UK Freeview Frequencies - Help Needed

[Pork Chop]

I'm new to this game, and am trying to use the Hauppauge HVR 1300 card with 4.1.5. I guess its not quite supported at the moment and really need some help with the channel frequencies to allow Sage to trouble shoot the issue.

Can someone please upload/paste there .fq file of UK Freeview channels.

Much appreciated.

[Mark SS]

I'm using Anders SBDARecorder at the moment rather than the beta version of Sage so have attached the settings file from this. You should be able to dig out the majority of channel details from this but rename to .xml and view it in IE rather than notepad.

Alternatively you could use ScanChannelsBDA from http://nate.dynalias.net/.

[Pork Chop]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

I'm using Anders SBDARecorder at the moment rather than the beta version of Sage so have attached the settings file from this. You should be able to dig out the majority of channel details from this but rename to .xml and view it in IE rather than notepad.

Alternatively you could use ScanChannelsBDA from http://nate.dynalias.net/.

Hi Mark SS

This is great, you've really helped solve a problem for me.

PC

[cosmocat]

I am having problems getting sage to tune my nova-t card for mendip channels. All I get is "No signal"
I have captured the frequencies etc used by wintv2000 ( the haupaugge app ) that works fine, but am unsure how to map these values into the .frq file. The WINTV2000 app lists frequency as well as ONID , TSID and SID values.

Any ideas ?

Thanks.

[Alfiegerner]

@ cosmocat. I'm happy using the SBDA recorder plugin at the mo. Here are my Mendip settings for that, although I'm not sure what you'd need to do to translate it to suit sage's native dvb files.

[cosmocat]

Thanks Alfiegerner
Using your data I was able to figure out what parameters the sage .frq file needed. I created a small .frq file of just 3 channels and they tuned in fine.
The "program" values in your xml file lines up with the "SID" values from winTV2000. Funny thing though, my frequencies were offset from yours, with 166 at the end of some but not all. I used the frequencies as WinTV2000 reported them and it worked so I guess it may be a calibration thing with the card.
Any way, I'm off to write a full .frq file now to get the rest of the channels.

Thanks.

[Alfiegerner]

Originally Posted by cosmocat

Any way, I'm off to write a full .frq file now to get the rest of the channels.

Thanks.

Glad to help. Let us know how you get on. Would you mind posting your .frq file for us? If nova-t support looks stable enough I guess I'll finally get rid of using a network encoder for dvb-t

[cosmocat]

Hi Alfiegerner.

Attached my second stab at the .frq file for mendip. Its not totally successful as XMLTV seems to have different ideas about channel numbering and if I try to remap channels under sage it seems to break the import of xmltv guide data.
I think it needs further tweaking to get it all to line up. If you want to play and repost feel free

[rickgillyon]

You can take all of the zero channels out of your FRQ. Basically, your FRQ gives the channel numbers, these can be whatever you want and don't have to be continuous. Add the tuner, apply the XMLTV lineup, then remap each channel in your XMLTV lineup to the numbers in the FRQ file. This shouldn't break XMLTV at all, I have this working without issue. XMLTV still works perfectly. My FRQ is below:
total_channel:50
ch:1 690000 8 4169 0 1
ch:2 690000 8 4233 0 1
ch:3 746166 8 8274 0 1
ch:4 746166 8 8384 0 1
ch:5 778166 8 12866 0 1
ch:6 746166 8 8325 0 1
ch:7 690000 8 4351 0 1
ch:10 746166 8 8309 0 1
ch:12 826166 8 22272 0 1
ch:13 746166 8 8442 0 1
ch:14 746166 8 8448 0 1
ch:30 746166 8 8353 0 1
ch:31 729833 8 27136 0 1
ch:32 826166 8 22336 0 1
ch:35 729833 8 27072 0 1
ch:80 690000 8 4415 0 1
ch:81 746166 8 8595 0 1
ch:82 826166 8 22080 0 1
ch:83 826166 8 22144 0 1

[rickgillyon]

BUT...

If you have another, non-freeview tuner, you will need two xmltv lineups - if you remap a lineup it affects all tuners using that lineup. I use nielm's multi-lineup xmltv. Details here.

[cosmocat]

So if I added a second nova-t tuner, I could use a copy of my first -0.frq file ( renamed -1.frq ) for the tuning data, and would not need to do anything special to the XMLTV guide data as they would both have the same channel line-up

Yes ?

[rickgillyon]

Exactly. I have a pvr350 connected to Telewest cable which has my first lineup (1.xml). I have four freeview tuners (2xCinergy 2400i) which have identical FRQ files and use one lineup (2.xml).

On your second tuner, copy the FRQ, add the tuner, assign the same lineup and it should all work perfectly...

[ben_gb]

Hi,

I think I must be missing something here....I'm trying to manually build a .frq file (in Freeview land), as the Scan for channels in Sage doesn't produce a valid file.

Can anyone tell me where I get the various fields for the .frq file - especially the 3 to 6th fields? (I figured out that the 2nd one is the main frequency for the channel and the 1st field, ch:#, is just the number that you want to give the channel in Sage).

I've got a Nova-T so can run WinTV2000 to get a channel list with some details, but the ONID and TSID fields given in there seem to be the same for many channels...

Thanks for any help!

Regards,
Ben

[Grunter]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

You can take all of the zero channels out of your FRQ. Basically, your FRQ gives the channel numbers, these can be whatever you want and don't have to be continuous. Add the tuner, apply the XMLTV lineup, then remap each channel in your XMLTV lineup to the numbers in the FRQ file. This shouldn't break XMLTV at all, I have this working without issue. XMLTV still works perfectly. My FRQ is below:
total_channel:50
ch:1 690000 8 4169 0 1
ch:2 690000 8 4233 0 1
ch:3 746166 8 8274 0 1
ch:4 746166 8 8384 0 1
ch:5 778166 8 12866 0 1
ch:6 746166 8 8325 0 1
ch:7 690000 8 4351 0 1
ch:10 746166 8 8309 0 1
ch:12 826166 8 22272 0 1
ch:13 746166 8 8442 0 1
ch:14 746166 8 8448 0 1
ch:30 746166 8 8353 0 1
ch:31 729833 8 27136 0 1
ch:32 826166 8 22336 0 1
ch:35 729833 8 27072 0 1
ch:80 690000 8 4415 0 1
ch:81 746166 8 8595 0 1
ch:82 826166 8 22080 0 1
ch:83 826166 8 22144 0 1

Is there any way of avoiding the manual remapping of channels in Sage ? I have set the frq file up as described, and also renumbered the channels in XMLTVRT using altchids but still Sage will not take my channel order. Once I have manually remapped them they are fine. How does Sage determine the channel order for DTT channels ? BTW, thanks for all your posts on this subject, they've been really useful.

[Alfiegerner]

Originally Posted by Grunter

Is there any way of avoiding the manual remapping of channels in Sage ? I have set the frq file up as described, and also renumbered the channels in XMLTVRT using altchids but still Sage will not take my channel order. Once I have manually remapped them they are fine. How does Sage determine the channel order for DTT channels ? BTW, thanks for all your posts on this subject, they've been really useful.

I have my frq file ordered so that bbc1 is given ch:1, bbc2 ch2 and so on. Then my xmltv ordering (where bbc1 altchid = 1, bbc2 altchid = 2 etc) maps up with the frq file. This seems to work as far as ordering goes ...

I've got another issue where I get audio but not video on a couple of channels - has anyone else seen this?

Big thanks to cosmocat and rickygillon for getting me this far

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by ben_gb

Can anyone tell me where I get the various fields for the .frq file - especially the 3 to 6th fields?

You need to download and run ScanChannelsBDA.

Run it in a command window, select your tuner when it asks. Then type 1 (Select Network - there is a menu) and enter, it will prompt for a frequency and a band. Put in each of your frequencies one after another (or just one at a time), band is always 8 in the uk. Then hit a 2 (Generate channels.ini) this will produce output like this for each frequency you put in:

Network_1("Pontop Pike", 729833, 8, 1)
  Program_ 1("BBC THREE"           , 4351,  620,   621, 4351)    # 7
  Program_ 2("BBC THREE"           , 4351,  620,   622, 4351)    # 7
  Program_ 3("BBC NEWS 24"         , 4415,  640,   641, 4415)    # 80
  Program_ 4("BBC TWO"             , 4233,  610,   611, 4233)    # 2
  Program_ 5("BBC TWO"             , 4233,  610,   612, 4233)    # 2
  Program_ 6("BBC ONE"             , 4169,  600,   601, 4169)    # 1
  Program_ 7("BBC ONE"             , 4169,  600,   602, 4169)    # 1

BBC1 looks like this:

ch:1 690000 8 4169 0 1

Channel, Frequency you know. The 8 is always 8 on all channels for the UK, 4169 is the number after the Channel name in the output from ScanChannelsBDA. As far as I can tell, the last two numbers are always 0 and 1.

HTH!

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Grunter

Once I have manually remapped them they are fine. How does Sage determine the channel order for DTT channels ?

No idea I'm afraid, but if they work after manual remapping does it matter? It's a one-off anyway isn't it? Granted, it would be nice if it worked more easily, but so long as it works...

Originally Posted by Grunter

BTW, thanks for all your posts on this subject, they've been really useful.

A pleasure. I'm not an expert (despite what it says in my profile) but I was lucky enough to test early on when there was even more guesswork. I have to say that Freeview through Sage is clearer and a far better picture than using my PVR350 with Telewest cable.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Alfiegerner

I have my frq file ordered so that bbc1 is given ch:1, bbc2 ch2 and so on. Then my xmltv ordering (where bbc1 altchid = 1, bbc2 altchid = 2 etc) maps up with the frq file. This seems to work as far as ordering goes ...

I have telewest on another tuner/lineup, so I actually make sure that the channel ids for BBC1 are always the same. My two lineups have BBC1 mapped to 1 for freeview and 101 for telewest, but because the ids are the same the channel only appears once in the guide. My freeview channels have a higher encoder_merit, so if I tell it to record something off 101, Sage is smart enough to see there are five channels serving BBC1's id, and records it off the 4 DVB tuners first, leaving the cable tuner free for the channels that are only on cable. Magic!

Originally Posted by Alfiegerner

I've got another issue where I get audio but not video on a couple of channels - has anyone else seen this?

You're sure they aren't radio channels? Or scrambled channels (UKTV Gold, Discovery etc.)? Sorry if this makes me sound like I think you're a nutter, but you never know...

[rickgillyon]

If you have problems, did you know you can get updated versions of 3 important HD/DVB files here:
http://download.sage.tv/users/qian/

Back up first! Close down Sage (and Service if used), the AX files go in SageTV\Common, the other in SageTV\SageTV.

[Grunter]

Originally Posted by Alfiegerner

I have my frq file ordered so that bbc1 is given ch:1, bbc2 ch2 and so on. Then my xmltv ordering (where bbc1 altchid = 1, bbc2 altchid = 2 etc) maps up with the frq file. This seems to work as far as ordering goes ...

I've got another issue where I get audio but not video on a couple of channels - has anyone else seen this?

Big thanks to cosmocat and rickygillon for getting me this far

This is exactly the process I have used for both the frq and XMLTV files, BBC1=ch:1 / altchid = 1, BBC2 = ch:2 / altchid =2 but for some reason Sage starts at channel 2 which it assigns to the Community channel !!!! From then on all channels are present but in a nonsensical order. Shame, because the rest of it works a treat, if only we could understand how Sage assigns the channel order !! Still, thanks all for your comments, I'll keep looking and let this thread know if I find anything further.