UK Freeview channel changes (1 Viewer)

[Anthony Vaughan]

Hi CyberSimian

I found ScanChannelsBDA_UK very useful. BTW, it showed 746000 as having good strength and signal, but no channels. Interestingly, MediaPortal picks up the channels for 746000 from Crystal Palace.

I found a weird thing when I edited UK.Crystal Palace.xml. I created a copy first. Windows called it UK.Crystal Palace - Copy.xml. Then, when I went into TV Server Configuration, 'Crystal Palace - Copy' appeared in the Region/Provider field (dropdown) of the scanning screen. I realigned this to Crystal Palace for all of my tuners. I then removed 'UK.Crystal Palace - Copy' and the next time I opened TV Server Configuration > Scanning, Darvel appeared in all of my tuners. Now, I think this is a bit weird, because I would have expected the Region/Provider field to be selected by name, when it in fact seems to be selecting by position in the list.

This was very confusing. I only noticed this behaviour because every time I scanned I was getting the old tuning parameters when I new I had deleted 754000 from the list. It was then that I noticed that the Region/Provider field was saying Crystal Palace - Copy and I went through the procedure I described above.

BTW, you can test for Review hanging the next time there is a channel change and try viewing one of the moved channels. I forgot to mention that when I try to view a channel from the EPG that hangs in the TV Channels area, the EPG also hangs. So, I think the issue is serious and will need one of the developers to fix it

Tony

 

[CyberSimian]

it showed 746000 as having good strength and signal, but no channels. Interestingly, MediaPortal picks up the channels for 746000 from Crystal Palace.

There were two "temporary" MUXes in the 700MHz band for Crystal Palace (746MHz and 754MHz), and the recent retune event removed one of them. The remaining MUX (746MHz) is a DVB-T2 MUX. Unfortunately, ScanChannelsBDA_UK does not understand DVB-T2, and so it cannot list the channels present in that MUX. But at least it indicates that there is a signal at that frequency, and displays the signal strength and quality.

Note that although the 746MHz MUX is DVB-T2, it is likely to contain mostly standard-definition channels, and perhaps only one or two high definition channels. This is because most broadcasters of the lesser channels cannot afford the higher transmission costs of HD.

I then removed 'UK.Crystal Palace - Copy' and the next time I opened TV Server Configuration > Scanning, Darvel appeared in all of my tuners.

Yes, this is a known problem. I have been caught out by this several times . I suspect that it is as you suggest -- "TV Server Config" remembers the position in the list, whereas it would be more sensible to remember the name of the tuning-parameters file. Maybe someday this will be changed.

try viewing one of the moved channels.

Whenever I retune "TV Server", I always sort the channels by number and then look for duplicates. With the "Enable channel movement" setting selected, TV Server can in some cases match up the old channel with the new and avoid creating a duplicate, but TV Server cannot do this in every case. When I find duplicates, one channel will work, but the other (usually) will not. However, I still get the pop-up saying that TV Server could not tune the non-working channel (there are several different pop-ups that can appear, depending on the circumstances; for an explanation, look at the "Start/Stop Timeshift" section towards the end of this page in the Wiki).

One possibility occurs to me. For timeshifting and recording, there is a setting that allows you to specify how many tuners you want TV Server to try if the first attempt at tuning a channel fails. When I first started using MP I set this to "try all tuners". The disadvantage with that is that the system appears locked up when you select a non-working channel from the EPG. The system is not actually locked up -- TV Server is trying all of the tuners allowed, with a lengthy timeout for each.

These days I have changed my settings so that TV Server tries only one tuner. If TV Server cannot tune the channel using that tuner, it is unlikely to be successful using any of the other tuners. The following screen shot shows the setting not to use for "Recordings" (there is a similar setting for "Timeshifting":



Check what values you have for these settings. If you are using "0", try changing them to "1".

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[Anthony Vaughan]

Hi CyberSimian

Thank you. That helped me understand why ScanChannelsBDA_UK didn't show the 746's.

I had my TV Server tries set to 3. I've set it to 1 and will report back on whether that changes things.

Tony

 

[Anthony Vaughan]

Hi CyberSimian

I'm afraid that settings TV Server tries to 1 hasn't stopped the configuration program from hanging when reviewing a channel that doesn't exist anymore; so, I guess, the issue must lie elsewhere.

Tony

 

[CyberSimian]

I'm afraid that settings TV Server tries to 1 hasn't stopped the configuration program from hanging when reviewing a channel that doesn't exist anymore; so, I guess, the issue must lie elsewhere.