Missing Service Name for ABC and SBS channels (Newcastle, Australia)

Graeme Russ

I'm running Fedora 18 on a HP N40L Microserver under with a DigitalNow Quad DVB-T Receiver (http://www.digitalnow.com.au/product_pages/Quad.html) as a backend server and a AMD E-350 running OpenELEC 3.0.0 frontend.

I was using MythTV (under Fedora 16) as a backend, but ever since OpenELEC 2.95.5 (OpenELEC 3.0 RC5) I have been experiencing buffering/stuttering of live TV every few seconds.

I've never been particularly happy with MythTV and now that Tvheadend timeshifting has matured, I figured I would give it a go

I cloned the git repo and successfully compiled tvheadend (commit e9ce02138e81d0dd94a2b155e57fda282063c008) and ran it with build.linux/tvheadend -C

Going to Configuration->DVB Inputs->TV Adapters, I selected each adapter clicked on 'Add DVB Network by location...' and selected Australia/Newcastle from the list.

The Multiplexers tab lists:


+---------------+-------------+----------------------+-----------+-------+---------+
|     Network   |  Frequency  |    Modulation        | NetwordID | MuxID | Quality |
+---------------+-------------+----------------------+-----------+-------+---------+
| SBS NSW       | 543,500 kHz | QAM64, 7MHz, 8k-mode |  12802    |  848  |   100%  |
| ABC NSW       | 226,500 kHz | QAM64, 7MHz, 8k-mode |   4112    |  547  |   100%  |
| SBS NSW       | 599,500 kHz | QAM64, 7MHz, 8k-mode |  12802    |       |   100%  |
| NBN Newcastle | 585,500 kHz | QAM64, 7MHz, 8k-mode |   4121    | 1792  |   100%  |
| PRIME         | 704,500 kHz | QAM64, 7MHz, 8k-mode |  12930    | 2480  |   100%  |
| ABC NSW       | 592,500 kHz | QAM64, 7MHz, 8k-mode |   4112    |       |   100%  |
| SCA           | 690,500 kHz | QAM64, 7MHz, 8k-mode |  12812    | 2058  |   100%  |
+---------------+-------------+----------------------+-----------+-------+---------+

The Services tab lists:


+---------+-----------------+------+-----------------+-------------+-----+-------+---------------+---------------+------------+-------------+-------+
| Enabled |  Service name   | Play |   Channel Name  | DVB Charset | EPG | Type  |    Provider   |    Network    | Encryption | Multiplexer | Pre...|
+---------+-----------------+------+-----------------+-------------+-----+-------+---------------+---------------+------------+-------------+-------+
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | SBS NSW       |            | 543,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | SBS NSW       |            | 543,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | SBS NSW       |            | 543,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | SBS NSW       |            | 543,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | SBS NSW       |            | 543,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | SBS NSW       |            | 543,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | SBS NSW       |            | 543,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | ABC NSW       |            | 226,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | ABC NSW       |            | 226,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | ABC NSW       |            | 226,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | ABC NSW       |            | 226,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | ABC NSW       |            | 226,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | ABC NSW       |            | 226,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   |                 | Play | Unmapped        |    auto     | Yes | Other |               | ABC NSW       |            | 226,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   | 4ME             | Play | 4ME             |    auto     | Yes | SDTV  | PRIME         | PRIME         |            | 704,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   | 7mate Newcastle | Play | 7mate Newcastle |    auto     | Yes | SDTV  | PRIME         | PRIME         |            | 704,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   | 7TWO Newcastle  | Play | 7TWO Newcastle  |    auto     | Yes | SDTV  | PRIME         | PRIME         |            | 704,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   | ELEVEN          | Play | ELEVEN          |    auto     | Yes | SDTV  | SCA           | SCA           |            | 690,500 kHz |   0   |
|   Yes   | eXtra           | Play | eXtra           |    auto     | Yes | SDTV  | NBN Newcastle | NBN Newcastle |            | 585,500 kHz |   0   |
    ...          ...           ...         ...             ...       ...    ...         ...            ...            ...           ...        ...

There is a service name for all the commercial stations (NBN Newcastle, PRIME, and SCA multiplexers), but the service name for the ABC and SBS channels are all blank. These channels worked perfectly well in MythTV.

I'm able to click on 'Play' and watch the commercial channels remotely, but clicking on play does not allow SBS or ABC channels to be viewed. Mannually setting the channel name allows the channels to be displayed in OpenELEC/XBMC but they cannot be watched.

I deleted the configuration (rm -r ~/.hts/) and re-ran tvheadend, this time choosing the generic Australia region. This has 100 Muxes so the scan took some time. The results were exactly the same.

Any hints?

George Goosen

Did you find any joy with this?

I have the same problem.

Infact im not even sure i find all the channels

Steve Lillis

I wonder if this has to do with the fact that progressively over the last few years Analog TV has been turned off around Australia. This has resulted in frequency re-stacking of our Digital TV channels thus some networks have moved channels (eg I understand SBS on UHF-29 moves to VHF-7 in a lot of areas).

As TVHeadend has these channel frequencies preconfigured by location (I read somewhere these are hard-coded in the binaries) then with the recent changes this will not match anymore for some TV networks.

If so how can we easily update TVHeadend so it matches all new default frequencies for Australian location? Or do we need to get the developers to update the code for Australia. I assume this is probably an issues around thye world not just Aussie.