Mailing List Archive

19.9 Removing unwanted channels?
I know that it says in 19.9 of the official howtos that I can prevent
unwanted channels from being added again by editing and commenting out
those channels in ~/.mythtv/<name>.xmltv but that file is empty.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
-Tako
Re: 19.9 Removing unwanted channels? [ In reply to ]
Tako Schotanus wrote:
>
> I know that it says in 19.9 of the official howtos that I can prevent
> unwanted channels from being added again by editing and commenting out
> those channels in ~/.mythtv/<name>.xmltv but that file is empty.

The <name> part is the name you used in the Video sources
when you ran "setup". "~" is the home directory of the user
when "setup" was run. "mythfilldatabase" should always be
run by the same user that ran "setup".

If that file exists but is empty, I'd guess that XMLTV
failed when it was called by "setup". Check the terminal
messages to see if this is the case. Fix the XMLTV problem
then run "setup" again.

In this example, I'll use "CoxCable" and the user home dir
is /home/bjm for user bjm. When I run "setup" and and choose
"3. Video sources", I enter "CoxCable" then enter zip code
89074. After a few seconds, the following message appear on
the terminal:


starting manual configuration process..


getting list of providers for postal/zip code 89074, be patient..
updating provider description to: Cox Communications - Las Vegas

getting channel list, be patient..
adding channel 2 KCLV..
adding channel 3 KVBC..
...
adding channel 78 SHOWP..
adding channel 79 TMCP..

updating /home/bjm/.mythtv/CoxCable.xmltv..

After I finish with setup but before I run mythfilldatabase,
I want to comment out Showtime so I edit the file
/home/bjm/.mythtv/CoxCable.xmltv . I find the line:

channel: 78 SHOWP

then change it to:

#channel: 78 SHOWP

Now when I run mythfilldatabase it doesn't grab data for
channel 78.

If weeks later run setup, use the same name and zip code,
it may add new channels and delete channels that no longer
exist but it appears that it will leave the commented
channels just as they are.

I hope this helps,

-- bjm
Re: 19.9 Removing unwanted channels? [ In reply to ]
Bruce Markey wrote:

> Tako Schotanus wrote:
>
>>
>> I know that it says in 19.9 of the official howtos that I can prevent
>> unwanted channels from being added again by editing and commenting
>> out those channels in ~/.mythtv/<name>.xmltv but that file is empty.
>
>
> The <name> part is the name you used in the Video sources
> when you ran "setup". "~" is the home directory of the user
> when "setup" was run. "mythfilldatabase" should always be
> run by the same user that ran "setup".

Of course, and locate only finds one <name>/xmltv on my entire system
which is in the home of the mythtv's user. No problem there. The file
exists, it's just empty.

> If that file exists but is empty, I'd guess that XMLTV
> failed when it was called by "setup". Check the terminal
> messages to see if this is the case. Fix the XMLTV problem
> then run "setup" again.

I'm not sure about that, but what could it have done? I chose the
tv_grab_nl (after making a symbolic link from tv_grab_nl_wolf because
its MUCH faster than tv_grab_nl). Should the script have an option to
make that list? Or does the setup make it?

I didn't run "mythfilldatabase -manual" but I don't think that has
anything to do with it?
(why didn't I run it? I just didn't like the interface much so I did the
same work using mysqlcc directly in the database)

> I hope this helps,

Not yet, but thanks anyway :-)

-Tako

>
>
> -- bjm
>
>
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> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: 19.9 Removing unwanted channels? [ In reply to ]
Tako Schotanus wrote:
...
> I'm not sure about that, but what could it have done? I chose the
> tv_grab_nl (after making a symbolic link from tv_grab_nl_wolf because
> its MUCH faster than tv_grab_nl). Should the script have an option to
> make that list? Or does the setup make it?

I see. For the second time today I've assumed the behavior
of tv_grab_na which may not apply to other grabbers. The
"nl" might not actually store a list of channels in this
file. In that case, I'm not sure how to prevent it from
grabbing unwanted channel information. Hopefully someone
who uses a similar grabber may have some ideas.

Since these grab scripts are written in perl, it may be
possible to modify the scripts to ignore listings from the
unwanted channel but there may be an easier way.

-- bjm
RE: 19.9 Removing unwanted channels? [ In reply to ]
Ok, just to be sure: it's the grab script that should do the pruning?
Would it be possible to (also) define it in the database?
I tried to see if I could set the channel number in the database to
NULL, thinking that NULL would be an obviously illegal number so MythTV
would hopefully ignore it. It doesn't of course, but it could be made I
guess.

What I imagine is that this is another difference between the parts of
the world: probably in the States there are so many channels that you
could save quite a lot of time not retrieving the information about
channels you're never going to watch anyway. Is that true?

Here the tv_grab_nl_wolf script just downloads a pregenerated xml file
containing all the possible channels (there aren't that many, about 30
max I think). The script is extremely simple as you can imagine
(download file <year><month><day>.xmltv from server X) so doing the
filtering on top of the database would keep the script as simple as it
can be. Even better, you could easily make an interface where you could
select which channels to show and which to hide.

But again, if the practical situation in the rest of the world prevents
you from just downloading all channel data this wouldn't be much of an
option for the rest of you. (still would be nice though if MythTV and
MythWeb would ignore channels with NULL channel numbers ;-).

Cheers,
-Tako

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net] On Behalf Of Bruce Markey
> Sent: vrijdag 13 juni 2003 3:38
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] 19.9 Removing unwanted channels?
>
>
> Tako Schotanus wrote:
> ...
> > I'm not sure about that, but what could it have done? I chose the
> > tv_grab_nl (after making a symbolic link from
> tv_grab_nl_wolf because
> > its MUCH faster than tv_grab_nl). Should the script have
> an option to
> > make that list? Or does the setup make it?
>
> I see. For the second time today I've assumed the behavior
> of tv_grab_na which may not apply to other grabbers. The
> "nl" might not actually store a list of channels in this
> file. In that case, I'm not sure how to prevent it from
> grabbing unwanted channel information. Hopefully someone
> who uses a similar grabber may have some ideas.
>
> Since these grab scripts are written in perl, it may be
> possible to modify the scripts to ignore listings from the
> unwanted channel but there may be an easier way.
>
> -- bjm
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
Re: 19.9 Removing unwanted channels? [ In reply to ]
fredag 13 juni 2003 03:38 skrev Bruce Markey:
> Tako Schotanus wrote:
> ...
>
> > I'm not sure about that, but what could it have done? I chose the
> > tv_grab_nl (after making a symbolic link from tv_grab_nl_wolf because
> > its MUCH faster than tv_grab_nl). Should the script have an option to
> > make that list? Or does the setup make it?
>
> I see. For the second time today I've assumed the behavior
> of tv_grab_na which may not apply to other grabbers. The
> "nl" might not actually store a list of channels in this
> file. In that case, I'm not sure how to prevent it from
> grabbing unwanted channel information. Hopefully someone
> who uses a similar grabber may have some ideas.
>

I use tv_grab_sn here, and I had a hell of a time going through this part of
the configuration. What I had to do, was run 'tv_grab_sn' with '--configure'
for the first time, this is to define the channels that its supposed to grab.
Now came the myth part, my grabber and my TV card did not agree on channel
numbers. An example, would be that the grabber identified a channel as
'26.da', while this channel here would be E10. This required, that I run
mythfilldatabase with '--manual' to edit the entire entry, but only for the
first time. Iff, this doesn't set the channels then I ran setup and told it
to empty the channel/program datatable ... all other settings as usual. Then
back to running mythfilldatabase --manual to manually set up the channels.
Took some time with 23 channels :-) To obtain the correct channel numbers, I
had to go through my xawtv configuration, but telling mythfilldatabase to do
this automatically did not solve the problems. This would tell myth, the
correct channels, but mythfilldatabase would not know what channel belongs to
what, as the '26.da' is actually the channel id as defined on the grabber
side, and would be an identification number in the database as
'26.datablablah.com', without which the table is never filled in correctly.
So, print on a piece of paper (for now) and then having it in hand, while
running mythfilldatabase in manual mode was the only solution for me.

Hope that helps.

Orn