Freeview HD's EPG uses the same encoding as Freesat, but for some reason the EEPG plugin doesn't recognise it; it probably only uses the extended decoder when it's using Freesat's non-dtandard PIDs.
EEPG's code is a bit tortuous, and it has a memory leak, so I decided to look again at the Freesat patch from http://www.rst38.org.uk/vdr/. It needed a bit of updating for recent versions of VDR, and I also updated the tables with data from the EEPG plugin.
And it works nicely :-). I haven't been using it long, but it looks like it isn't leaking, and all the text in the EPG looks correct.
I've uploaded it to http://www.realh.co.uk/vdr_freesat_freeviewhd.patch.gz. If you use Debian or Ubuntu you can add it to the source package with quilt import. But also add this line to debian/vdr.install (I got errors after trying to add it to the patch):
freesat.t* var/lib/vdr/
If not using debs you'll have to copy the freesat.t1 and .t2 files there manually, or redefine FREESAT_DATA_DIRECTORY in libsi/freesat.c if you want them to live somewhere else.
Hi Tony,
On 3 April 2012 16:23, Tony Houghton h@realh.co.uk wrote:
Freeview HD's EPG uses the same encoding as Freesat, but for some reason the EEPG plugin doesn't recognise it; it probably only uses the extended decoder when it's using Freesat's non-dtandard PIDs.
EEPG's code is a bit tortuous, and it has a memory leak, so I decided to look again at the Freesat patch from http://www.rst38.org.uk/vdr/. It needed a bit of updating for recent versions of VDR, and I also updated the tables with data from the EEPG plugin.
And it works nicely :-). I haven't been using it long, but it looks like it isn't leaking, and all the text in the EPG looks correct.
I've uploaded it to http://www.realh.co.uk/vdr_freesat_freeviewhd.patch.gz. If you use Debian or Ubuntu you can add it to the source package with quilt import. But also add this line to debian/vdr.install (I got errors after trying to add it to the patch):
freesat.t* var/lib/vdr/
If not using debs you'll have to copy the freesat.t1 and .t2 files there manually, or redefine FREESAT_DATA_DIRECTORY in libsi/freesat.c if you want them to live somewhere else.
I'd similarly previously sent a rebased version of the patch to Dominic Morris (the original author), though he was a bit unsure about putting it on the homepage until he had time to test it himself.
I've added him on CC so he knows that's you've done this update and its working with Freeview HD as well. With any luck we can get the updated version put up on rst38 :-)
On 3 April 2012 16:23, Tony Houghton h@realh.co.uk wrote:
Freeview HD's EPG uses the same encoding as Freesat, but for some reason the EEPG plugin doesn't recognise it; it probably only uses the extended decoder when it's using Freesat's non-standard PIDs.
Also, I noticed that (like the EEPG plugin) Dominic's patch only looks for Freesat EIT data on PID 3842 (BAT & SDT data is on PID 3841). This is where the EPG data can be found on the majority of the transponders, broadcast at a symbol rate of 22.0 MSymb/s.
However, on the Arqiva transponder (11.427 GHz [1]) the data is instead present on PID 3002 (BAT & SDT) and PID 3003 (EIT), and is transmitted at the much faster symbol rate of 27.5 MSymb/s. This should allow a full EPG to be retrieved far more quickly. RdioCaroline (one of the radio channels) is a channel you can tune your receiver to in order to lock on to this transponder.
Ideally the patch could be updated to watch for both EIT PIDs, and (even more ideally) the VDR EPG idle scan code could be patched to immediately jump to Arqiva on S28.2E and retrieve the EPG rather than laboriously cycling through all the transponders.
---
[1] http://www.satscan.net/transponder.php?SatelliteID=2&TransponderID=1328
On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 17:33:49 +0100 Dominic Evans oldmanuk@gmail.com wrote:
On 3 April 2012 16:23, Tony Houghton h@realh.co.uk wrote:
Also, I noticed that (like the EEPG plugin) Dominic's patch only looks for Freesat EIT data on PID 3842 (BAT & SDT data is on PID 3841). This is where the EPG data can be found on the majority of the transponders, broadcast at a symbol rate of 22.0 MSymb/s.
However, on the Arqiva transponder (11.427 GHz [1]) the data is instead present on PID 3002 (BAT & SDT) and PID 3003 (EIT), and is transmitted at the much faster symbol rate of 27.5 MSymb/s. This should allow a full EPG to be retrieved far more quickly. RdioCaroline (one of the radio channels) is a channel you can tune your receiver to in order to lock on to this transponder.
Thanks for that info. I knew there was a transponder where the EIT was broadcast at a much faster rate (I've heard you can get a complete week's EPG in ~30 seconds instead of the normal ~30 minutes) but I didn't realise it was on yet another pid.
Back on the subject of Freeview HD, do you happen to know which part of the SI refers to the Freeview HD channel/transport? It doesn't appear to be listed in the standard NIT, although once you tune to that channel everything appears to be normal, other than the Huffman-encoded EIT and that even its own NIT doesn't refer to itself AFAICT.
Ideally the patch could be updated to watch for both EIT PIDs, and (even more ideally) the VDR EPG idle scan code could be patched to immediately jump to Arqiva on S28.2E and retrieve the EPG rather than laboriously cycling through all the transponders.
You don't have to cycle through all transponders for Freesat anyway, unless you want pids for the video, audio etc streams, because the SDT and EIT are of the "other channel" variety. You can do a complete channel scan (apart from getting pids) on any one Freesat transponder in a few seconds.
Am 03.04.2012 17:23, schrieb Tony Houghton:
Freeview HD's EPG uses the same encoding as Freesat, but for some reason the EEPG plugin doesn't recognise it; it probably only uses the extended decoder when it's using Freesat's non-dtandard PIDs.
EEPG's code is a bit tortuous, and it has a memory leak, so I decided to look again at the Freesat patch from http://www.rst38.org.uk/vdr/. It needed a bit of updating for recent versions of VDR, and I also updated the tables with data from the EEPG plugin.
And it works nicely :-). I haven't been using it long, but it looks like it isn't leaking, and all the text in the EPG looks correct.
I've uploaded it to http://www.realh.co.uk/vdr_freesat_freeviewhd.patch.gz. If you use Debian or Ubuntu you can add it to the source package with quilt import. But also add this line to debian/vdr.install (I got errors after trying to add it to the patch):
freesat.t* var/lib/vdr/
If not using debs you'll have to copy the freesat.t1 and .t2 files there manually, or redefine FREESAT_DATA_DIRECTORY in libsi/freesat.c if you want them to live somewhere else.
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If you are interested:
I have submitted a patch for EEPG to compile the external tables to be part of the code. If that is interesting for you as well, you can find it here:
http://projects.vdr-developer.org/issues/903 http://projects.vdr-developer.org/attachments/897/patch.txt.gz
On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:47:25 +0200 Mario Schulz drcms@arcor.de wrote:
I have submitted a patch for EEPG to compile the external tables to be part of the code. If that is interesting for you as well, you can find it here:
http://projects.vdr-developer.org/issues/903 http://projects.vdr-developer.org/attachments/897/patch.txt.gz
AFAICT EEPG uses a sort of "halfway house". The tables are embedded in one of the header files so it doesn't need to open external files any more, but the strings still use the same format as the original files rather than being in the form of arrays, so they still need to be parsed.
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Dominic Evans -
Mario Schulz -
Tony Houghton