[vdr] UK users - multiple BBC One/Two/News in channels list

[Laz]

On Wednesday 03 Nov 2010, Torgeir Veimo wrote:
> On 4 November 2010 09:24, Alasdair Campbell <alcoheca at gmail.com> wrote:
> > After leaving it for a few hours this is what I have, note BBC ONE at
> > the very bottom, the EPG is available here but no video stream, same
> > with BBC TWO elsewhere.
> 
> Here's my last working one, from two and a half year ago. Notice the
> frequencies are different;
> 
> BBC
> ONE;BBC:506000:C34D34M16B8T2G32Y0:T:27500:600:601=eng,602=eng:0:0:4164
> :9018:4100:0 BBC
> TWO;BBC:506000:C34D34M16B8T2G32Y0:T:27500:610:611=eng,612=eng:0:0:4228
> :9018:4100:0
> ITV1;ITV:482000:B8:T:27500:520:521=eng,522=eng:0:0:8261:9018:8197:0
> Channel 4;Channel 4
> TV:482000:B8:T:27500:560+8190:561=eng,562=eng:0:0:8384:9018:8197:0
> Five;five:562000:B8:T:27500:6017:6018=eng,6019=eng:0:0:12866:9018:12290
> :0 ITV2;ITV:482000:B8:T:27500:530:531=eng,532=eng:0:0:8325:9018:8197:0
> ITV3;ITV:482000:B8:T:27500:540:541=eng,542=eng:0:0:8294:9018:8197:0
> E4;Channel 4
> TV:482000:B8:T:27500:570+8190:571=eng,572=eng:0:0:8448:9018:8197:0
> More 4;Channel 4
> TV:482000:B8:T:27500:590+8190:591=eng,592=eng:0:0:8442:9018:8197:0
> Five
> Life;five:562000:B8:T:27500:6673:6674=eng,6675=eng:0:0:12928:9018:1229
> 0:0 Five
> US;five:562000:B8:T:27500:6689:6690=eng,6691=eng:0:0:12992:9018:12290:
> 0 Film4;Channel 4 TV:538000:B8:T:27500:0:0:0:0:27136:9018:24576:0 BBC
> THREE;BSkyB:10773:h:S28.2E:22000:5200:5201=eng,5202=NAR:5203:0:6319:2:
> 2045:0 BBC
> FOUR;BSkyB:10773:h:S28.2E:22000:5300:5301=eng,5302=NAR:5303:0:6316:2:2
> 045:0
> ITV4;ITV:482000:B8:T:27500:600:601=eng,602=eng:0:0:8353:9018:8197:0
> UKTV
> History;UKTV:538000:B8:T:27500:301:302=eng,304=eng:0:0:25792:9018:2457
> 6:0

One thing that can be a pain is having to manually reorder the channel 
list when new channels are added or they change what their assigned 
channel number is. Or new channels appear right at the end of the channel 
list (which still includes out-dated channels!).

It would be nice if vdr had an option to set channel numbers based on the 
values that are encoded into the streams. I don't know enough about DVB  
standards to know where to find those numbers (LCN, Logical Channel 
Numbers, I think) but I do seem to remember someone on here a couple of 
years back mentioning a script which would reorder the channel listing to 
the "correct" numbering.

Actually, I think that "scan" has an option to add the LCNs to a generated 
channels.conf. A bit of digging finds:

"The channel numbers can be found in the NIT table as the user-defined 
descriptor 0x83 and each channel number has a corresponding Service ID 
which is included in the descriptor"

Now...would it be as simple as extracting the LCN and then calling 
cChannel->SetNumber() for the relevant channel? Does a new channels.conf 
then get written (at some point) including the relevant :@number entries 
so that it all works?

I might have a go to see if I can get this working but it won't be for a 
while due to other commitments.

I realise that a lot of people don't worry about channel numbers but it 
sort of makes sense to me, at least for DVB-T where there are 
significantly fewer channels than on DVB-S, for example. It's also the way 
that "proper" STBs do it and most people (at least in the UK) would expect 
their normal channel numbers.

Cheers,

Laz