On Sat, 2009-05-23 at 11:47 +0200, Klaus Schmidinger wrote: ...
You could also remove all unwanted channels from your list and set "DVB/Update channels" to "names and PIDs". Then the EPG scan would only switch through the desired transponders.
I believe there is room for improvement.
Of course I want *all* channels I can use and I want new channels, too, if can use them.
And I do not want to go through my list of channels manually all the time, find those that I cannot view and delete them manually.
I believe VDR could do a much better (more thorough, less error-prone) job at that than I ever could.
Here is a list of improvements that would greatly help maintaining a clean and useful channel list:
1) When VDR does its EPG scan, it switches to all channels anyway. Why not test each channel and see if it actually delivers data? If it does, set a new configuration field to 0. If it does not, increment that field by one. Lets call this field the "absent" value. The reason why we do not get any data does not matter. Maybe the channel is temporarily not broadcasting. Maybe it has ceased to exist. Maybe I do not have a cam for it. Maybe I have a suitable cam, but no subscription.
2) When zapping, automatically skip channels that have an "absent" value of > 5 (maybe that value should be configurable).
3) Do not display channels anywhere that have an "absent" value of > 5 (maybe that value should be configurable. If you set it to zero, all useless channels will show up again).
4) A "cleanup" run could remove all channels that have an absent value that exceeds a certain number (maybe 50).
5) You could define additional criteria that would increment the "absent" value during an EPG scan. For example: 5a) the channel does not broadcast one of the audio languages that I have configured as the set of languages that I can understand. 5b) the channel broadcasts video, but with less than 1 Mbit/s. (That would get rid of all those advertising channels which only broadcast slide shows).
Cheers, Carsten.