Sandy Heath BBC2 Digital Switchover - What next?

[emotionnotion]

Folks,

Sandy Heath (East of England) switched off the analogue BBC signal yesterday.

My HDHomeruns and SageTV no longer receive a signal for BBC2.

What is the SIMPLEST way of retuning a single channel without messing up the SageTV Channels, sequence and XMLTV/EPG mapping?

Its been so long since I set this up, not sure on how best to make this initial change.

Next month these switch all the others OFF

[brewston]

Not many people seem to mention this feature, but I use the 'scan for updated channels' feature. It keeps all existing channels in place but reports when a channel has moved physically and give you the option to remap to the new physical address. Assuming the call sign (BBC-2) stays the same then the mapping to XMLTV should stay too (Even that isn't too difficult to remap in the same screen)

Before you start, create a system restore point (XP, I assume newer Windows have it too) and just roll back if things don't go well...

[emotionnotion]

Mmmm.

I imported my channels, FRQs via XMLTV.

The only option I see under video sources is SCAN AVAILABLE CHANNELS.

Doesn;t that mess everything up; SageTV is telling me I have never done a channel scan; which is correct. I did it in a separate version, manually mapped all the channels and then imported this into my production sage environment to specifically avoid channel scanning.

Is this the same option (I see no Updated channel scan option).

[brewston]

Under scan available channels, there are 2 options - full channel scan or updated scan (I'm paraphrasing since I'm not in front of it) But since Sage doesn't think you've ever done a scan, it might force a complete scan.

I think your other option is to find the correct frq details and edit the file - I'm sure others wil chime in on this bit..

[fac13]

Originally Posted by brewston

I think your other option is to find the correct frq details and edit the file - I'm sure others wil chime in on this bit..

Agree with that. When we switched over here all I did was prepare new frq files in advance using published information about the new muxes and frequencies.

Then on switch-over day all I had to do was swap in the new frq files (and, ahem, correct my typos). No need for changes to anything else. It works, it's quick, you can see what is happening and regression is a doddle.

I've seen the "scan for updated channels" feature, but bad experiences using earlier versions of Sage's channel management software have put me off.

Digiguide plus DG2XML plus Stéphane's importer plus Windows Notepad have served me very well. These days on the rare occasion when I want to try a Sage scan I backup my Sage Program Files folder first and restore it afterwards.

[emotionnotion]

That makes sense; I use Digiguide, XMLGUI and notepad too.

My issue is where to get the new frequencies from?

Or, I guess I need to backup the filw, run a sage rescan and cut and paste the difference from the new properties/frq.

SJG

[rickgillyon]

Or just use ScanChannelsDBA to get the file entries, and compare.

[emotionnotion]

Fixed it but cheated to keep it simple

I used ScanChannelsBDA which worked fine but, I could not work out how to take entries from the logfile and put them into the tuner FRQs.

So, I installed a temporary copy of Sage Server on a laptop, ran a full channel scan in Sage (against my network Tuners - HDHomeruns) and then copied the changed channel entries from the digital switchover (BBC1 and BBC2) from the test server FRQ files into my real Windows Home Server FRQs.

Restarted the sage service and Voila!! Tuned in BBC1 and BBC2



I would like to know if anybody has a guide for which LOG entries from ScanChannelDBA you put into the tuner FRQ files though for the end of the month when ALL ANALOGUE channels get switched off

[fac13]

Originally Posted by emotionnotion

I would like to know if anybody has a guide for which LOG entries from ScanChannelDBA you put into the tuner FRQ files though for the end of the month when ALL ANALOGUE channels get switched off

Provided you've used a recent version of the utility then down near the bottom it outputs the lines you need to copy and paste to make a frq file.

Edit: Sorry, perhaps I misunderstood. If you are scanning before switchover then nothing in the file can be guaranteed to be of any use to you afterwards. Were you hoping it would tell you what the future frequencies would be?

I found information about the switchover changes in my area via google.

[emotionnotion]

I was using ScanChannelsDBA after the switchover.

I did not know the SageTV piece was right at the end.

The problem is the utility times out at 642000 Khz time and time again and does not complete through to the end.

That is probably why I could not find the entries for putting into the SageTV FRQ files

Question is, why does it time out rather than continuing to completion?

[fac13]

I'm not sure why your scan on your HDHomerun tuner is timing out, that's odd. The only problems I've had have been with scans on my DVB-T2 tuner, which does timeout when it encounters a frequency broadcasting a DVB-T2 mux.

Do you know whether 642000 in your area is used for HD? If so it could be a similar problem with the utility.