EMJB's Terrestrial Channels brainstorm

[EMJB]

I am starting a new thread rather than continue the somewhat off topic discussions under the ABM heading.

I suspect the vast majority of UK users have one or more TVs with the following features that seem to work without any problems:

1. Finds all muxes giving a reasonable signal using only a country selection by the user, rather than having to select individual transmitter
2. Where the same mux is available from 2 or more transmitters, chooses the optimum one (presumably based on signal strength/quality)
3. Allocates a universally agreed numbering system
4. Only displays channel and associated programme information for muxes that can actually be detected.

with the only drawback I have noticed being the time taken (~ 5 minutes).

When I first started to use Openvix (with UK terrestrial signals only), I found it very difficult to find what to do to replicate the television set's programme channel numbering etc - the published manual only contained satellite scanning info. Of the available options:

• ABM required details of individual transmitters, which were incomplete and only updated days after frequencies were changed (e.g. as part of the 700 MHz clearance), and the channel lists and EPG data showed all channels in that region, even though only ~50% are available from fill-in transmitters - very disconcerting.
• The automatic scan from the menu fails to cope with signals from multiple transmitters - I think the first found is used - and the programme channels are in what seems to the newbie to be a random order.
• The manual scan from the menu depends on predefined transmitter details in a similar manner to ABM, and again does not order the programme channels.
• The "Network scan" option in the menu for the automatic and manual scan defaults to "On", but this feature does not work correctly and can lead to problems when scanning for fill-in transmitters. The situation is further confused by the "terrestrial.xml" files apparently selecting a network scan, though I gather this part of the file is ignored.
• The TerrestrialScan plug-in does not order or correctly number the programme channels, and in a quick look at the code I could not find any logic to deal with signals from 2 or more transmitters.

The ABM and manual scan approaches do have the advantage of speed, but any solution that avoid needs to update files etc would be well worth the additiional scanning time in my view. It is perhaps worth pointing out that there are over 1000 UK Freeview transmitters, so any per-transmitter data files are likely to be incomplete.

My apologies if changes in the last two years have invalidated some of the above - I have just found it all so frustrating that I have developed work rounds for my own use only.

What I would dearly like to see is some instructions for the preferred way of duplicating the television set's programme channel layout etc, and some way found to discourage the alternatives (e.g. at a lower level in the menu system, or only visible when an expert mode is selected). It would be nice to follow the TV sets' example and completely avoid the individual transmitter selection, but if this is not practical it seems to me that giving a transmitter different entries for pre- and post- any change is the best solution.

EMJB