VDR doesn't let you switch to a channel that you cannot decrypt. I usually like this feature, so I won't switch to a channel I cannot see, but today some channels at 28.5E are FTA (a sky promotion or a technical glitch?), even if they have a caid!=0, so I had to modify cDvbDevice::ProvidesCa to alway return true. I know that sky's to blame (or maybe they just don't want to advertise their channels as FTA), but maybe it should be a configurable option.
Bye
Luca Olivetti wrote:
VDR doesn't let you switch to a channel that you cannot decrypt. I usually like this feature, so I won't switch to a channel I cannot see, but today some channels at 28.5E are FTA (a sky promotion or a technical glitch?), even if they have a caid!=0, so I had to modify cDvbDevice::ProvidesCa to alway return true. I know that sky's to blame (or maybe they just don't want to advertise their channels as FTA), but maybe it should be a configurable option.
I strongly agree that the current mechanism is theoretically a good idea but works poorly in practise.
1) Many channels have a caid=0, but when you tune to them, all you see is a black screen. Maybe they transmit only rarely or they are in fact encrypted, but do not set the proper caid.
2) When you have a certain cam, it does not mean that you can always receive *all* channels supported by its ID. So you will have even more "dead" channels in your channels.conf.
3) Channels may broadcast unencrypted in spite of caid!=0 (see above).
4) If you do not have any cam, you tend to get a huge channels.conf with mostly unusable garbage in it.
What I would *love* to see is the following feature: Every time VDR does an EPG scan, it reads from the channel it just switched to. If there are no data within a few seconds, it increments a number in the channel entry, if there are data, it clears this number. If the number exceeds a configurable threshold, the channel entry is deleted. Before adding new channels to channels.conf, VDR switches to the channel and reads from it. If there are no data within a few seconds, it does not add it.
With this feature, only interesting new channels (like the ones you observed above) would appear at the end of channels.conf, inactive channels would disappear automatically after a while and the whole channels.conf would stay a lot cleaner and more manageable.
Carsten.
Carsten Koch wrote:
Luca Olivetti wrote:
VDR doesn't let you switch to a channel that you cannot decrypt. I usually like this feature, so I won't switch to a channel I cannot see, but today some channels at 28.5E are FTA (a sky promotion or a technical glitch?), even if they have a caid!=0, so I had to modify cDvbDevice::ProvidesCa to alway return true. I know that sky's to blame (or maybe they just don't want to advertise their channels as FTA), but maybe it should be a configurable option.
I strongly agree that the current mechanism is theoretically a good idea but works poorly in practise.
Many channels have a caid=0, but when you tune to them, all you see is a black screen. Maybe they transmit only rarely or they are in fact encrypted, but do not set the proper caid.
When you have a certain cam, it does not mean that you can always receive *all* channels supported by its ID. So you will have even more "dead" channels in your channels.conf.
Channels may broadcast unencrypted in spite of caid!=0 (see above).
If you do not have any cam, you tend to get a huge channels.conf with mostly unusable garbage in it.
What I would *love* to see is the following feature: Every time VDR does an EPG scan, it reads from the channel it just switched to. If there are no data within a few seconds, it increments a number in the channel entry, if there are data, it clears this number. If the number exceeds a configurable threshold, the channel entry is deleted. Before adding new channels to channels.conf, VDR switches to the channel and reads from it. If there are no data within a few seconds, it does not add it.
With this feature, only interesting new channels (like the ones you observed above) would appear at the end of channels.conf, inactive channels would disappear automatically after a while and the whole channels.conf would stay a lot cleaner and more manageable.
Sounds like a good thing to do in a plugin - way too complex for the VDR core ;-)
Klaus
Carsten Koch wrote:
Every time VDR does an EPG scan, it reads from the channel it just switched to. If there are no data within a few seconds, it increments a number in the channel entry, if there are data, it clears this number. If the number exceeds a configurable threshold, the channel entry is deleted. Before adding new channels to channels.conf, VDR switches to the channel and reads from it. If there are no data within a few seconds, it does not add it.
I thought of a lot of similar concepts. It is difficult to decide whether a channel is 'alive' or not. For most channels its enough to track the channel announcements. If the channel wasn't announced for a long time, the channel is most likely gone, esp. if it was introduced by a channel scan. You can watch this by tweaking the channel name and wait for the original name to return.
Some channels however don't send channel announcements. These channels wont be visible, except when tuned to. An example is this one: BOUTIQUES:12324:vC34:S19.2E:27500:164:0:0:0:8611:1:1096:0 Not seen in a single transponder scan for 4 months. But you can tune to it, its even FTA.
One reliable way to detect whether an encrypted channel sends data is the femon plugin. At least for me, femon shows the video data rate even for channels I cant see.
One nice enhancement would be if VDR would track the date a channel was last seen on EPG scan. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to do this from within a plugin.
Once again, this wont track existence of PID traffic. And I'm not even sure whether its possible to get a list of all active PID's on a transponder without tuning to each one.
Cheers,
Udo
Klaus Schmidinger wrote: ...
What I would *love* to see is the following feature: Every time VDR does an EPG scan, it reads from the channel it just switched to. If there are no data within a few seconds, it increments a number in the channel entry, if there are data, it clears this number. If the number exceeds a configurable threshold, the channel entry is deleted. Before adding new channels to channels.conf, VDR switches to the channel and reads from it. If there are no data within a few seconds, it does not add it.
With this feature, only interesting new channels (like the ones you observed above) would appear at the end of channels.conf, inactive channels would disappear automatically after a while and the whole channels.conf would stay a lot cleaner and more manageable.
Sounds like a good thing to do in a plugin
How do I extend the EPG scan in a plugin?
Carsten.
Carsten Koch wrote:
Klaus Schmidinger wrote: ...
What I would *love* to see is the following feature: Every time VDR does an EPG scan, it reads from the channel it just switched to. If there are no data within a few seconds, it increments a number in the channel entry, if there are data, it clears this number. If the number exceeds a configurable threshold, the channel entry is deleted. Before adding new channels to channels.conf, VDR switches to the channel and reads from it. If there are no data within a few seconds, it does not add it.
With this feature, only interesting new channels (like the ones you observed above) would appear at the end of channels.conf, inactive channels would disappear automatically after a while and the whole channels.conf would stay a lot cleaner and more manageable.
Sounds like a good thing to do in a plugin
How do I extend the EPG scan in a plugin?
Carsten.
You don't ;-)
Since you'll need to set up a cReveiver to actually see whether you can receive anything from a channel, you should simply go trough the channels and try to receive from them. If one of them doesn't deliver data, you could move it to a different place in the channel list or do something else with it.
Personally I believe this will become obsolete, anyway, once user defined channel lists are possible (yes, I know, I've been mentioning this on several occasions in the past, but it's still pretty high on my list of things to do...).
Klaus
Klaus Schmidinger wrote:
Sounds like a good thing to do in a plugin - way too complex for the VDR core ;-)
Yes, but my original request (option to skip/tune encrypted channels you don't have a cam to manage) is simple enough.
Bye
-
Carsten Koch -
Klaus Schmidinger -
Luca Olivetti -
Udo Richter