MythTV EIT data not working
After I did a new channel scan in MythTV 0.23.1 I discovered that I didn’t get any EIT data from the DVB-C network anymore. I’m in Helsinki (Finland) and using Welho cable provider. So, I basically went through the same process as this guy, creating channels.conf files and so on. Eventually I discovered his page, which solved the issue of not getting EIT data. I did some more research into this and how to potentially solve it in other ways.
Solution #1 – Do a Full Scan (Tuned)
So, what worked for me was what he describes in his post, i.e. to do a Full Scan (Tuned) with the following parameters:
Frequency: 162000000 Modulation: QAM_64
When I look closely, those are the values for a few of the channels in my channels.conf file:
4Sport:162000000:INVERSION_AUTO:6900000:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:417:673:145 The Voice/TV Viisi:162000000:INVERSION_AUTO:6900000:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:513:660:241 DINA:162000000:INVERSION_AUTO:6900000:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:641:642:64000 4SportPro:162000000:INVERSION_AUTO:6900000:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:418:675:193 Infokanava.:162000000:INVERSION_AUTO:6900000:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:221:222:1973
So, I assume it would work to feed the values from any channel in your channels.conf to the Tuned Full Scan. If you don’t have a channels.conf file, you can try getting one from/for your cable provider, or creating it yourself:
scandvb -a 0 /usr/share/dvb-apps/dvb-c/fi-HTV > channels.conf
The -a parameter should carry the number for your dvb adapter (/dev/dvb/adapterX). The second parameter is some details about your cable provider. Oh, and don’t panic if the file doesn’t seem to get populated, everything is written to stdout at the end of the process.
Solution #2 – Import channels.conf and fix database manually
I haven’t tested this one, but if you can’t get the above to work, you might as well try this one (let me know if it works). If you don’t have a channels.conf for your provider, see above explanation for how to get one. Then import that into MythTV using the channel scan. You should now have all the channels working in MythTV (presumably without EIT data).
I found a bug ticket that looks like it’s describing this issue. It talks about how dtv_multiplex.sistandard is not set to dvb in the database for channels.conf imports, and therefore the EIT scanner never gets executed. So I checked my working installation and below is the data in the tables.
mysql> select * from videosource; +----------+---------------+--------------+--------+-----------+----------+----------+--------+------------+------------+ | sourceid | name | xmltvgrabber | userid | freqtable | lineupid | password | useeit | configpath | dvb_nit_id | +----------+---------------+--------------+--------+-----------+----------+----------+--------+------------+------------+ | 1 | Free channels | eitonly | | default | NULL | NULL | 1 | NULL | -1 | +----------+---------------+--------------+--------+-----------+----------+----------+--------+------------+------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> select mplexid, sourceid, transportid, networkid, sistandard from dtv_multiplex where sourceid=1; +---------+----------+-------------+-----------+------------+ | mplexid | sourceid | transportid | networkid | sistandard | +---------+----------+-------------+-----------+------------+ | 1 | 1 | NULL | NULL | dvb | | 2 | 1 | 28 | 42249 | dvb | | 3 | 1 | 27 | 42249 | dvb | | 4 | 1 | 26 | 42249 | dvb | | 5 | 1 | 25 | 42249 | dvb | | 6 | 1 | 24 | 42249 | dvb | | 7 | 1 | 23 | 42249 | dvb | | 8 | 1 | 22 | 42249 | dvb | | 9 | 1 | 21 | 42249 | dvb | | 10 | 1 | 20 | 42249 | dvb | | 11 | 1 | 19 | 42249 | dvb | | 12 | 1 | 18 | 42249 | dvb | | 13 | 1 | 17 | 42249 | dvb | | 14 | 1 | 16 | 42249 | dvb | | 15 | 1 | 15 | 42249 | dvb | | 16 | 1 | 14 | 42249 | dvb | | 17 | 1 | 13 | 42249 | dvb | | 18 | 1 | 12 | 42249 | dvb | | 19 | 1 | 11 | 42249 | dvb | | 20 | 1 | 10 | 42249 | dvb | | 21 | 1 | 9 | 42249 | dvb | | 22 | 1 | 8 | 42249 | dvb | | 23 | 1 | 7 | 42249 | dvb | | 24 | 1 | 6 | 42249 | dvb | | 25 | 1 | 5 | 42249 | dvb | | 26 | 1 | 4 | 42249 | dvb | | 27 | 1 | 3 | 15 | dvb | | 28 | 1 | 2 | 42249 | dvb | | 29 | 1 | 1 | 42249 | dvb | | 30 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 31 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 32 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 33 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 34 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 35 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 36 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 37 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 38 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 39 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 40 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 41 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 42 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 43 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 44 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 45 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 46 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 47 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 48 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 49 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 50 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 51 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 52 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 53 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 54 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 55 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 56 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 57 | 1 | NULL | NULL | | | 58 | 1 | 30 | 42249 | dvb | +---------+----------+-------------+-----------+------------+ 58 rows in set (0.00 sec)
So, try populating dtv_multiplex.sistandard with “dvb” for those entries that have transportid and networkid set. If you’re wondering about the networkid, 42249 is the networkid for my cable provider Welho, and according to some page, 15 is the network id for the Finnish broadcasting company YLE.
So, what’s supposed to happen? How do I get the EIT data?
If you haven’t had EIT data working before, here’s what should happen. Within a few minutes your program table (in the database) should start getting populated. If it doesn’t, try to make a recording and see if that helps. It seems that the mythfilldatabase utility doesn’t have anything to do with EIT data, when I run it it says “Source 1 configured to use only the broadcasted guide data. Skipping.“. So don’t expect any EIT data from running it. There’s no way to trigger the EIT data population, MythTV will just pick it up from the stream when it is sent by the provider.
Still don’t get anything after waiting for a good while? Go back and check your settings in mythtvsetup…
- Under “2. Capture cards“, open “Recording options“, check that “Use DVB card for active EIT scan” is on. This will mean your card is locked from any other applications, which I suppose is not a problem for most MythTV installations.
- Make sure that your source in “3. Video soures” is set to use EIT. I use the default channel frequency table (not sure what this means).
- Under “4. Input connections“, the quick tuning setting talks about EIT not being populated if quick tuning is used (I have it set to Live TV only).
Still nothing? Make sure the EIT data works at all in your cable network, i.e. check your TV or whatever device you use to watch TV.
Let me know if this helped…
Tweaking MythTV 
I have problem that EIT data stops working after about one week. After that time there will be small and big “holes” in the EPG. Some tickets about that has been opened but no good solutions has been found.
The best solution is to use cron script that restarts backend at the morning about every second day.
And you are sure that you have the card set to active EIT scan? Or if not, you are recording something regularly, so that EIT is updated. If you’re still having problems, you should be able to activate the logs for that component of mythtv, so that it prints all the EIT information it receives. I remember seeing how to do this somewhere, but I don’t remember where.
I’m sure that I have active EIT scan enabled on both cards. Also tried with one passive and other active but that didn’t work any better. I have checked also EIT logs and there is same holes that I see on EPG. After mythbackend restart everything works fine short time because it can get that one week EPG listings that are sent in EIT data and then it stops again.
It seems that this problem is only on some DVB (only cable?) broadcasters. As much as I understood about MythTV Trac tickets there is some bad data that cannot be handled. Changing scanning timeout did change things little bit worse.
Full Tune worked for me, thanks. Had to first generate channels.conf to see valid starting values for Full Tune and run tuning two times with different values, but now EIT works.
This on Ubuntu 11.04 and mythtv 0.24.
Larry is right. I’m having the same issue. I use mythtv-backend V0.23 on Ubuntu Server 64 bit 10.04.1. The USB stick is used as DVB-T.
The thing is the EPG scale is there, with right time, but no data at all (only the holes). I’ve already tried everything. Nothing works!
The exactly same usb dvb-t stick if used with ME-TV, for instance, works like a charm, presenting all the EPG schedule. Mythtv, on the contrary, simply cannot handle EPG well.
Perhaps in the next versions that issue is fixed… I hope :)
Kind regards
Hello. I tried Full Scan (Täysi etsintä (Viritetyistä)) whit same parameters whit no luck. Fresh install of mythbuntu whit all settings as you described above. Also living in Helsinki and somehow I don’t thing that it’s issue in the cable network itself. How can I chek if my card reseaves EIT information in terminal?
Getting really frustradet whit mythbuntu an mythtv. Is it me or is good and relevant information really hard to find? Isn’t there even one good guide how to set up this thing?Absolutely nothing in finnish, at least anything relevant about todays distros/versions. Having issues whit ir remote, nic, internet sharing and the EIT. I am really starting to question if this is goin to ever work, or I should go back whit crappy dvbviewer.
Do you know that the DVB card is working properly, i.e. is it being detected by Linux? You might want to try scandvb to scan for channels, or try out some other Linux programs for watching TV, just to see if the issue is with the DVB drivers themselves. Once you’ve established that DVB is working, then look into mythtv. Remember to shut down mythbackend before attempting to use the card with other programs.
many thanks for the right information about EPG & EIT with DVB-C-tuner.
A while ago, we had a power outage and suffering from lost channels.
Searching the internet I found your site.
I decided to delete the hardware in mythtv-setup and thus empty tables in the database.
After adding the DVB-card, and so on, I ran a full scan (tuned).
Checked the settings in mythtv-setup with the information from ur site. That worked well.
My cable-provider offers me tooooo much channels: I deleted 3/4 of the provided channels again from the GUI-interface in mythweb.
Thanks again.
bibi
Jan..
from the Netherlands
on Ziggo-network
I realise this is really old, but I stumbled across it while trying to get EIT working for DVB-T in the UK (Freeview).
I got it working now, partly thanks to your notes.
My backend settings are:
Capture Card Setup, Recording Options button: Tick to use active EIT scan.
Video Source Setup, Listings grabber: Transmitted guide only (EIT), Network ID: changed from -1 to 9018 (see below). This updates dvb_nit_id in videosource table.
General Setup screen: EIT transport timeout: 5 minutes, Backend idle before EIT crawl: 60 seconds.
Database setup:
select * from videosource;
Assuming the video source which is capturing EIT is sourceid 1.
Ensure that dvb_nit_id is set to the correct Network ID (not -1). See below.
update channel set useonairguide=1 where sourceid=1;
commit;
The networkid can be found from the rows in the dtv_multiplex table, if they are correct.
The issue I had was finding and correcting the Network ID. To do this I shut down the Mythbackend, then ran the following:
w_scan -ft -cGB
After about 10 minutes this writes all the found channels to the screen:
…
dumping lists (98 services)
Sky News;(null):482000:B8C34D0G32M64T8Y0:T:27500:101=2:102=eng@3,104=eng:0;103:0:22080:9018:20544:0
Pick;(null):482000:B8C34D0G32M64T8Y0:T:27500:301=2:302=eng@3,304=eng:0;303:0:22208:9018:20544:0
Challenge;(null):482000:B8C34D0G32M64T8Y0:T:27500:201=2:202=eng@3,204=eng:0;203:0:22226:9018:20544:0
…
The network id used in various places above is 9018 in my case (3rd number from the end of each channel that is found).