With only the UK: Freeview "epggrab: no OTA modules active"

Spinlock

I have tvheadend Tvheadend version 4.3-2375_g653bd0400-dirty running as a home assistant addon, and I'm using it with an HDHomeRun Connect for UK Freeview DVB-T.

My problem is that the EPG is missing program name and description for all of the channels, including the HD channels, in the BBCB mux, 474.167MHz. (The start and end times show up, but not any details about what is in each time slot).

To try to fix this I've been trying to force the "Over-the-air: UK: Freeview" grabber module to be used instead of the default "Over-the-air: EIT: EPG Grabber", either by setting UK: Freeview as a manual selection for the mux, or by making UK: Freeview the only enabled EPG grabber module.

For example:
I've set General > Base > Default view level to "Advanced", and configured Channel / EPG > EPG Grabber Modules with only "Over-the-air: UK: Freeview" enabled, as in this screenshot:

I've turned on trace and debug for tbl-eit and epggrab to a new log file in Configuration > Debugging.

I've set all of my muxes except the one that I'm interested in to "Ignore" in Configuration > DVD Inputs > Muxes, as in this screen shot:

For good measure, I've restarted tvheadend. Then when I try to use Configuration > Channel / EPG > EPG Grabber > Trigger OTA EPG Grabber I quickly see this message in my trace log:
2025-03-07 14:52:03.409 [ DEBUG]:epggrab: no OTA modules active for 474.167MHz in DVB-T Network, check again next time

It is similar if I set the Over-the-air: UK: Freeview module a manual selection on the mux.

1/ Why can't I use the UK: Freeview module?
2/ Is there another way to get UK EPG data for the 474.2MHz mux with the HD channels?

davep

Spinlock EPG for HD channels is compressed using Huffman coding, but the UK Freeview grabber is able to carry out the decompression so it should work.

On my system (also in the UK) I have the following settings:
"EIT: DVB Grabber" enabled, priority 1
"UK: Freesat" enabled, priority 5
"UK: Freesat (EIT)" enabled, priority 6.
Also set "Short EIT Description" to "Summary" on all grabbers.

Your image of the grabber settings doesn't have the "Priority" field. Do you have your user view level set to "Expert"?

Spinlock

davep I do see the priority if I choose Expert view - I had set priority of UK: Freeview to 1 (from default of 5), and for EIT (when it's enabled), I set priority to 3 from the default of 1. Reading the help text, that seems to be the opposite of what I needed - a higher number indicates I want to prefer a particular module 🤨

"Priority : Grabber priority. This option lets you pick which EPG grabber's data get used first. Priority is given to the grabber with the highest value set here. See Help for more info"

Thanks!

With only the UK: Freeview encoder enabled tvheadend behaves as if there is no such module (and the error message I posted above). If reconfigure my EPG Grabber Modules to enable both the EIT and the UK: Freeview parsers with the default priorities like this
...

Then I see these messages traced when I save the configuration
2025-03-07 19:51:26.686 [ INFO]:tbl-eit: module eit - scraper disabled by config 2025-03-07 19:51:35.889 [ INFO]:tbl-eit: module uk_freeview - scraper disabled by config

Seems exactly the opposite of what I did (I enabled both modules). 🤷‍♂️If I view the configuration file then, for example, uk_freeview is shown enabled
~ $ cat addon_configs/dae55a80_tvheadend/tvheadend/epggrab/config | egrep -A 13 uk_freeview "uk_freeview": { "class": "epggrab_mod_eit", "short_target": 0, "running_immediate": false, "scrape_config": "uk", "scrape_episode": false, "scrape_title": false, "scrape_subtitle": false, "scrape_summary": false, "name": "UK: Freeview", "type": "Over-the-air", "enabled": true, "priority": 5 },

So, I've deleted all of my EPG channels, and restarted tvheadend to be sure it's reading a fresh config file.

After the restart I've remapped the services to channels (and forgot to turn the Trace and Debug info back on). Remapping the services to channels triggered an EPG scan, and I get a very sparse subset:

I didn't remember to turn the tracing back on to see any helpful messages. I'll try again.

Spinlock

I posted the wrong image above - this is my EPG Module configuration with priority shown.

Spinlock

Yay - I have EPG info for the DVB-T2 / HD Freeview multiplex, alongside info for all of the other channels. I did three extra things...

1/ A completely clean install: I deleted all config files and data (I removed addon_configs/dae55a80_tvheadend in Home Assistant), and then the addon regenerated fresh empty data
1b/ I quit the startup/first time wizard by clicking cancel before it had finished scanning all of the multiplexes
2/ I set my preferred EPG modules and turned on all of the sub-fields in the EPG Grabber configuration
3/ Finally, I cleaned up the list of automatically found multiplexes, scanned them, then mapped channels, and then watched the EPG quickly fill up with sensible info

🙂

Thanks for pointing out the proper way to set the EPG grabber priority Dave !