[pvrusb2] HVR-1950 Schedule Information Source

[Roger]

On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 19:51 -0500, roccomoretti wrote:
> Roger wrote:
> > Is it still required to use a secondary provider (such as Schedules
> > Direct) for downloading scheduling information, or can this information
> > be downloaded directly via the ATSC tuner?
> 
> I've successfully been using (only) the over-the-air ATSC scheduling 
> data with my HVR-1950 and MythTV for quite some time now. Program titles 
> come through perfectly. (The episode descriptions, however, get mixed 
> around between programs. But as Mike indicates, this is almost certainly 
> a MythTV issue - as I understand it, the pvrusb2 driver just passes the 
> data through as-received.) Schedule forecasting can be a little thin, 
> though. Although my local PBS station gives 3+ days of info, the 
> networks give substantially less - sometimes even less than the FTC 
> mandated 12 hours.

Thanks for the clarification on this!


> > I do believe there is an option for this within MythTV, however, MythTV
> > wiki sites state to use Schedules Direct.
> 
> Yeah, it's a bit of a deliberate blindspot on their part. (To the extent 
> that when you have issues with the ATSC schedule information, their 
> first suggestion is to use Schedules Direct. *sigh*) The ATSC scheduling 
> guide still works, though. FYI: the OTA (over the air) ATSC EPG 
> (electronic programming guide) is sometimes called the EIT (event 
> information table) by MythTV.

Yup. EIT.

> A final, more pvrusb2-related note: the pvrusb2 driver enforces mutual 
> exclusion between the digital and analog sides, due to hardware 
> constraints. Usually the transition happens seamlessly, but if any 
> program is using the digital tuner *for any reason*, you can't switch to 
> the analog mode for as long as the digital tuner is in use. Scanning for 
> EIT data counts as using the digital tuner. The issue comes if you tell 
> MythTV to use the ATSC EIT info - it will constantly scan the EIT, 
> holding the digital side open. You can turn the EIT scan off, but then 
> updates to the EPG become unreliable. :-)

Again, thanks for the clarification on this as well!

I was troubled into thinking when I would have to schedule the MythTV
backend to scan for ATSC EIT info.  Now that you've stated it's
constantly scanning, I find this completely interesting!


I've performed manual scheduling using MythWIKI for the past year.  It's
much easier with the wiki page, after the initial learning curve.

Feeling more comfortable the HVR-1950 should work here after acquiring
this missing info concerning EIT & finding XvMC works extremely well
(nullifying the system requirements. ;-)

I was considering a HDHomeRun, but then would figure I would have to
upgrade my entire network to gigabit and then, as I run Gentoo syncing
to a local portage, would create hiccups on the local net causing frame
jitters during recordings.  Figure the pvrusb2/hvr-1950 will provide
better stable recordings.

Cheers!

-- 
Roger
http://rogerx.freeshell.org