How Will U4 handle New Channels?

[Jeddie]

Tried to search but could not find an answer.

I haven't owned my U4 for very long. And I'm interested to know how it will handle the forthcoming new movie channel from SBS?

Will it simply add the channel itself?

Is there a setting that specifies behaviour for new channels?

Or do I need to do some type of Manual scan to get it?

Thanks

[Gully]

It should just update automatically though the picon will need to come from an online update/download once available.

[Jeddie]

Thought I would re-visit this.

I had to add SBS World Movies channel manually. I did a full scan and re-did my Favorites. The U4 did not automatically update the new channel..

So now I would like to add 7mate HD without having to do a full re-scan.

How do I do a partial scan for 7mate HD?

[Grumpy_Geoff]

So now I would like to add 7mate HD without having to do a full re-scan.

What's wrong with doing a full scan (Location scan)? It won't touch your Favourites bouquet.

How do I do a partial scan for 7mate HD?

For a scan of just the Seven Network -
Zap live TV to any service from the Seven Network.
Press MENU>>Setup>>Tuners>>Manual Scan
Type of scan - Predefined transponder
Clear before scan - no
GREEN/Scan
Once the scan has completed, press OK and exit back to live TV, you'll then be using the Last scanned bouquet and it will contain only the Seven Network services. Press FAV to open the channel list on that bouquet. Select 7mateHD Sydney. Press GREEN/Add to Favourites.
Press CH+ to cycle the bouquets to Favourites. Press MENU>>Enable move mode.
Select 7mateHD Sydney, press OK to "grab it" for moving, use UP/DOWN to move it to the desired spot, press OK to "drop it". Press MENU>>Disable move mode.
Select 7mateHD Sydney, press OK to zap to it and set Favourites as the current bouquet.

[prl]

So now I would like to add 7mate HD without having to do a full re-scan.

What's wrong with doing a full scan (Location scan)? It won't touch your Favourites bouquet.

+1

[Paul_oz53]

So now I would like to add 7mate HD without having to do a full re-scan.

What's wrong with doing a full scan (Location scan)? It won't touch your Favourites bouquet.

+1

That's not entirely true as I just discovered.

I took this at face value but it was a disaster.
The full scan correctly found the channel 7mateHD BUT it has replaced all my channel 9 and 10 services with the Melbourne UHF repeater equivalents in all my bouquets containing those services

This is without me having altered any of the bouquets. The result is unwatchable on 9 &10. The flaw in full scan is I cannot prevent it scanning the high UHF channels. For reasons unknown the U4 prefers the UHF channels despite their abysmal signal quality.

I will fix the corrupt services manually but I have no confidence in the full scan because of this behaviour.

[Paul_oz53]

So now I would like to add 7mate HD without having to do a full re-scan.

What's wrong with doing a full scan (Location scan)? It won't touch your Favourites bouquet.

+1

That's not entirely true as I just discovered.

I took this at face value but it was a disaster.
The full scan correctly found the channel 7mateHD BUT it replaced all my channel 9 and 10 services with the Melbourne UHF repeater equivalents in all my bouquets containing those services

This is without me having altered any of the bouquets. The result is unwatchable on 9 &10. The flaw in full scan is I cannot prevent it scanning the high UHF channels. For reasons unknown the U4 prefers the UHF channels despite their abysmal signal quality in outer suburban Melbourne.

I will fix the corrupt services manually but I have no confidence in the full scan because of this behaviour.

[Edit: Manually scanning channels 8 and 11 repaired the corruption without editing Favourites at all. Thus, all scan types appear to replace all existing service entries. If you only receive UHF or VHF services then there is no issue but if you receive both you can suffer this problem. Bug?]

[Grumpy_Geoff]

[Edit: Manually scanning channels 8 and 11 repaired the corruption without editing Favourites at all. Thus, all scan types appear to replace all existing service entries. If you only receive UHF or VHF services then there is no issue but if you receive both you can suffer this problem. Bug?]

I now see you've added an edit, as I was about to post this -

I don't think it actually altered your Favourites, it's just that the provider details (ONID, TSID) have changed in lamedb/lamedb5 and now point to the shitty frequencies.

To recover, do you have a recent backup?

Or try a manual scan, Complete, Network scan off, Clear before yes.

[Paul_oz53]

I don't think it actually altered your Favourites, it's just that the provider details (ONID, TSID) have changed in lamedb/lamedb5 and now point to the shitty frequencies.

To recover, do you have a recent backup?

Or try a manual scan, Complete, Network scan off, Clear before yes.

Thanks Grumpy Geoff,

That would explain the situation at a technical level. To an average Joe though, the effect is still pretty irritating.

Only took me a couple of minutes to fix it with the manual scans. I do have backups and I could have edited the bouquets manually too, if need be.

Tried the manual scan as suggested but identical results - shitty frequencies have replaced the good ones. I will have a go tomorrow daytime as I suspect the reception at night is a factor.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Tried the manual scan as suggested but identical results - shitty frequencies have replaced the good ones. I will have a go tomorrow daytime as I suspect the reception at night is a factor.

Your shitty frequency LCNs should have gone to 350 and above, or did you not get duplicates?

[Grumpy_Geoff]

If you only receive UHF or VHF services then there is no issue but if you receive both you can suffer this problem. Bug?]

When was the last time you performed a full scan? Perhaps this is a new bug in the 19.3-series otherwise you should have seen this before.
I'm thinking "our man" prl may want you to turn on debug logging and perform a full scan so he can analyse the debug output

[Paul_oz53]

Tried the manual scan as suggested but identical results - shitty frequencies have replaced the good ones. I will have a go tomorrow daytime as I suspect the reception at night is a factor.

Your shitty frequency LCNs should have gone to 350 and above, or did you not get duplicates?

No duplicates. Nothing in the service listings above 308. I checked for that because I expected that the missing frequencies would be there.

[Paul_oz53]

If you only receive UHF or VHF services then there is no issue but if you receive both you can suffer this problem. Bug?]

When was the last time you performed a full scan?

Last full scan would have been 9Gem HD. I recall it screwing up so I restored and manually scanned ch 8.

Perhaps this is a new bug in the 19.3-series otherwise you should have seen this before.
I'm thinking "our man" prl may want you to turn on debug logging and perform a full scan so he can analyse the debug output

I think it is a bug but can't be sure when it first appeared. I usually do firmware in daylight hours and this may be relevant to the behaviour of my scans.

Happy to post my logs.

Last full scan would have been 9Gem HD. I recall it screwing up so I restored and manually scanned ch 8.

Debug logging is on but the main PC is broken so I will need to fix that first (PSU died. Spare is underpowered.)

[prl]

The full scan correctly found the channel 7mateHD BUT it replaced all my channel 9 and 10 services with the Melbourne UHF repeater equivalents in all my bouquets containing those services

... For reasons unknown the U4 prefers the UHF channels despite their abysmal signal quality in outer suburban Melbourne.

The algorithm that selects which channels to select where two channels have the same parameters (ONID, TSID, SID) but different frequencies often gets it wrong, on all T/U/V models, not just the U4. It uses a fairly short sample of the signal strengths to select the frequency to be used. It's not an intentional bias towards the UHF channels, but it's possible that differences between the measurement of signal strength between the VHF and UHF bands puts in an unwanted but systematic bias.

I'm surprised, though, that given what else is described, that the wanted channels weren't found in the "duplicates" LCN range, 350 and above.

The recommendation to use Location Scan rather than individual channel scans should probably have been qualified by something like "in most circumstances".

[Paul_oz53]

Thanks prl.

Daytime scans are worse. Lost ABC too.

I'm consistently only getting one instance of each service and nothing over 350 as an alternate. If this were working I'd be quite content. At least the option to select the alternate would be present.

As it stands, the loss is the Terrestrial bouquet only contains the 58 detected services and no alternates or the last scanned channel. I could manually build Terrestrial but I don't need it.

[Jeddie]

For a scan of just the Seven Network -
Zap live TV to any service from the Seven Network.
Press MENU>>Setup>>Tuners>>Manual Scan
Type of scan - Predefined transponder
Clear before scan - no
GREEN/Scan
Once the scan has completed, press OK and exit back to live TV, you'll then be using the Last scanned bouquet and it will contain only the Seven Network services. Press FAV to open the channel list on that bouquet. Select 7mateHD Sydney. Press GREEN/Add to Favourites.
Press CH+ to cycle the bouquets to Favourites. Press MENU>>Enable move mode.
Select 7mateHD Sydney, press OK to "grab it" for moving, use UP/DOWN to move it to the desired spot, press OK to "drop it". Press MENU>>Disable move mode.
Select 7mateHD Sydney, press OK to zap to it and set Favourites as the current bouquet.

So I did this and it worked fine. Thanks GG.

But the picon for 7MateHD still shows 7Food not 7MateHD picon? I guess this will be fixed in future firmware?

[Grumpy_Geoff]

But the picon for 7MateHD still shows 7Food not 7MateHD picon? I guess this will be fixed in future firmware?

Yes, eventually, or see "How to directly fetch the picons-tv-australia package from IanSav's feed server and then install it"

[prl]

The picon setup for 7mateHD is sitting in the picon repository ready to be included in the next firmware release.