Discussion:
How to do a (full) channel scan within VDR?
Barrera, Inigo
2005-02-07 19:01:01 UTC
Permalink
Hello,

we finally have a PC running VDR 1.3.17 (with softdevice 0.0.8) with a
Nova-T card, and we want to pass it through an automated testing equipment
to check if such kind of machine is compliant with the DVB-T Receiver
specification for Spain, as a university graduate research work for a
resident student.

Some of these tests are repeated on different sets of frequency channels, so
we need to somehow re-tune the system between tests. Usually, when we
perform these compliance tests on commercial sets, we just do a full scan
when necessary. But I just don't know how to do this with VDR. The problem
is that all commands from the testing equipment must be triggered through IR
commands, so this re-scan or full scan command should be triggered through
the remote. That means that either there is a direct key for this, or it is
accessible through the menu system.

The first idea was to use the channel update feature for this. I thought of
doing a fake channels.conf file, with all the channels and a fake service
for each one, but I don't really know how the channel update feature is
working so I don't know if several service would be caught in this way (or I
should add a number of fake services for each channel in the file), and
-what is much worse- I don't know how to start the update (or when it
starts). Should it work? Is this feature explained somewhere? (sorry if it
is too basic, but I really couldn't find it)

As other ideas I also thought of using a special script which is calling the
scan from dvb utils after vdr, and use the power-off key as a trigger. Not
so ellegant, though. And I also found a scanner plugin, but (at least the
version I found) it seemed to be updated until vdr 1.1.32. Does anybody know
of another plugin which I could use, in case channel update cannot be used
for this? Or a patch, or anything?

Thank you very much!
Inigo.


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Udo Richter
2005-02-08 02:08:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by Barrera, Inigo
The problem
is that all commands from the testing equipment must be triggered through IR
commands
The remote allows to teach User1...User9 keys, and by keymacros.conf you
can tell VDr to run a shell command from commands.conf. For example, the
line "User1 Menu Commands 1" will start the first command in
commands.conf if the User1 key is pressed.

From there, you can start a background shell script doing lots of nice
stuff, like tuning to channels via svdrp commands. For example,
"svdrpsend.pl chan 1" will tune to channel 1, "svdrpsend.pl scan" will
start EPG scanning, etc.

All this is documented in the program readme files and in the man pages.
(dont miss "man 5 vdr")

Cheers,

Udo
Joerg Knitter
2005-02-08 09:22:30 UTC
Permalink
Post by Udo Richter
Post by Barrera, Inigo
The problem
is that all commands from the testing equipment must be triggered through IR
commands
The remote allows to teach User1...User9 keys, and by keymacros.conf you
can tell VDr to run a shell command from commands.conf. For example, the
line "User1 Menu Commands 1" will start the first command in
commands.conf if the User1 key is pressed.
From there, you can start a background shell script doing lots of nice
stuff, like tuning to channels via svdrp commands. For example,
"svdrpsend.pl chan 1" will tune to channel 1, "svdrpsend.pl scan" will
start EPG scanning, etc.
If you don´t have all available channels/transponders in the
channels.conf, "svdrpsend.pl chan x" does not help. And "svdrpsend.pl
scan" did not work on a single card system when I tested it last with
VDR 1.3.12 - I have a dual card system so I don´t have this problem.

Any other possibilities to find new channels on a one-card-system?

Joerg
Reinhard Nissl
2005-02-08 20:35:15 UTC
Permalink
Hi,
Post by Joerg Knitter
If you don´t have all available channels/transponders in the
channels.conf, "svdrpsend.pl chan x" does not help. And "svdrpsend.pl
scan" did not work on a single card system when I tested it last with
VDR 1.3.12 - I have a dual card system so I don´t have this problem.
Any other possibilities to find new channels on a one-card-system?
When you have a single budget card system and use vdr-xine then transfer
mode is active all the time and no complete epgscan can happen even it
is started from the epg setup with the scan button (VDR will just scan
the current transponder).

Isn't it that VDR drops transfer mode to do a complete epg scan if there
has been a long time of user inactivity?

Anyway, replaying a recording and pausing it will release the single
device from transfer mode and VDR will start an epg scan after 60 seconds.

Be aware that due to the paused recording VDR will not shut down as it
would do when transfer mode is active.

I'm just thinking about adding a similar feature to vdr-xine: when xine
is not connected to vdr-xine, vdr-xine will play the NO SIGNAL recording
and pause it to release it's transfer mode receiver device. Just on
connect by xine, vdr-xine will stop playing it's recording and live TV
will continue just as it is currently happening all the time. But it
should not hinder VDR to shut down due to user inactivity. At least this
issue should be solved before such a feature can be implemented.

Bye.
--
Dipl.-Inform. (FH) Reinhard Nissl
mailto:***@gmx.de
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