UK Freeview changes

[mvallevand]

I am not sure how this change impacts UK Freeview users https://www.freeview.co.uk/help/service-...ree-launch but I figure it could be a bit of work for some of you.  Perhaps NextPVR  experts could share some insight on what the impacts are and how to adjust their guide and schedules.

Martin

[Stanno]

Hi Martin, thanks for the heads up.  I am amazed that this does not seem to have been publicised over here.

NPVR handles this well as far as I am concerned.  I use SD for program guide data and, when I checked, this has automatically switched to the correct channel data so my channel 23 (Davejavu) was mapped to 25 (Davejavu).  I have edited npvr.db3 directly to match the channel number with the mapped channel number and all seems well.

Stanno

[ceejayemm]

I use a HDHomeRun Quatro and as it hadn't been updated for a while, on Wednesday (Jan 26th) I rescanned for the change of UK channels mentioned above.  I use Schedules Direct for my UK South EPG data. I have noticed these changes reported in a few places in the UK press but it hasn't been widely publicised. Freeview have documented what is happening here: BBC Three launches | Freeview I haven't as yet retuned my TVs as we mainly watch the mainstream channels (not affected) on TV but I do record various things on the other channels with NPVR.

After the retune the HDHomeRun channels where as shown in pic1.jpg - not quite right - BBC Three has appeared but some of the subsequent channels appeared to be duplicated. The HDHomeRun Windows app shows these duplicated channels too. I cleared all the devices in NPVR (v5.2.5.220111 on RPi 4B) and scanned for all channels. This resulted as shown in pic2.jpg. The details seem OK, but the Name is still the old name however the duplicates seem to have been resolved. I copied this setup to all the other devices and then manually updated the EPG. Since then the 'normal' overnight EPG has also happened once (last night) - the results on the Guide are shown in pic3.jpg.

It appears that not all the 'ducks are in a line' as can be seen in the pictures attached. Having now also reread the Freeview announcement (and not just the snippets in the UK press) it seems the changes took place at midday on January 26th - and I did my updates around about 09:00 that day so may be I need to retune again to bring the HDHomeRun into line first before I do anything else.

I will update again if I have any further progress.

Chris

[Stanno]

I also have a HomeRun Quatro and I confess I didn't think to re-scan that. 

When I did everything in NPVR was screwed up!  I had to start over with a complete channel delete/re-scan/update.

[ceejayemm]

I have now retuned the HDHomeRun again. Things seem a little better there now, The Channel Lineup web page now seems to be correct, duplicates gone and BBC Three (23)  and Dave Ja Vu (25) etc on the right channels.  NPVR / Schedules Direct is still the same as previously.  I suspect SD needs to update its listings rather than it being a problem in NPVR.

Stanno - I feel your pain ;-)

Chris

[PRBUK]

If it helps, I developed the 'LineUp' utility to automate the process of aligning NextPvr to the broadcaster's schedule (and allow you to customise/merge/exclude etc).  I am in the UK.  Details in this Community Announcements forum.

[ceejayemm]

There has been a firmware update (200220128) for the HDHomeRun Quatro which seems to have straightened out the problems we have been seeing with the latest FreeView moves. 

I applied the update to the Quatro, deleted all my devices in NPVR and retuned device 0 which seemed successful. I then copied device 0 to the three remaining devices and updated the EPG. The Guide now seems OK and I can view Dave ja vu on channel 25 but BBC Three (channel 23) is off air right now so I will check this later.

Chris

[Lao Pan]

Next week on UK Freeview there are some major changes, which again seem to be having no publicity. Possibly they don't want people to know until it is to late!
There are retune events on both the 29th & 30th June 2022 - this is to facilitate the closing down of one of the last of the 2 DVB-T2 mux's, as the government has sold the bandwidth for 5g usage 

Some channels are being moved - BBC4 HD and CBBC HD are being squeezed onto the remaining HD Mux, some of the SD mpeg4 channels are moving to the old mpeg2 mux's, which are already rather poor quality.

There will also be some channel replacements and re-names - new logos are in the [UK Freeview & Freesat Channel Logos (Updated)] thread.

Finally several channels will have to close - I will personally miss both Quest HD and BBC News HD.

We will be left with one DVB-T2 mux and five of the old DVB-T mux's that use very high compression mpeg2.

There doesn't seem to be any plan to convert the old mux's to DVB-T2 so that they can use AVC or even HEVC encoding and the professing that everyone only wants to watch on-line, hasn't resulted in any ip streaming channels that can be accessed without a proprietary app - which you have to pay for 

Ooops - rant over 

If you want to know the details of all the changes next week, this site is, as usual, on the ball:

https://rxtvinfo.com/2022/two-days-of-fr...he-changes

https://rxtvinfo.com/freeview-updates