DVR and cable providers

[Th3H0ff]

Greetings
DVR seems to be discussed at length but I have found anything regarding my question. I would like to understand one thing.
Why does the channels detected by Plex differ when switching between the available cable operators for my country? Example: Operator 1 has channel 1-3 available, Operator 2 also has channel 1-3 available but Operator 3 doesn’t have channel 1-3 but channel 4-7.
This seems like a purely programmatical issue to me since if I have Operator 1 selected and do a rescan using Operator 3 I can watch channel 4-7 but loose channel 1-3.

Regards
Fredrik

[Alucard1]

Need a bit more information, how are you getting these providers in to plex? Single tuner or multiple tuners? I would think if you had 3 providers you would have 3 tuners or are these IPTV channels?

[Th3H0ff]

Hi
I have a single Hauppauge SoloHD tuner and the cable operators, I guess, are provided based on my country. These three are then listing different channels.

[Alucard1]

ok gotcha, I am not sure if your card is network based or not but have you tried adding each provider as a different tuner? If that does not work, you should be able to use DVBLogic software to combine the 3 providers and then point Plex to the DVB Logic software. I used to use their software way back in the day when I was dealing with multiple providers so I can get them in to Windows Media Center.

[plex_floyd_dk]

I’d like to know this as well, and maybe add another question: How do you add a new cable TV provider to Plex?

Just changed from YouSee to Bolignet Aarhus as provider, and no matter which of the existing providers I choose, no channels are found.

Assume that each provider listed in Plex contains information on which frequencies/Network ID’s to use while searching, which would explain why @Th3H0ff get different numbers of channels depending on which provider you choose.

Can’t find a manual way to provide this information in the Plex interface.

[Alucard1]

It would help to know your setup. Do you have one or more tuners? If you have multiple tuners you would need to add each one.

My earlier suggestion to use DVBLogic software I guess is no longer valid as they recently stopped doing business. However xTeve may work and may detect your tuners and then you have the ability to renumber the channels to get rid of the overlapping channel numbers.

[plex_floyd_dk]

Apologise for the response time.
I’m running Plex under MacOS Cataline, with a single TVButler tuner.

After writing the post above, I did some digging around on my system and in “/Applications/Plex\ Media\ Server.app/Contents/Resources/Tuner/Shared/scanners/dvbc” I found two folders “fast_scan” and “transponders”, each containing a list of xxxx.ini files.
These are luckily in clear text.
Tried to edit one of the “fast_scan” files, with the details of my new TV provider (Frequency: 306 MHz, Symbol Rate: 6875 & QAM64)

[SATTYPE]
1=8040
2=DVB-C Denmark (Bolignet Aarhus, Fast Scan)
3=DK

[DVB]
0=1
1=306000,V,6875,,QAM64

This added a new provider to the list in the Plex interface, and using this, I was able to tune into two channels, but nothing more. So Plex apparently can’t find the other channels based on this limited information.

I then went into the “transponders” folder, found the file containing the best match of my location, with the longest list of frequencies, and copied that to a new file, I then edited this, and did a new scan in the Plex interface.
It took a while, but resulted in Plex finding almost all my channels. Some frequencies is missing. Have a VU+, which is able to show me the tuning information, so will have to go through the list.

I understand why you have a list of providers, but I don’t understand why Plex don’t give you the option to do a full scan(?).

Also who is maintaining the list of transponders? Would love to provide my file to the team, so that others may benefit from my work.

[Th3H0ff]

This is absolute madness which doesn’t behoove a product like Plex.
Why?
Based on your example, plex_floyd_dk, I dug around on my own Plex server which is Docker based running on Ubuntu. In the Docker container I found the directory /lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Tuner/Shared/scanners/dvbc/transponders, this is probably the same directory on a native Ubuntu installation, which held the files you mention. Alot of .ini. And I went to “dvbc” since I have my tuner connected to a DVB-T cable provider. In the directory I did a grep on “Finland” which is my residence and found the three files representing the three providers seen by Plex.
What I did was I took all the channel rows below from one provider, one giving me two of the channels I want but not the three others.

[SATTYPE]
1=5248
2=DVB-C Finland (Sonera Cable)
3=FI

[DVB]
0=18
1=170000,V,6900,,QAM128
2=162000,V,6900,,QAM128
3=154000,V,6900,,QAM128
4=314000,V,6900,,QAM128
5=322000,V,6900,,QAM128
6=338000,V,6900,,QAM128
7=346000,V,6900,,QAM128
8=354000,V,6900,,QAM128
9=362000,V,6900,,QAM128
10=370000,V,6900,,QAM128
11=378000,V,6900,,QAM128
12=386000,V,6900,,QAM128
13=394000,V,6900,,QAM128
14=402000,V,6900,,QAM128
15=234000,V,6900,,QAM256
16=242000,V,6900,,QAM256
17=250000,V,6900,,QAM256
18=258000,V,6900,,QAM256

and I added those rows to the .ini-file of the provider giving me the last three channels. I only added the rows missing in the first file and skipped the duplicates. Plain and simple. When I proceeded to do a new scan I could select my new “provider” and was able to enable all five channels, two from one file and three from the other.

Update: My cable provider is kind enough to post a frequency list on their web page which also lists symbol rate (6875 or 6900) and QAM (128 or 256) which I was able to add to my .ini and thus give me access to almost all open channels in the service.

I must agree. Where does this transponder information come from and who is keeping it up to date? I’m used to working with open-source but this is a bit too much hassle.

Peace
/Fredrik

[plex_floyd_dk]

Hi Fredrik,
Happy to hear that you managed to get it working using my post.

I understand the idea about having providers, but I don’t understand why there’s no option to do a “full scan”. Though it takes time, it would let everyone find all their channels, without having to wait on the dev team to include each and every provider world wide.

[Alucard1]

DVB providers all use different transponder freq and symbol rates. Since the Plex devs are in the US it is probably not easy to acquire. But it probably would make it easier for others if you share updated config files that work with the devs.

[Th3H0ff]

I understand that but to enable the DVR feature properly they really should open up for user input. I my case being able to edit in the missing channels turned the DVR from a novelty feature into something I’ll actually be able to use.

/Fredrik