Map European analog channel manually

[LostInSpace]

Hi,

I'm trying SageTV for some days now and I'm quite impressed about the quality of the SW. I've been trying another competitor's solution but it didn't reach the quality of sageTV. anyway, I have a problem:
I leave in Europe (Belgium) and my cable operator provides me only a list of the channels with they freq. but they are mixed up and I'd like to sort them by preference. How can I do that? I tried using the channel set up but did not succeed. More, not all the channels provided are detected so I'll have to tune them manually...

Please help ...

[nielm]

There is no way to do this in Sage specifically (it seems that there is no concept of re-ordering TV channels in North America), but there is a way to do this in Windows...

You will need to hack the registry to override Windows' default channel/frequency assignments. This will affect all programs that use Windows' DirectShow to handle the tuner (which is everything except Hauppages' WinTV!).

When I was a Snapstream user, (before I saw the light!) I wrote a guide on how to do this -- you can find it here:
http://www.snapstream.com/community/...s/customorder/

Some of the things are Snapstream-specific, but you should get the general idea... (I must get around to updating it for Sage)

Re: not all channels are detected, if you are using XMLTV Sage can only display channels that appear in the XMLTV file, so you need to either:

• manually edit the generated XMLTV file to add the channel IDs for the channels without data
• or edit your XMLTV grabber script to put 'dummy' channels in there
• or create a separate XMLTV file with the dummy channels, and the use the XMLTV tv_cat option to merge the two files

(also see this forum post)

[LostInSpace]

Thanks, it works...
I hope that SageStudio will be adapted for European users and they will support European TVguides (Why not EuroTV.com ???)
Thanks for your support

[eurojojo]

Hai,

As explained on http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...yoverrides.asp it is a bit difficult in parts of Europe to get Sage running. Cable providers do not use exact channels, but f.e. channel "48+". And, channels are never in the right order, and must be re-ordered with presets. On a TV you can fine-tune. But that's not possible with software like Sage. People posted different tricks to solve the problem, but I hope I am working on the "final solution" (for Windows).

With FreqCopy you simply fine-tune with WinTV(2000). Best is when you use only Mhz-settings, since FreqCopy will re-order the channels and override existing channels. Make sure WinTV(2000) indicates stereo-sound when it is available. I found my cable-provider's table to be a bit off, and produce mono-sound on some channels. After you have all channels in the right order and tuned up, start my tool and it will create a frequency override table. From then on you can address the channels in the order of WinTV(2000) without the need for WinTV(2000) until you need to retune! It should work with all software, since it is then part of your Windows system settings.

On the webpage about FreqCopy I will show my analysis of the Hauppauge registry settings. Linux programmers may want to use that. Since the tool works with the Windows registry, there is no reason for a port to Linux.

Comments are welcome, and I am willing to improve on the tool and of course fix bugs (within reasonable limits). I wrote it for personal use, but you are welcome to help yourselves.

The link: http://www.prize.nl/software/freqcopy

Don't be offended by the PayPal button. It is "hey-man-ware". Only if you think "Hey man, this saves me a lot of time, thanx" or something alike I hope you make a donation...

[bisbjerg]

Hi Eurojojo,

How does the changed frequencies take effect. Should I remove and add the TV Tuner card in SageTV Setup?

Regards,
Lasse

[nielm]

You should only need to restart Sage, no need to add/remove sources, though you may need to re-order your channel lineup afterwards!

When Sage wants to change channel, it tells Windows though the DirectShow interface to "Tune to channel xx". Windows looks in the registry to find out what frequency channel xx is, and sets the capture card to that frequency...

Both mine and eurojojo's systems modify the registry entries that set up the channel->Frequency mappings, mine requires a lot of manual effort, while eurojojo's requires you to tune and set up your channels in WinTV2000 first...

[eurojojo]

Originally posted by nielm
Both mine and eurojojo's systems modify the registry entries that set up the channel->Frequency mappings, mine requires a lot of manual effort, while eurojojo's requires you to tune and set up your channels in WinTV2000 first...

Indeed.

[bisbjerg]

OK, so it should be possible to re-order the channels by using the eurojojo method, and restart SageTV (and eventually enter Channel Setup)?

[eurojojo]

Originally posted by bisbjerg
OK, so it should be possible to re-order the channels by using the eurojojo method, and restart SageTV (and eventually enter Channel Setup)?

It worked here. Tell us about it if it did or did not work. Message me PM if it did not work because of my tool failing. Good luck.

[SHS]

eurojojo would like me to host that file being the web site you have it on is very very slow being I should had this download in 5sec not 2min later.

[bisbjerg]

OK, so now I have tuned in on and re-ordered all my 44 channels in WinTV2000.
Ready to use the FreqCopy tool, I just wondered why I didn't have any registry entry called ..\Microsoft\TV System Services ??
Tried FreqCopy anyway, and got the 44 registry entries, but only 12 contained any frequencies. What am I doing wrong. Is it because I have DX9 installed on this system, and MS has changed something?

[LostInSpace]

Thanks for your tip. I'll try it asa I have some time...

[eurojojo]

Originally posted by bisbjerg
OK, so now I have tuned in on and re-ordered all my 44 channels in WinTV2000.
Ready to use the FreqCopy tool, I just wondered why I didn't have any registry entry called ..\Microsoft\TV System Services ??

I was puzzled by that myself also. It took me a couple of days to simply try it and mess with these Registry settings. Seems like the override works directly on DirectX. If there is no ..\Microsoft\TV System Services in the Registry apparently there was no override behorehand.

Tried FreqCopy anyway, and got the 44 registry entries, but only 12 contained any frequencies. What am I doing wrong. Is it because I have DX9 installed on this system, and MS has changed something? [/B]

Only channels in WinTV2000 that are defined as "MhZ" such-and-such are transferred by FreqCopy. Channels that are true hard cable-provider-channels (sorry for being this vague, if you don't understand what I mean I will try better) are not transferable. FreqCopy will create a free channel filled with the "0"-frequency. Just figure out the MhZ of the channel you had on it. See the "Help" screen in FreqCopy. Win2000TV keeps working the way it did before you did the override, fortunately. What you might also try is make two sets, one for "Antenna" and one for "Cable".

Keep me posted.

[eurojojo]

Originally posted by eurojojo
Only channels in WinTV2000 that are defined as "MhZ" such-and-such are transferred by FreqCopy.

Maybe this weekend I will teach FreqCopy the conversion tables of Microsoft. If you are in Denmark or Belgium you may need to use the table on

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...terneurope.asp

Start your WinTV2000, go to the Suite Manager. Under "Channel" you immediately see which channels are defined in Mhz, and which are not. For the ones that are not in Mhz, look up the value in the table I just gave. F.e. if it says channel "8", then the value is 181250000L. That means 181.25 Mhz. Create in WinTV2000 a channel as "All channels" for 181.25 Mhz and finetune it. Delete the old definition. This is the part I may automate in FreqCopy.

[bisbjerg]

Thanx eurojojo,

I hope I'll find the time to try this in the forthcoming weekend.

[eurojojo]

Ok. I think I will not equip FreqCopy with the possibility to re-arrange the channels automatically. The Hauppauge lay-out of the registry may change and mess things up big time. On my webpage I will put the same instructions as I gave above to convert the channels.

[bisbjerg]

Hi,

Finally got around messing with the registry.
I ended up making the channel freq. entries manually, as I couldn't get the FreqCopy app. to work properly.

I went through the painstaking job of scanning for channels with WinTV2000, and finetuning afterwards. Very time-consuming
I then used FreqCopy but it didn't seem to get the frequencies right for some reason.
I finally gave up, got the frequencies from the cable guy and made the entries myself.
The good side of this is, that now I understand the issues involved here a little better than when I startet off

[johandm]

Hi,

I just started evaluating SageTV; I live in Belgium.

thanks for the details on how to manually map the European channel frequencies & order. It works great.

One question though: Now, SageTV show my channels as "Channel 1", "Channel 2" etc. Is there any way to rename these to more friendlier names like: "VRT", "VTM", etc?

Thanks,
Johan.

[nielm]

Channel names come magically with XMLTV... (see my other reply to your other post)...

[nielm]

yet another tool for doing this is FreqShifter: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...d.php?p=106114