Telenet analog-to-digital switch -- manually finding and inputting DVB-C channels in Mediaportal2 (1 Viewer)

Cordraconis

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July 26, 2016
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OK, this is specifically for people in Belgium (Vlaanderen) who are using Telenet Cable with MediaPortal 2.
Next year (Edit: this year, in march 2020) the Telenet provider will stop broadcasting Analog TV and Radio signals on their cable, and make the switch to Digital (DVB-C). The radio signals will disappear completely, so you'll have use an antenna - at least untill they also stop FM and switch to DAB+ within a few years rolleyes - but most of these radio stations were already on DVB-C free-to-air anyway and this is outside the scope of this article. The analog TV will go to a separate DVB-C stream at 290MHz (According to Telenet website, 298MHZ According to MediaPortal2???) in Standard Definition. So if you have your Mediaportal Server already set up for analog like me, this is how to UPGRADE to digital ;-)

Depending on where you live, the new DVB-C stream may not yet be on your cable, but I tested this in 2 different cities and while even not publicly advertised, the stream may already be there for testing purposes.

Mental note: I just realized that since this is a local phenomenon, I could just type this in Dutch, but hey, maybe other "World Citizens" find themselves in the same situation so I'll continue in Jean-Marie Pfaff English. (Inside joke for Belgians and Germans.)



UPDATE: Thx to Corona-shenanigans I have some time to kill, so I decided to wrestle with 2 Channels that the workflow below/Mediaportal2 dit NOT detect but my TV did. (And to remove all analog residue from my channel lists.)
In fact this is a shortcut to the explanation below, but I'll still post it here for posterity and maybe someone can still use it. (I remember a guy from the US who I tried to help with this... I'll search around later.)
In short: I used VLC player to open "Media > Capture device > TV-Digital" , choose DVB-C and used 290000kHz as the transponder frequency. After a few seconds it should start playing. Hit stop and then rightclick on the "dvb-c://frequency=290000000" line and choose Information > Codec after which you should see the internal allocations and id's of the DVB-C stream. Note there are some encrypted channels, so check first in VLC if they play before going trough the throuble to add them.
Tip for the MP2 developers: some sort of "stream explorer" so we don't need VLC for this. ;-) Also it is not possible to manually create channels? I cannibalized an encrypted DVB-C channel to add a channel...
Next up is to get this info into Mediaportal2, so open up the TV Server Configuration > TV Channels > SD SignalSwitch (I refer to the old explanation below on how to create this group.)
Rightclick on a channel > Edit Channel. Rightclick again on the DVB-C line and there you'll see the "Service ID" which we need to manually transfer from the VLC Stream info into Mediaportal2. Also notice that the last 2 numbers of the Service ID and the PMT ID are identical. By copy-pasting that info and adjusting the ID's, we now can manually input/create all the channels from the stream into Mediaportal2. Also don't forget to repeat all this with the other stream on 298MHz.

I tested it and both the old and the new channels are present and play OK. The EPG is a bit wonky, but probably this will be better tomorrow one everything is updated.




1) First of all you 'll need to search for the new DVB-C stream.
While maybe you could do the scanning manually, I have just used the "Scan For Channels" feature on one of my DVB-C cards in the "TV Configuration" utility.
I used the options "The Netherlands" and "ZIGGO_NL_ALL_SR6900_256QAM" since they worked a few years before when I was first struggling to set everything up. (Search my old posts if you need to. I also vaguely remember that the settings were somewhere in a file inside the Mediaportal directories, but since one can find all Telenet DVB-C streams with the Netherlands option, there is no real need for seperate country options.)
Check here on what you are supposed to find: Zenderoverzicht kabelabonnement Telenet

2) Next put the new channels you found in a separate "SD Signalswitch" group. So go trough all the unencrypted/green DVB-C channels you found and doublecheck the frequency with rightclick-->Edit (Details: 298.00... or 290.00...) and put them in the new group. Supertip: I put "SD-" in front of every new channel to make the mapping and merging easier.
Some unencrypted/green channels had a different name in the details section, so probably they renamed or shifted around a few things with Telenet? Best to check/rename them all while you are at it and check the frequency to determine if they should go to the new group.
Don't forget to go to "TV Channels > TV Mapping" and make sure the new DVB-C channels are mapped to both cards if you have multiple.

3) Clean up the new group "SD Signalswitch" by editing and renaming. I also went trough the trouble to check the "Preview" of everything to make sure and also did the Preview thing with the "Analog" group since after a few years some renaming was needed. Some analog channels will disappear, and for example Discovery Channel was not found in the new DVB-C stream but I know from my Panasonic TV that it is actually there so MediaPortal 2 missed it. I'll have to check that one out later. Also it didnt found the SD version of the national channels "Een" and "Canvas", but I knew they were already *UN*encrypted in HD on another stream, so I used those anyway.

4) After that, combine the channels from the new "SD Signalswitch" group with the Analog group in the "TV Chanels > Combinations" tab. Open the Analog tuner first and then check for the "SD-" prefixes. Works way better than the other way around.
Add any extra SD-channels you gained today in your "Favorite" group.

5) EPG



FINISHED! Basically that is it: you now should have 2 channels (one Analog and one Digital -- use the Edit button to check) under each entry in you "Favorite" group. Normally priority should be given to the DVB-C tuner over the analog tuner, so once the switch happens everything should keep working like now, but you could then afterwards remove the Analog tuning details from the "Favorite" group channels.


VLC-to-Mediaportal2-DVB-C--manual settings.jpg
 

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