How to control the channel search when doing a soft reset>

[Ian_AW]

G'day,

After the latest update I have ended up with an unfortunate channel list. Its a bit like an alphabetically sorted keyboard instead of a QWERTY one.

It appears that rather than adhere to the channel list in the user's IceTV account, it tries to override that and assign a found channel and assign it because it detects a a stronger signal.

On my system I get the SBS and Channel 7 ones as in my IceTV account. Then it gets a bit freaky.
The rest of the channels are in the order as follows.

(100...) ABC HD
(100...) 10 Peach
(100...) ABC Me
(100...) ABC Kids
(100...) 9 Rush
(100...) 10 HD
(100...) 9 Go
(100...) 9 HD
(100...) ABC Plus
(100...) 10 Bold
(100...) 9 Gem
(100...) 9 Life
(100...) ABC News

Why (100...)?
Because that is now it presents and I cannot see any more.

Like the alphabetically sorted keyboard, a pain to use and difficult to work with.

Is there any way to restrict the channel numbering to what is set in the user's IceTV account? After all IceTV works perfectly well. I know that LCNs are old school, but on my Beyonwiz T2, I have manually edited bouquets and it would be getting on to close on a decade of use without any issues. Here the scan and match works perfectly for SBS and Channel but then does its own thing fir the rest.

Is there any way this can be edited manually, and if so, what are the steps?

Thanks.

[MD]

You can sort them alphabetically by scrolling the Guide backwards in time as far as it will go at which point the same box as that used to sort timers will appear.  Choose name as the default is number.

I'll leave the strange LCNs to others more technically competent but personally I ignore them and simply like the networks grouped alphabetically, excepting NITV and Nickolodeon whose names are not the same as the parent network but as outliers are easy to find.

[IanL-S]

What you need to do is to use the channel identifier from the backend - you go to
KODI > Settings > PVR & Live TV >Channels and turn "Use Channels from backend" ON

You will need to be in Expert mode (not basic or advanced) for the option to be available - use the cog bottom left.

[Ian_AW]

G'day, I have already done that and the list I gave is the channel assignments AFTER I made that change.

I'm in Blacktown and suspect I am getting stronger signals from the regional channels because on other occasions the Channel 7 ones have ended up as 65, etc which are the Prime regional channels.

I want to be able to only use the channels in my IceTV account.

The scan says there are 74 channels found but after the "housekeeping"there are just 39 channels. How does the soft reset decide which to keep and which to remove? Where can the raw list be accessed?

[IanL-S]

OK, already tried that one.

Some of the channels are "radio" channels, which explains the larger number.

Other than doing a soft reset I cannot think of any possible solution to the channel problem. However, with the exiting build of the TVHeadend add-on this may not help. The current build (inconsistently) finds multiple muxes for the same content. Where I am I am fortunate that I only get one "duplicate" mux for C31 (channel 44); but in my case they are both correctly identified. Looks like the matching process is going feral in your case.

As I said in an earlier post, the technical team (aka Daniel Hall) is working on a fix. The complexities of the task means that there is not ETA.

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

Where I am I am fortunate that I only get one "duplicate" mux for C31 (channel 44); but in my case they are both correctly identified.

I found that I could get duplicate services/channels when the scan file contained two muxes that technically had different frequencies, but the frequencies were close enough together for the adapter to be able to successfully tune to both muxes.

If I recall correctly, on a vanilla TVH, if I selected 'Australia/Sydney' I got only one, but if I selected 'Australia/General' (or similar), I ended up with duplicates.

[IanL-S]

That is interesting, the 2 muxes for C31/LNC 44 are very close together - 557.5 and 557.625. The proximity for other secondary transmitters (that I often got in the early days of Topfield PVRs) are not adjacent.

[Daniel Hall at IceTV]

Where I am I am fortunate that I only get one "duplicate" mux for C31 (channel 44); but in my case they are both correctly identified.

I found that I could get duplicate services/channels when the scan file contained two muxes that technically had different frequencies, but the frequencies were close enough together for the adapter to be able to successfully tune to both muxes.

If I recall correctly, on a vanilla TVH, if I selected 'Australia/Sydney' I got only one, but if I selected 'Australia/General' (or similar), I ended up with duplicates.

This was because the normal (included in the base tvheadend install) scanning file for "Australia/General" has two versions for each mux, one at '.5' and one at '.625' as Ian mentioned. In the IceBox we have a custom mux list for scanning within TVHeadEnd that only has the entries at '.5' as after checking it looks like all of Australia uses that format.

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

This was because the normal (included in the base tvheadend install) scanning file for "Australia/General" has two versions for each mux, one at '.5' and one at '.625' as Ian mentioned. In the IceBox we have a custom mux list for scanning within TVHeadEnd that only has the entries at '.5' as after checking it looks like all of Australia uses that format.

Yes, that is what I found.  Apparently the scan files are out of date.  The TVH team have been trying to contact the owner of the source scan file repository to address the issue, however, I am not certain what the outcome was.

On my Topfield, all tuned channels are .5 except RF CH 8 which is .625.

[IanL-S]

If I recall correctly, with the TRF 2100 there was a problem that it did not pick up one of the LCNs in Hobart because it was .625 rather than .5. Had to update the firmware for it. It was a secondary transmitter (if I recall correctly). At one time there was two or three secondary transmitters for Hobart ABC. Mount Wellington the main one, with I think Sorrel, New Norfolk and cannot remember where else. Is it possible that  st .625 is used for secondary transmitters.

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

If I recall correctly, with the TRF 2100 there was a problem that it did not pick up one of the LCNs in Hobart because it was .625 rather than .5. Had to update the firmware for it. It was a secondary transmitter (if I recall correctly). At one time there was two or three secondary transmitters for Hobart ABC. Mount Wellington the main one, with I think Sorrel, New Norfolk and cannot remember where else. Is it possible that  at .625 is used for secondary transmitters.

That sounds interesting.  Perhaps I should try that out on my test LE system, see if there is a pattern to missing LCNs with .5 vs .625.

[TimC]

Why (100...)?
Because that is now it presents and I cannot see any more.

If I recall correctly, the "100..." is showing the first three digits of a five-digit number that the system assigns when the channel scan fails to capture the LCN of a channel. As usual the software truncates the least significant digits. If it truncated the Most significant digits, you would have seen "...001", "...002", "...003", etc.

In my circumstance I find that a full capture of all the LCN is an uncommon occurrence. I usually get most of them, but there are usually one or two that get missed.
However, the LCNs can be manually edited using the Web UI at Configuration, Channel / EPG, Channels tab.

I keep feeling that I am missing something with this thread as most of the other members are aware of this and haven't suggested the solution. 

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

Perhaps I should try that out on my test LE system, see if there is a pattern to missing LCNs with .5 vs .625.

With a self-compiled bleeding-edge TVH on Ubuntu using the TVH Wizard, .5 vs .625 did not make a difference to the LCN.  All 'services' ended up with an LCN, however, not all 'channels' got an LCN.

I thought that this was too convenient, so I did it all again, this time keeping a keen eye on the services.  As it turned out, the 'services' for the 3 commercial networks all lacked LCNs at the start.  However, as the OTA EPG grabber ran on each mux, I could see the LCNs being learned in real time as the service list was updated.  Once the LCNs on the services were updated, they were also automagically updated on the channels as well.

The LCNs are not part of the standard service table and are instead provided by descriptor 0x83.

https://www.freetv.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/OP-41-LCN-Descriptor-Issue-8-July-2016.pdf

I need to dig a lot deeper into the TVH code, but I think that TVH is not waiting long enough during the tuning process to see if any LCN descriptors turn up.  Whilst TVH is doing the OTA EPG grab, it sees the LCN descriptors and updates the services/channels accordingly.

Because ICETV does not use the OTA EPG grabber, I wondered if simply the act of tuning to one of the channels on the mux would be enough for TVH to learn the LCNs.

I reset my system once more, disabled the OTA EPG grabber and then ran another scan.  This time, I was still missing LCNs, but on different muxes.  Once the scan was complete, using my browser, I tried to view one of the channels that lacked an LCN and then bingo!  The LCNs for that entire mux turned up in my services list.

Proposed Solution:  For every mux that has channels without an LCN, tune to a single channel on that mux for a few seconds.

[Daniel Hall at IceTV]

Ok, so I have a question for everyone.

Is it really important to you have "LCN's" available? Especially as they are not used for channel changing or really anything apart from channel ordering (if you go through additional hoops). Channel ordering can also be achieved by simply sorting by name as well.

Especially as LCN's are not part of the actual DVB spec and are just added on for Australia and sent as additional data, which is why they are a bit hit or miss as to whether they get found or not.

Multiple transmitters are something we need to address however.

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

and are just added on for Australia

As far as I can tell, UK, Europe & NZ all have LCNs too.