Where can I find information about EPG related details?

[birdman]

You wont be able to get radio numbers starting at 700.

I suspect that I can (and am willing to try). I'd also put some Internet streaming radio (BBC Local radio channles, for example) in the radio list somewhere underneath that, once I can figure out how to enter urls such that they actually work.

As sated earlier E2 splits radio channels from TV channels. I dont see the merit of padding the radio number so they match the LCN values. You will always have to switch between radio and TV. Surely simpler to just select the radio channel from bouquet?

It's actually much quicker to enter "706<Enter>" to get to R5SX rather than to open up an EPG or Bouquet and look for it.

I dont understand in what context you are mentioning ABM and lamedb. Conventional scan and ABM both write to lamdeb.

AFAIK ABM only writes bouguet files. It reads lamedb, so that it can get the channel info.[/quote]

ABM for terrestrial does not recognise T2 channels yet. However standard terrestrial channels are placed in correct order and positions (excluding radio).

That's how I found out how to do the channel number padding. But I forgot to take a copy of the files, and have changed them since (how, or why, I forget) so it's on my list to generate them again.
They also have an example of how to skip large numbers (or at least there was a big skip in the numbering, and not just he skip to 1000+), although I couldn't figure out the logic in the short time I looked at it.

[abu baniaz]

ABM obtains data from satellite/transmitter/headend and writes to lamdeb too.It adds to existing data though. Try it with no channel data on receiver.

[birdman]

ABM obtains data from satellite/transmitter/headend and writes to lamdeb too.It adds to existing data though. Try it with no channel data on receiver.

I can't think of anything it could write there. But since I need to do a test ABM run anyway, I can find out what it does then.
By "no channel data on receiver", do you mean "unplug the aerial"?

[abu baniaz]

No lamedb and no bouquets on receiver.

init 4 && rm -rf /etc/enigma2/lamedb && rm -rf /etc/enigma2/*.tv && rm -rf /etc/enigma2/*.radio && init 3

It writes the service details as per provider.

[birdman]

No lamedb and no bouquets on receiver.
...It writes the service details as per provider.

I'd assumed that this would be done by ABM checking for lamedb exisiting first and, if it isn't there, kicking of a scan and waiting until it completed before continuing.
Anything else would be code duplication.

And I'd consider this to be ABM initiating a scan, rather than ABM writing to lamedb.

[abu baniaz]

ABM "scan" and channel scan are different. ABM doesn't just "scan" though. I consider "ABM scan" to be "downloading channel data", creating channel data on receiver, removing obsolete data, creating/updating bouquets.

You possibly won't apprecaite the differnce if my presumption of you setting your tuner to sandy heath are correct. Set to Europe and then scan, it will be different. If you had a satellite tuner, you would truly appreciate the difference.

[birdman]

You possibly won't apprecaite the differnce if my presumption of you setting your tuner to sandy heath are correct. Set to Europe and then scan, it will be different. If you had a satellite tuner, you would truly appreciate the difference.

Given that the tuning data for Sandy Heath has the frequencies for every mux it broadcasts, I can't see how a scan for Europe (== all of UHF) will get anything different. There isn't (or at least shouldn't) be anything more there.

[abu baniaz]

It is not about getting more. It is about appreciating the difference.

[birdman]

It is not about getting more. It is about appreciating the difference.

An interesting concept.
I don't want to get less, as that would mean I'm missing channels.
So if I don't get more, then I'm struggling to see the difference.

[Rob van der Does]

@ Birdman:
1- the lamedb is used for zapping. You can't zap to any service that's not in the lamedb.
2- Did you have a go with

http://forums.openpli.org/topic/35499-epg-convert-to-rytec/?view=findpost&p=451518

as suggested earlier?

[birdman]

@ Birdman:
...
2- Did you have a go with

http://forums.openpli.org/topic/35499-epg-convert-to-rytec/?view=findpost&p=451518

as suggested earlier?

Thanks.
I didn't see any suggestion for that, but from what I can see that is a means of scraping data from OpenWebif HTML pages and creating a Rytec formatted XML file from it.
Getting the data out of my box is not my problem. It's how to get it into it that I'm looking at.

[Joe_90]

@Birdman - the ABM process is different to the normal E2 scanning process. Take the Astra satellite cluster as an example. If you run an E2 scan on 28.2 (whole satellite), it will run through its list of transponders plus the network PIDs, tune to them sequentially and extract every channel and store them in lamedb.
With an empty lamedb, if you run ABM and set it for Freesat and/or SKY for particular region(s) it will tune to the home transponder of Freesat and extract a list of transponder frequencies and the Freesat services from that home transponder. It will store the frequencies and service names in lamedb. Similarly it will tune to the SKY home transponder extract the details etc. etc. The difference between the ABM scan and an E2 scan is that it runs in about one minute and extracts those services contained within the SKY/Freesat bouquet of channels. An E2 scan will take much longer and will extract (theoretically) every service from every transponder it tunes to.

[birdman]

@Birdman - the ABM process is different to the normal E2 scanning process....

Which explains the comment from abu baniaz then.
But since I only have DVB-T(2) tuners, and have them set to Sandy Heath (which now has all of its mux frequencies defined in terrestial.xml), I'm not going to see any actual difference. It is already scanning as quickly as it can and getting all that it can (although not storing channel numbers in lamedb...)

[Joe_90]

For terrestrial the situation is similar, but on a much smaller scale. Freeview covers all the SD and HD channels in about 7 multiplexes ( equivalent to transponders in the satellite environment) from Sandy Heath. Well, about 6 and a bit multiplexes if you eliminate the SD equivalents of the BBCs and ITV. ABM tunes to the primary multiplex (PSB1/BBCA) and then uses frequency information stored in the NIT PID to populate the channel information on lamedb without having to tune to all the other multiplexes. It's working for SD, but not (as far as I know) for HD. ABM doesn't work at all well in the Irish DVB-T environment due to duff frequency info held in the NIT.
The E2 scan that you are doing will pull in all the HD and SD channels as you say, but the E2 scan does not seem to use the channel numbers (LCNs) stored in the service information, so you don't get a nicely sorted scan as you would on a commercial Freeview receiver. The advantage with ABM is that it orders the channels. I just do an E2 scan of my local multiplexes and store the services manually in my favourites list. As there are only about 10 TV and 9 radio channels live so far on the Irish DVB-T service it's not a big deal.

[birdman]

For terrestrial the situation is similar, but on a much smaller scale. ...It's working for SD, but not (as far as I know) for HD.

Which, for me, means that it's not working.

The E2 scan that you are doing will pull in all the HD and SD channels as you say, but the E2 scan does not seem to use the channel numbers (LCNs) stored in the service information, so you don't get a nicely sorted scan as you would on a commercial Freeview receiver. The advantage with ABM is that it orders the channels.

Which is why I've been asking about the format of bouquet files.
So what I intend to do is:

1. Save a copy of what I currently have (it's not what I want, but everything is there - just not in the "right" place).
2. Do an ABM scan from scratch. See what its lamedb and bouquet files look like.
3. Do an E2 scan for Sandy Heath (which will pull in the HD channels).
4. Work out, based on 2, what bouquet files should look like for what I want.
5. Write a Perl script (which I'll run off-box) to process my full lamedb file (from 3) into the full set of bouquet files that I need and, at the same time, producing a picons directory with correctly-named picons (the Freeview service tags are different to the satellite ones, even though the channels are the same). The Perl script will be driven by a <DATA> section that describes whcih channels I want where, and with what numbers.

5. is the easy bit.