category/provider is present FALSE The categorys of the EPG Events are included


Many thanks,

J.

Answered

 

[pisdu]

Wonderful work DJBlu , working like a charm
Thanks a lot !!!

 

[sjb]

DJBlu: Thanks for the info. The layout matches up with what I see here in NZ, haven't tried it with my Oz mates yet.

The channel description in the TXT file - did you get that out of the bouquet as well. You mentioned something about a Huffman encoded channel name in the earlier post but I've always used the one in the SDT.

When I document all these protocols can I put you on my (very short) mailing list for filling in the blanks/reviewing contents etc?

Steve