Guide Tool Tips

[Cafe.Rcaer]

Thought I'd share, and also because I always forget the best way to do it, I thought I'd write this down somewhere!

I scan with an analogue card in still - if I don't, I don't (seem) to get all channels. Maybe I don't have the patience.

Non of the Merge Tuners, by channel number, call sign or any of the options work for me.

So, after setting up as before, analogue with STB, FireDTV THEN Freeview on a separate "cycle", I go to guide tool and first thing is to sort the left hand list by call sign - puts the channels next to each other by name.

Then, click the channel you want to loose, so where I have Playhouse Disney as channel 1084 (with 2xFDTVs) and Play Disney on 727 (1xanalogue). Highlight ch1084 first, then press and hold Ctrl, then select 727. Then right click 727 and select merge (or use the button on the toolbar, but right clickng takes less energy ;-) )

I've found that if you do it this way, you're left with one channel 727. If you select them in the other sequence, you're left with 1084, which I would then have to rename (hey, I like the channels in the right order).

If you merge the wrong channels, just select the merged channel and click split.

As you scan down the list, you can keep your eye on the FireDTV tuner column - if it's missing, there's a channel somewhere to be merged.

If you're not sure of the channel number, or if you're looking for somewhere to put, say, ITV2+1 (on freeview, but not on cable) the cable channel numbers are in the right hand side, if you select the Vernon Lineup.

After I've done, I resort the left hand side by channel number, and remove anything between 5 and 106 (Gay Rabbit? WTF?) and make sure there's no duplicate channel numbers, and no missing guide subscriptions.

I still can't find Guide data for Screen 2, though...

[Confused Stu]

Thanks Cafe - I never realised you could scroll the "Channels" window to the right and see which tuners that channel's available on. I'm not that bright, me!



I do very similar:

• I use the 5.3 FDTV drivers for scanning as I never get all the channels with 5.6, so step 1 is install 5.3.
• Run the "Set Up TV" in Media Centre and tell it to configure my 4 DVB-T tuners manually.
• De-select the two actual freeview tuners and just leave the two FDTV tuners, click Next.
• Now tell it you want to set up your other DVB-T receivers too.
• It'll give you a screen with just your Freeview tuners in it, make sure both are selected and start your scan.
• When the scan's done, reinstall 5.6 drivers as they seem a little more reliable for day to day use (to me).
• Now open the Guide Tool and in the drop down box in the top right, select Virgin TV lineup.
• Sort both left and right windows by Call Sign by clicking on the headings.
• I then go through each channel in the left window and manually renumber it to the same as in the right window. Context menu button, down arrow twice, enter, type number, enter, down arrow, repeat. You soon get into the swing of it!
• As Cafe said, for any Freeview channels that aren't on Cable, just find a convenient slot to put them into ("Gay Rabbit" goes into my "Home Shopping and other rubbish I'll never watch" category around the 760 mark by the way).
• For any channel that's not listed in the right window, have a look here: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_channels_on_Virgin_TV but the beauty of using the right window is that it's much quicker than finding them on the website (in my experience).
• Any channels that you find duplicated, click on one, hold down CTRL, click the other, then right click on one and select "Merge". Sounds like Cafe has this step sorted a little better than me.
• I personally put all the "Test" and other non-channels above 1000 to keep them out of the way.
• Once you've got all the channels in the right order, click the number column heading to sort your channels into number order.
• Click on channel 1, scroll down to channel 999, hold down Shift to multiple select and click 999 - this should highlight all your channels.
• Now on the toolbar, click the drop down arrow on the button with the blue circle and the word "Subscribe" on it. Select "By Channel Number" and give it a few seconds.
• When it's finished and starts responding again, multiple select the channels above 1000 (the "Test" ones, etc). Single click on one of the tickboxes while they're multiple-selected to disable all of them.
• Now change the drop down box in the top right to "Freeview" for your area, and scroll down your list for any channels that don't have a guide assigned. If one's available on the Freeview list, single click the channel (left window), single click the guide channel (right window) and then click the blue circle without the "subscribe" word. Continue for the other half dozen or so channels without a guide.
• Finally, if you're particularly OCD'ed (like me) you can move Living (110 to 109) and MUTV (530 to 528) as they're on different channel numbers in the GuideTool listing to the actual listing.

Additional tip - if you want to save some time, pop in a TT C1501 before you do the "Set up TV" step. When it scans your cards, you'll have to tell it you want to manually set it up, then select your cable-card, then do the 2 groups of DVB-T cards as above. Once you've finished scanning you can remove the C1501 card if you want (haven't got enough free slots on my PC, so when I put it in I have to have a Floppy card connected but loose on top of the open PC during scanning). This will pre-sort a large number of channels into the correct channel numbers and put the cable channels to be sorted above 1000. This worked great before I put a freeview card in too as you would know anything below 1000 was already sorted, now I still have to go through the lower numbers and look for freeview channels to be moved and merged. Using GuideTool, there isn't a large time difference between having the C1501 in or out during scanning, so the last 2 scans I haven't bothered with it.

Sorry for jumping on your bandwagon Cafe, but this thread was a bloody good idea of yours and just wanted to add my (very slightly) different technique to it too.

Now, if only MS would assign program data to the channel guides for Watch, Watch +1 and Sky Screen 2 - I'm not too worried about the other few it's missing (Diva TV+1 anyone?)!! Oh, and a guide stream for the new HD channels would be nice sometime too.

[Cafe.Rcaer]

Ahhhh, so you change all the channel numbers on the left hand side to the right ones, then let it subscribe the listings based on the channel number? That makes sense, and selecting the channels on the left before doing it might be why I've never got Merge Tuners to work!

Sharing tips was a good idea!

[htpcman]

Originally Posted by Confused Stu

Oh, and a guide stream for the new HD channels would be nice sometime too.

Ahh so it's not just me!