Channel scan and mythfilldatabase/xmltv don't play nice together

[fgouget@…]

I have a DVB-T input card (Hauppauge Nova-T500). Doing a channel scan finds all my channels and fills the database with the relevant tuning information. However the EIT program information is too limited (does not go far enough ahead in time, no detailed program summary, actors list, etc) so I need to add an xmltv video source.

xmltv's French grabber provides all the program data I need, but it does not have any tuning information.

So to get the proper information in mythconverg's channel table I need data from both the channel scan and from mythfilldatabase. However I never managed to get all that data right via normal means:

• If I do the 'mythfilldatabase --manual' run first, not knowing what the channel ids are going to be, and then the channel scan, I end up with duplicate rows in the channel table: one with the tuning data, and the other with the xmltv id and icon.
• If I do the channel scan first and then run 'mythfilldatabase --manual' then I face two options when filling in the channel id field:
  • I can fire off something like mysqlnavigator to retrieve the channel ids straight from the channel table (but setting up mythtv should not require accessing the database directly) and give these ids to mythfilldatabase. But then I get told that the channel already exists and the database is not updated.
  • Or I can give a different channel id to mythfilldatabase (e.g. something < 1000). But then I end up with duplicate channels, both of them incomplete. This also makes the channels untunable because MythTV picks the wrong entry (might be somewhat random and I'm just very unlucky).

So I used this last option and then manually merged the channels in Mysql but that's not an acceptable way of setting up MythTV.

Maybe the mythfilldatabase's --do-channel-updates option could help (I just discovered it while entering this bug). However:

• mythtv-setup suggests running 'mythfilldatabase --manual', not 'mythfilldatabase --manual --do-channel-updates' so a user doing just as he has been instructed will end up with a non functional setup and will not know how to fix it.
• 'mythfilldatabase --help' says it is for DataDirect?, not for xmltv.

Using the Debian packages:

libmyth-0.21 0.21-0.13
mythtv-backend 0.21-0.13
mythtv-common 0.21-0.13
mythtv-database 0.21-0.13
mythtv-frontend 0.21-0.13

Please include all output in bug reports.
MythTV Version : exporté MythTV
Branch : tags/release-0-21
Library API : 0.21.20080304-1
Network Protocol : 40
Options compiled in:

linux profile using_oss using_alsa using_arts using_jack
using_backend using_dbox2 using_dvb using_firewire using_frontend
using_hdhomerun using_iptv using_ivtv using_joystick_menu
using_libfftw3 using_lirc using_opengl_vsync using_v4l using_x11
using_xrandr using_xv using_xvmc using_xvmcw using_xvmc_vld
using_bindings_perl using_bindings_python using_opengl
using_ffmpeg_threads using_libavc_5_3 using_live

[Nick Morrott <knowledgejunkie (at) gmail (dot) com>]

This functionality is intended be the result of the XMLTV projects xmltv-lineups work. I have been collecting data for the matching of DVB-T/S channels to XMLTV data, but the project should allow any XMLTV grabber to allow this ability.

The old version of the XMLTV wiki contains a page describing the intended features of the lineups capability: ​http://xmltv.org/wiki/lineupproposal.html

Please also follow the xmltv-dev list for future developments of this proposed work.

[stuartm]

Feature request without a patch.