Freesat OTA Epg. looking for simple steps

R Maxwell

Firstly many thanks to everyone who has worked on Tvheadend its pretty amazing and your hard work is appreciated.

Im struggling to get the OTA epg for Freesat working off the Astra satellite signal.

I have a DVBSky 2 chan pcie vers3 card with 2 inputs.
I can see/watch the channels fine.
I dont see any bouquets for FreeSat
TVHeadEnd Version 4.2.7

Debian Stretch

I have enabled the OTA Epg in the modules for Freesat. I have enabled EPG in both of the TV Adaptors - DVB card setup

I can see the scan starting I think in the log but it doesnt seem to find anything on what I assume is each mux.

I can see the following in my log, ( I think the TVGuide XMLTV is interspersed ( which seems to be stuck at 35% ) )

2018-11-04 14:05:05.224 subscription: 0622: "epggrab" subscribing to mux "10847V", weight: 4, adapter: "Montage Technology M88RS6000 #1 : DVB-S #0", network: "Astra", service: "Raw PID Subscription"
2018-11-04 14:05:06.900 spawn: No schedule found
2018-11-04 14:05:06.903 spawn: [Sun Nov 4 14:05:06 2018] Fetching listings: 35%
2018-11-04 14:05:11.291 spawn: No schedule found
2018-11-04 14:05:11.295 spawn: [Sun Nov 4 14:05:11 2018] Fetching listings: 35%
2018-11-04 14:05:17.100 spawn: No schedule found
2018-11-04 14:05:17.101 spawn: [Sun Nov 4 14:05:17 2018] Fetching listings: 35%
2018-11-04 14:05:21.958 spawn: No schedule found
2018-11-04 14:05:21.961 spawn: [Sun Nov 4 14:05:21 2018] Fetching listings: 35%
2018-11-04 14:05:27.606 spawn: No schedule found
2018-11-04 14:05:27.609 spawn: [Sun Nov 4 14:05:27 2018] Fetching listings: 35%
2018-11-04 14:05:33.364 spawn: No schedule found
2018-11-04 14:05:33.367 spawn: [Sun Nov 4 14:05:33 2018] Fetching listings: 35%
2018-11-04 14:05:39.004 spawn: No schedule found
2018-11-04 14:05:39.008 spawn: [Sun Nov 4 14:05:39 2018] Fetching listings: 35%
2018-11-04 14:05:43.441 spawn: No schedule found
2018-11-04 14:05:43.445 spawn: [Sun Nov 4 14:05:43 2018] Fetching listings: 35%

2018-11-04 14:05:45.191 subscription: 0622: "epggrab" unsubscribing

I did have the EIT module working but have turned it off.

I managed to get the xmltv bleb working, turned off now.

I have run out of ideas why the OTA Epg isnt being found in the signal, any help would be appreciated.

Adrian Smith

The UK Freesat 7-day EPG is only transmitted on the Freesat Home transponder which is currently 11425H. First of all then check that this Mux was found when you set up and scanned the network. Also check in the Mux configuration that it is enabled for EPG scan.

When you say you don't see any Bouquets for Freesat, are you expecting them to have "Freesat" in the bouquet name like the BSkyB ones do? If so, they don't, the Freesat Bouquets are named after the region and have HD and SD versions. So for me, the Freesat bouquet is "England HD: East (W)/Anglia W".

The Freesat EPG grabber works fine for me (I have others enabled as well) but you will see it time out on Muxes other than the Freesat Home Transponder above. I know that doesn't help you

Try mapping and playing another service on the home transponder and check the "status" screen to ensure you have good signal on this transponder. If you have no signal, or a weak signal, on this transponder then you won't get the Freesat EPG.

R Maxwell

Thanks for this info. It helped a lot. I checked the 11425 mux and it wasnt mapped channel. It doesnt seem to have any playable channels on it but as soon as I attempted to play the Fashion Channel the EPG for Freesat was populated and the Freesat Bouquets appeared. So this means the mux needs to be mapped to get the EPG off it I assume....

This leaves me with another question, should the channel icons appear automatically or do I have to download them elsewhere ?

Adrian Smith

How long ago did you do the rebuild? How many tuners do you have? Is your TVHeadend system switched on and idle at 2am and 2pm each day? How long have you waited for the EPG to be populated?

Over the air EPG grabbers work on a schedule defined in the "Configuration/Channel/EPG/EPG Grabber" tab of the user interface. My "over-the-air grabbers" section has the following settings:

Force initial EPG Grab at start-up :not checked
Cron: Default settings .... 4 2 *

EPG Scan Timeout in seconds: 90

From memory, the first and last settings above are not the defaults. The change to the timeout is especially important if you only have one or two tuners because the EPG grab works as follows:

1. Tune a spare tuner to the first Mux
2. Receive data continuously from that Mux until either (a) the expected EPG data is received and processed or (b) the timeout occurs

3. Repeat from the start until all Muxes scanned for EPG data

I can't remember what the default timeout is but when I first set up TVHeadend I only had one tuner and the above process took many HOURS to complete (and that's assuming that I didn't try to use the tuner to watch anything in the meantime). The process was tuning to every mux and looking for Freesat EPG data (which it wouldn't find) and waiting for the timeout before moving onto the next mux.

I now have four tuners and the above settings and the Freesat EPG grab is rock solid. In this scenario, all four tuners are used in the EPG grab process (assuming that the tuners are not in use to record or watch something).

If you initiate an OTA EPG grab manually from the same configuration screen, you'll see the tuner(s) being used to scan for EPG data in the log (click the small symbol in the bottom right hand corner of the web interface to see the log in real time).

You can fully optimise EPG scanning on each Mux with the "EPG Scan" setting if you want to. If you are a DVB-S2 UK Freesat setup only you could set the "EPG Scan" setting for all muxes to "EIT Only" except for 11425H which you could set to "Only UK Freesat". This would be a bit of effort to set up but once set it would be very quick to scan for the Freesat EPG.

As to why tuning to a channel on 11425H kicked in the EPG, this is because the EPG data is transmitted all the time in the background of all channels on the mux and TVHeadend would have picked up and processed this data when the channel on 11425H was tuned. Quite why you can't repeat this I'm not sure.

My suggestion would be to change the EPG Grabber settings as above (especially the timeout) and then initiate an OTA EPG grab. You should see lots of entries like this in the log:

subscription: 0A58: "epggrab" subscribing to mux "11082.25H", weight: 4, adapter: ......

.. then after 90s

epggrab: EIT: DVB Grabber - data completion timeout for 11082.25H in Astra 28.2
epggrab: UK: Freesat - data completion timeout for 11082.25H in Astra 28.2

subscription: 0A58: "epggrab" unsubscribing

Don't worry about the "data completion timeouts" - you'll get one even on 11425H but once it has scanned 11425H the EPG should be populated.

Time taken for the whole process to complete will be dependent on the number of tuners you have but, once it has completed the EPG should be populated.

Adrian Smith

Sorry - missed your question about channel icons yesterday. No, the channel icons aren't provided over-the-air with the EPG data. You'll need to source some Freesay picons elsewhere. There's quite a few forum posts/tutorials on setting this up.