Roger James wrote:
...
This is the bit that has confused me in the past. I have been reading your
previous posts, so before going on let met verify some terminology.
Station - programming source of a media stream, which may be simultaneously
made available (broadcast) via number of different channels. i.e. MTV or
BBC1, the content.
Channel - a broadcast instance of a stations media stream. i.e., a UHF
analog signal, a stream of a digital multiplex, etc, the transport
mechanism.
Right, but I like a little more shock value to see the forest
rather than the trees.
Channel - a frequency or identifier for a TV set (or receiving device)
to distinguish the broadcast signal.
Station - a building with employees and lots of wires often with a
tower on top or on a nearby hill.
CNN is where Arron Brown works. "20" is a sequence of two buttons
on my remote control. When I press these buttons at my house, the
tuner picks up the signal from Cox Communications in Las Vegas
which is showing a picture of Arron Brown.
So my confusion is, does a video source define a set of channels or
Channels. The station CNN in Atlanta, GA has reported their listings
of planned broadcasts in UTC to TMS and others. CNN ignores these
listings and show "State of Emergency" hurricane coverage all day
(BTW www.redcross.org) but that's not the point =). Cox in Las Vegas
is in Pacific daylight savings time and broadcasts CNN over frequency
20. So, I get Arron Brown on channel 20 at 7PM PDT. Somewhere in Ohio
the same broadcast is simultaneously shown on channel 34 at 10PM EDT.
stations. The way in mythtv that you associate a particular video source
with a particular input, would seem to suggest that it should define
channels, but the way in which you interface it to a listings provider
suggests that it should define stations.
See the KVBC example in the attached. The same station is carried
over two channels (digital and analog) from the same provider but
the listings are different per channel. This is not uncommon.
In my case a small number of the stations available via digital terrestrial
channels are also available via analog terrestrial channels.
I'm not familiar with TV in the UK but if these have different
tuning information then I would think that they would require
separate rows in the channel table.
My fixed setup now has two video sources both using an an xmltv grabber. I
suspect this means I am now grabbing some listings twice. I now have some
Yes but no big deal. Even if you expect these listings to all be
the same, they don't have to be and they are not for other myth
users like myself.
"duplicate" entries in my channel sql table, but I have given these the same
channel number and callsign. This means that only one of them is shown in
the EPG.
Good enough.
-- bjm
--- Begin Message ---
Geoffrey, we haven't heard from you in a while and I assumed
you'd moved on to better things.
Do see the examples in the posts that Mike pointed to but I'd
like to touch on some key points here.
Geoffrey Hausheer wrote:
I have a setup with 2 PVR250s (well, one is a M179, but whatever), one
of which tunes directly from Cable, and the other tunes through an STB.
The direct-tuning gets channels 1-100, whereas the STB can get channels
1-999 (or there-abouts)
This is a very common situation. Most people that have digital
cable also have analog channels and set two sources. I have this
myself and this config was certainly accounted for in testing
the new scheduler and beyond.
Today, I need 2 DD subscriptions, with overlapping channels, which also
means that my low channels (1-100) show up twice in the EPG.
Minor point but you should be able to have one zap2it account and
set two 'lineups". They allow up to 4 per account.
If the channel number and the "callsign" match, the EPG should only
show one line. I suspect that this and what follows are the result
of mis-matched callsigns.
In addition, I can't use 'Record on ths channel' and have the scheduler
be efficient.
Channels with the same callsign are considered to be the same
"station" so if the same show appears in both listings, it could
choose to record from any of the matching channels.
My question is, would anyone object to moving channels over to using
dtv_multiplex (or something similar)? It looks like dtv_multiplex is
designed to seperate the channel number from the card. In this way, I
could have a single subscription (all my channels), and then set the
secnd card to only pick up a subset of the channels.
Careful here. There are obvious distinctions between "channels" and
"stations" that can easily be forgotten and assume they are the same
thing. The are not.
Channel - a frequency or identifier for a TV set (or receiving device)
to distinguish the broadcast signal.
Station - a building with employees and lots of wires often with a
tower on top or on a nearby hill.
Obviously, channel 3 in one city carries a different station than
channel 3 in another. In Las Vegas, KVBC (NBC) is on channel 3 but
KVBC is also carried on digital channel 123.
Channel 3 and 123 have mostly the same listings, however, 123 carries
some local politics show instead of Ebert & Roper on the weekends and
during the first half of Leno on weekdays. Both "channels" primarily
carry the same "station" but the listings, when done correctly, are
different. Many people have reported that that have a station 24hrs
from one source and only during part of the day from another source
with a different station the rest of the time (CNN Headline news
over night for example).
Listings are given per channel not per station. I could complacently
assume that all KVBC listings are the same and could be copied to
other KVBCs. If they were identical, it wouldn't matter either way
but when they are different, this would be a problem.
Is there a better way to do this? The downside is that it could
complicate channel setup (though the default would remain as they are
today...when a card is assigned a provider, it gets all channels from
that provider)
Just a thought. If this is a reasonable proposal, I'll try to work up a
patch.
Even though this may work for you for now, there really needs to be
a unique chanid for each provider/channel and listings in the program
table for the shows that will be carried over the channel for that
chanid.
That said, it sounds like you are proposing that you should have
one video source but a different set or subset of channels from
that source associated with an input. That may work but that actually
loses some functionality. Say you have one source with ch 1-999. Your
digital input has chanid 1001-1945 and for your analog inputs, chanids
1003-1073. There is no distinction between 1003 from the analog input
and 1003 on the digital input. Currently, by having two different
sources I can use channel priority to choose if I'd prefer 1003 over
2003 or visa versa.
-- bjm
--- End Message ---
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