VDR isn't fetching EPG info for my DVB-S channels. At best it shows what's on now and next but many channels seem to have no data at all.
My dish is a Sky minidish, so I presume I don't have diseqc. To "seed" channels.conf I used the scan utility from linuxtv-dvb-apps, with the initial tuning files for Astra-28.2E and Eurobird1-28.5E because I read that's where Freesat is broadcast from. I noticed that the provider for all the channels is listed as "BSkyB", so does this mean I'm getting "Freesat from Sky" rather than the BBC/ITV consortium?
ISTR reading that Freesat's EPG is on Eurobird1. Perhaps I accidentally masked it out because I tried to mask out encrypted channels and non-TV/radio? But I would have thought VDR would add it back, because it doesn't mask on its own scans.
Or perhaps scan's output isn't quite compatible with VDR, even with the -o vdr option? I know this causes lots of trouble with the DVB-T channels, because VDR adds copies of channels if they're not quite in the format it likes best and then gets a bit weird with them, including not providing EPG info for the channels from the external scan tool. I've managed to resolve this for DVB-T, but there are so many satellite channels (mostly not of interest to me) I can't really keep track of which ones came from scan and which from VDR, and some VDR claims are "unavailable" even though they should be FTA.
It would be good if the developers of scan and VDR could advise each other so they're properly compatible with each other and if VDR could have an option to run a separate program for building channels.conf so I could do all sorts of tricks like filtering out encrypted channels and sorting the ones I'm interested in.
Hi
You can use loadepg plugin to load 1 week of EPG information for quite all channels of SKY UK and Freesat
There is a thread talking about options here :
http://www.vdrportal.de/board/thread.php?threadid=77780&hilight=loadepg
Currenty I use guide coming from xmltv connected to RT site (grab_rt_uk) and the loadepg plugin to complete list
Best regards
Selon Tony Houghton h@realh.co.uk:
VDR isn't fetching EPG info for my DVB-S channels. At best it shows what's on now and next but many channels seem to have no data at all.
Hi Tony,
Tony Houghton wrote:
VDR isn't fetching EPG info for my DVB-S channels. At best it shows what's on now and next but many channels seem to have no data at all.
Ever since the Freesat platform was launched a few months ago, the EPG data is being broadcasted along the program on a non standard PID. Take a look at this page http://www.rst38.org.uk/vdr/ . There is a patch (Patch for vdr 1.7.x) which enables VDR to fetch the EPG data from live TV.
The patch for 1.7.x also applies cleanly to 1.6.0. Make sure to do a "make clean && make" after applying the patch.
It is working well on my VDR machine.
Regards, André
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:40:56 +0100 André Weidemann Andre.Weidemann@web.de wrote:
Hi Tony,
Tony Houghton wrote:
VDR isn't fetching EPG info for my DVB-S channels. At best it shows what's on now and next but many channels seem to have no data at all.
Ever since the Freesat platform was launched a few months ago, the EPG data is being broadcasted along the program on a non standard PID. Take a look at this page http://www.rst38.org.uk/vdr/ . There is a patch (Patch for vdr 1.7.x) which enables VDR to fetch the EPG data from live TV.
The patch for 1.7.x also applies cleanly to 1.6.0. Make sure to do a "make clean && make" after applying the patch.
It is working well on my VDR machine.
It sort of works for me with 1.6.0, but not quite well enough. VDR now lists all the times correctly but most of the programmes still have no titles or program info. I've installed updated freesat.t1/2 files, restarted VDR and forced a scan.
El Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:12:06 +0000 Tony Houghton h@realh.co.uk escribió:
It is working well on my VDR machine.
It sort of works for me with 1.6.0, but not quite well enough. VDR now lists all the times correctly but most of the programmes still have no titles or program info. I've installed updated freesat.t1/2 files, restarted VDR and forced a scan.
FWIW I see the same with 1.7.0. I tried various bbc channels, a couple of itv ones and, surprisingly, I see the "no title" (localized) items also on film4 (surprisingly because it shouldn't be part of freesat, at least the freesat web page only lists bbc and itv). I put the freesat.t[12] files that came with the patch (should I look for newer ones?) in /home/vdr/conf, but I modified libsi/Makefile accordingly.
Bye
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008, Luca Olivetti wrote:
FWIW I see the same with 1.7.0. I tried various bbc channels, a couple of itv ones and, surprisingly, I see the "no title" (localized) items also on film4 (surprisingly because it shouldn't be part of freesat, at least the freesat web page only lists bbc and itv). I put the freesat.t[12] files that came with the patch (should I look for newer ones?) in /home/vdr/conf, but I modified libsi/Makefile accordingly.
There's newer/complete tables in the freesat_table_complete.zip file. The default directory for loading the files from is /video - unless you've defined FREESAT_DATA_DIRECTORY in a make file somewhere.
cheers,
d.
El Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:10:50 +0000 (GMT) Dominic Morris dom@suborbital.org.uk escribió:
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008, Luca Olivetti wrote:
FWIW I see the same with 1.7.0. I tried various bbc channels, a couple of itv ones and, surprisingly, I see the "no title" (localized) items also on film4 (surprisingly because it shouldn't be part of freesat, at least the freesat web page only lists bbc and itv). I put the freesat.t[12] files that came with the patch (should I look for newer ones?) in /home/vdr/conf, but I modified libsi/Makefile accordingly.
There's newer/complete tables in the freesat_table_complete.zip file. The default directory for loading the files from is /video - unless you've defined FREESAT_DATA_DIRECTORY in a make file somewhere.
I omitted the trailing slash in the definition, so it didn't find the files. I corrected it and now I don't have "no title"s anymore, but there are many holes in the epg ( e.g. on "bbc 1 e mids" I have epg for today, the first 3 programmes of tomorrow, then it skips to the 2nd and from there to the 6th). Is it because they're slow broadcasting it? The german channels on astra at 19.2 (which unfortunately I cannot understand) use the standard method and the weekly epg is almost instantaneous.
Bye
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008, Luca Olivetti wrote:
I omitted the trailing slash in the definition, so it didn't find the files.
Ah yes, that would do it!
I corrected it and now I don't have "no title"s anymore, but there are many holes in the epg ( e.g. on "bbc 1 e mids" I have epg for today, the first 3 programmes of tomorrow, then it skips to the 2nd and from there to the 6th). Is it because they're slow broadcasting it?
Yup, it's quite slow coming in, certainly > 30 minutes if I remember correctly.
cheers,
d.
Hi
I have read all your exchange since beginning but I still do not understand and really curious to know what is the real gain to patch VDR and wait at least 30 minutes to have EPG instead of using Loadepg plugin who do the full job in 2 minutes ?
Are there EPG info not available with plugin but on vdr patch ?
Best regards
Selon Dominic Morris dom@suborbital.org.uk:
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008, Luca Olivetti wrote:
I omitted the trailing slash in the definition, so it didn't find the files.
Ah yes, that would do it!
I corrected it and now I don't have "no title"s anymore, but there are many holes in the epg ( e.g. on "bbc 1 e mids" I have epg for today, the first 3 programmes of tomorrow, then it skips to the 2nd and from there to the 6th). Is it because they're slow broadcasting it?
Yup, it's quite slow coming in, certainly > 30 minutes if I remember correctly.
cheers,
d.
vdr mailing list vdr@linuxtv.org http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vdr
En/na dplu@free.fr ha escrit:
Hi
I have read all your exchange since beginning but I still do not understand and really curious to know what is the real gain to patch VDR and wait at least 30 minutes to have EPG instead of using Loadepg plugin who do the full job in 2 minutes ?
Well, loadepg is a manual thing, I had some problem with it with my setup (I have to tune to the channel with the epg, it wouldn't do it by itself here) and I didn't know it worked with freesat (I mainly used it in the past to get epg for the italian channels on hotbird). Now that some time has passed, I have one week epg (it seems to be complete now, even for channels that I wasn't tuned to while updating) that hopefully will be automatically updated by itself.
Bye
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:43:46 +0000 (GMT) Dominic Morris dom@suborbital.org.uk wrote:
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008, Luca Olivetti wrote:
I omitted the trailing slash in the definition, so it didn't find the files.
Ah yes, that would do it!
Looks like that was my problem too.
I corrected it and now I don't have "no title"s anymore, but there are many holes in the epg ( e.g. on "bbc 1 e mids" I have epg for today, the first 3 programmes of tomorrow, then it skips to the 2nd and from there to the 6th). Is it because they're slow broadcasting it?
Yup, it's quite slow coming in, certainly > 30 minutes if I remember correctly.
Me too (again), there were a few holes at first but now I seem to have a complete EPG.
El Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:02:45 +0100 Luca Olivetti luca@ventoso.org escribió:
El Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:12:06 +0000 Tony Houghton h@realh.co.uk escribió:
It is working well on my VDR machine.
It sort of works for me with 1.6.0, but not quite well enough. VDR now lists all the times correctly but most of the programmes still have no titles or program info. I've installed updated freesat.t1/2 files, restarted VDR and forced a scan.
FWIW I see the same with 1.7.0. I tried various bbc channels, a couple of itv ones and, surprisingly, I see the "no title" (localized) items also on film4 (surprisingly because it shouldn't be part of freesat, at least the freesat web page only lists bbc and itv). I put the freesat.t[12] files that came with the patch (should I look for newer ones?) in /home/vdr/conf, but I modified libsi/Makefile accordingly.
I'm now using the "Complete tables (thanks to bdb at digitalspy)" and deleted epg.data before starting vdr, but still most of the titles are "no title". Even those with a proper title (not many) have no additional details (i.e. there's just the title)
Bye
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008, Luca Olivetti wrote:
I'm now using the "Complete tables (thanks to bdb at digitalspy)" and deleted epg.data before starting vdr, but still most of the titles are "no title". Even those with a proper title (not many) have no additional details (i.e. there's just the title)
The patch logs in the syslog when it loads/fails to load the tables:
Loading table 1 Filename </etc/vdr/freesat.t1> Loading table 2 Filename </etc/vdr/freesat.t2> Cannot load </etc/vdr/freesat.t1> for table 1 Cannot load </etc/vdr/freesat.t2> for table 2
If the tables aren't loaded, then an empty title/description is returned and your logs will probably be spammed with:
Missing table 1/2 entry: <>
cheers,
d.
-
André Weidemann -
Dominic Morris -
dplu＠free.fr -
Luca Olivetti -
Tony Houghton