Utility to help with Channel Scanning

[timh]

I've written a little utility to generate the tuning information required for digital capture cards independently of the GBPVR config utility. You might find it helpful if your capture card doesn’t work well with GBPVR, e.g. if it crashes during scanning, or fails to find all the channels expected.

It's called GBPVR PID Grabber; it's actually a MultiDec plugin for use with a "host" TV application. It takes the tuning information from the host and writes it to a GBPVR compatible file. So you need to have your card working correctly with a suitable application first.

The instructions and download are on the wiki at:

http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Utility/GBPVRPidGrab

Hope someone finds it useful - feel free to post any questions or comments.
Tim

[CPhoenix]

Fantastic tool!

Works very well with DVBDream however DVBDream doesn't work well with my DVB-C Card (TT C-1501). So I've tried it with both ProgDVB5.16 and ProgDVB6.03 and get the same error message in the log:

Response from MDAPI_GET_PROGRAMM looks OK - will use this.
Symbol Rate appears to need scaling
Frequency not in need of scaling

Channel Change: PID grab not active

And subsquentley I'm unable to obtain the Scan-N.cache file.
I've tried fixing the Srate in the ini file but that doesn't seem to make any difference. Am I missing something?

Thanks,
Craig.

[timh]

Hmmm, strange. The "PID Grab not active" isn't an error message, just an indication that a new channel has been selected before PID logging has been started by the user.

Does a tick appear next to "Start PID Grab" when you select it in the plugin menu?
Tim

[CPhoenix]

Tim,

Cheers for the quick response!
No unfortunatley, it does not give me a tick against the "Grab Active" menu option. I've tried selecting it a few times and nothing happens.

I've attached the log, just incase.
Thanks again for your help.
Craig.

[timh]

I think I've found the problem - the later versions of ProgDVB seem to be fussy about the ID numbers assigned to plugin menu items. Can you try with the attached file, and let me know how you get on?
Tim

EDIT - attachement removed. Download from here

[CPhoenix]

Worked first time without a problem!
I've still yet to use the scan-n.cache file in GB-PVR but I'm sure it will work (will post again once I'm sure).

Thanks again for your help.
Craig

[ak1i]

Hi I am trying to use this utility with Sage TV to grab the ATSC/QAM channel info so to set up a Tuning Request manually for QAM channels that gbpvr does not pick up while Sage TV is able to.

I placed the gbpvr_pidgrab.dll and the ini files in the install dir of SageTV but no cache file was generated when I tuned to a station in Sage TV.

I set tuner 'type=C' in the ini file to capture QAM channels, leaving the rest to default values.

Perhaps someone who has used this tool w/ Sage TV can enlighten me how to get Sage TV to load this plugin-thx.

[sub]

Anyone that has problems finding some channels in GB-PVR 1.3.11 should try this new patch, which effectively rewrites much of the scanning, giving much more complete results: http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=3...ostcount=7

[timh]

Hi I am trying to use this utility with Sage TV to grab the ATSC/QAM channel info so to set up a Tuning Request manually for QAM channels that gbpvr does not pick up while Sage TV is able to.

I'm pretty cetain that this can't be made to work, as it's very unlikely that Sage TV supports the use of Multdec Plugins (as required by GBPVR PID Grabber).

You'd need to make your capture card work with an application such as ProgDVB, DVBDream etc. - but I'd suggest following Sub's advice to update the internal GBPVR scanning engine first.
Tim