sky uk - is it possible for auto tuning/channel grouping with tvheadend?

bob 808

I am using mediaportal with the EPG grabber plugin, this automatically adds new channels, removes dead ones and updates tuning paramaters as well as putting the correct channel numbers and groups together over the sat feed data.

Is any of this possible with tvheadend? I am migrating off mediaportal to kodi and am using the mediaportal tv service at the moment, but am interested in moving to tvheadend if I can get the same kind of functionality?

Thanks

bob

ProfYaffle

Yes, I think that the bouquet function does precisely this. Whether it's 100% automated, I can't say (I don't use it), but it should pick up whatever Sky is saying should be in a particular bouquet; the question is whether it then auto-maps the new/changed channels or whether you need to click the 'map all' button at that point.

Kevin J

pail sutherby wrote:
> I am using mediaportal with the EPG grabber plugin, this automatically adds new channels, removes dead ones and updates tuning paramaters as well as putting the correct channel numbers and groups together over the sat feed data.
>
> Is any of this possible with tvheadend? I am migrating off mediaportal to kodi and am using the mediaportal tv service at the moment, but am interested in moving to tvheadend if I can get the same kind of functionality?
>
Hi, I too am doing exactly this process, been on Mediaportal for about 5 years, finally moving over to all Linux systems, TVHeadend, Kodi, Openelec, Raspberry Pi 2, etc.

So I am very interested in what you have done, how it's working, etc.

Kind regards.

bob 808

So I have some leve of success.. I setup my signal type and mapped to the tuners, then it auto scanned all the channels. I picked my region in bouquets and it mapped a lot of channels but not into groups as I had hoped.

I had to create tags for my groups and change the tags on all the channels to get the behaviour I wanted in kodi. I have seen a post on here about a script to sort out channel groups but it seems to be out of date so have not tried it yet.

Now this is running it works great. I have not sorted icons yet for the channels - with mediaportal as a backend they just worked but not figured out the picon setup needed here yet.

I am using chromebox and pi2 as clients running openelec and they work just fine with livetv. I am also trying out one of the wetek boxes as my TV backend and it seems to be ok too

Kevin J

Ahh, the groups is a real necessity, with so many channels, and family members to please.
I am away on holiday next week, but will report back on how I get on my end once back and had time to play.
I also was using DJBlu's version of Mediportal, it was fantastic, but time to move on.

Keep me posted on what your up to your end, and I'll do the same.

Kind regards.

Gary Brown

I have been using this setup for a while now and there are a few problems with this setup and discussions with the devs have happened but nothing has been figured out for this yet.

When Sky change the channels tvheadend doesn't handle this correctly and you end up with a ton of channels numbered 4912. disable and enable the bouquet is a temp solution but you would loose anything you have set yourself.

give it time for this to get sorted as I'm almost finished University and will be spending some time looking into how to get my setup fully automated (motorised setup) but by doing this it will fix any underlying problems you could face.

bob 808

Thanks - is there any plan to get the groups/tags automated too as this is provided in the sky stream but not used in the current boquet method?

Gary Brown

I hope I can add this but at the moment I cannot find any info to show me what is sent by sky in there EPG. I'm more concerned by the 2 EPG bugs I have added to the issues #3009 and #3039. I was hoping one of the main devs could've looked at this but have not had any reply off them so far so have had to wait till I have the time to look at this myself which should be soon I hope.

Kevin J

pail sutherby wrote:
> I had to create tags for my groups and change the tags on all the channels to get the behaviour I wanted in kodi. I have seen a post on here about a script to sort out channel groups but it seems to be out of date so have not tried it yet.
>
You had to manually double click on each of the 600+ channels and select the group/tag? That must have taken hours???!?!!??

bob 808

It took a while / not as long as you would think though as the channel numbers were picked up by the scan so I could put everything 101-299 as entertainment, 301-350 movies 491-499 sport etc. I just wish you could set tags for multiple channels at once as I had to do it channel by channel!

Kevin J

How about this tool for setting multiple channel tags at once?
https://tvheadend.org/d/1416-tvheadedit-tool?page=1

Also how often do we need to be doing a fresh scan, re-tag / group channles, etc. How often does sky change stuff?

bob 808

thanks, I will have a look at that!

The rescan happens automatically when tuners are idle, so its just updating the tags if they are changed... this doesn't happen too often, so I guess checking once a month would pick up any minor changes?

Kevin J

pail sutherby wrote:

> It took a while / not as long as you would think though as the channel numbers were picked up by the scan so I could put everything 101-299 as entertainment, 301-350 movies 491-499 sport etc. I just wish you could set tags for multiple channels at once as I had to do it channel by channel!

How do you know which channels go into which groups / tags?

Dreamcat 4

I also am interested to see any improvement of this. It seems the biggest problem remaining now for UK/astra users. They are always updating the channels map.

The best idea I could think of was not to bother solving the actual cause. Just create some kind of script to re-apply the user customizations from scratch each time. Then clear the config / retune with a bouquet. And run the script to auto-find / auto-map or re-number the user's custom channels settings.

The problem with that approach is it doesn't restore the DVR scheduled recordings.

Kevin J

Gary Brown wrote:

> I hope I can add this but at the moment I cannot find any info to show me what is sent by sky in there EPG. I'm more concerned by the 2 EPG bugs I have added to the issues #3009 and #3039. I was hoping one of the main devs could've looked at this but have not had any reply off them so far so have had to wait till I have the time to look at this myself which should be soon I hope.

Hi, just wondering if there was an update on this?

Gary Brown

I've been on holiday over the last few weeks but have also got a few Education problems to deal with first so it may be next week or later I look at fixing these problems. will be trying to catch the 2 main programmers to chat about it also. I'll post when I get the chance to fix this.

Kevin J

Thanks for the update Gary, we'll eagerly await your reponce:)

Kind regards.

Kevin J

Hi Gary, just wondered how's it going, Anything need testing?

Kind regards.

Kevin J

Gary Brown wrote:

> I've been on holiday over the last few weeks but have also got a few Education problems to deal with first so it may be next week or later I look at fixing these problems. will be trying to catch the 2 main programmers to chat about it also. I'll post when I get the chance to fix this.

Hi Gary, just wondering if you had a chance to look into this?

Let us know if you want us to test anything,

Kind regards.

Jim Grove

Gary Brown wrote:

> I hope I can add this but at the moment I cannot find any info to show me what is sent by sky in there EPG.....................

There is an Enigma2 plugin that does exactly this. It is called 'AutoBouquetsMaker'
Would it perhaps be possible to have a look through it's source code and find the info that you are looking for?