[SoCalXMBC]

I have an instance of XBMC running as extenders in many rooms of my house. I have broadband cable for internet however I do not subscribe to cable TV. My tuner is being used as QAM only, detecting free to air unencrypted channels off of my cable provider and I associate those local channels to the correct TVGuide listings using WMC. From this perspective, all is well although it is presented to XBMC disordered and very messy. For instance my channels are populated heavily disorganized (eg. channel 10, 7, 6 , radio1, radio 2, 5, MeTV, etc, etc). In the past, I have manually reordered the channel lineup on each XBMC instance to correct discrepancies which is very time consuming and tedious.

I reorganized my channels in WMCs "tasks/Guide/edit channels" so that they are listed in order by channel, eg. 5, 6 ,7 ,8 ,9 ,10, etc and below that I have all the detected Radio channels with the music icons... however, this never seems to export to XBMC cleanly. The channles remain disorganized and detected hd radio channels are always clumped in with the video channels. So while manually fixing this in each fresh instance today... I thought I would pose the question.

Am I missing something? I'd appreciate some guidance or maybe an explanation of why it doesn't work in my instance since its not standard.

[Dilligaf]

Isn't there a "use backend channel order" or something of the sort in xbmc live TV settings somewhere?

[SoCalXMBC]

Yeah, I've used that and just about every other setting but it never seems to honor it. I figure its either not implemented to use the WMC changed epg channel sorting order or its limited to only the physical channel tuning number or broadcasted station ID.

[LSU Jonno]

Have you tried grouping your channels into groups in WMC and then use the backend groups feature within XBMC? I realize this is pretty similar to what Diligaf proposed, just wondering if your grouping function is messed up too.

[Dilligaf]

Have you tried resetting the epg database after changing that setting?

[SoCalXMBC]

I suppose Grouping in WMC is called Favorite Lineups? I just set a favorite linup, wow that was a disaster to setup since I'm QAM and custom defined channels - hundreds of non tunable channels, no delineation as to what is active or inactive and friendly names are all missing. But I worked through it and saved. Still no love.

Yes, depending on the setting I'm having to reset the pvr database and or just the epg database to propagate settings. I'm pretty familiar with how to make this organize properly in XBMC... its jut really tedious to do over and over again. My issues is really in getting the channels to import via the PVR plugin in the order i have set them in WMC so that I dont have to redo each and every instance. The settings in the ServerWMC plugin and in the XBMC LiveTV settings suggest that it might be possible to honor the WMC ordering. I have a feeling if I were synchronizing the EPG with the Cable provider and all available channels then this would not be an issue but with QAM and manual EPG associations this is getting lost in translation.

[krustyreturns]

Yes, 'favorites' in wmc is channel groups in xbmc. I thought this was working so long as xbmc is set to use the backend channel order. Have you gone to the channels tab in swmc and set it to use the same order than you are using in wmc (name/number)? If I recall right, after you make a change you may have to reset xbmc's database to see it (not sure though).

[SoCalXMBC]

No matter what I change IN WMC or XBMC (shy manually mapping that is), the result is always the same when imported and it imports as follows:



I can change Server WMC to order channels by number or name and the results do not change, however, if I change Call sign to Full Service name then the titles are no longer numerical but in the same order. This has basically been my experience with WMC->ServereWMC->XBMC for as long as I can remember of the last year no matter how I change settings.

In the past, I never bothered reordering the channels in WMC but I did play a bit with Favorite lineups with no success.

This is how the channels are ordered in WMC


And this is is the result in the WMC EPG


What is interesting is that if you look at the channel tuning number in XBMC (first image above) for channel 10, that is the correct tuning channel. In the reordered WMC and EPG, it is showing the wrong tuning channel next to each channel. I think the reorder may be doing some logical remap of the channel so that the EPG displays in correctly.

So it seems that no matter how the channels are organized in WMC, they will always import in the order of their actual tuning channel numerically.

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Also, the image below shows how one of the channels is detected and enabled as a music channel. However this is also lost on import and has no knowledge of it being a music channel at all:

WMC channel detection - 81.7 for example


XBMC radio empty, selected on 81.7


I can tune radio channels but they are not listed as such.

Since this seems to work for so many other people, I feel like it is somehow related to my QAM scanning and manual EPG associations. If ServerWMC is importing at the lowest level the channels as they are, it may be unaware of a different logical mapping layer above and beyond just the tuning channels?

[SoCalXMBC]

For those who asked, yes I have tried all of the following settings matrixed by themselves to all inclusive, resetting the PVR Database each time between each setting and validating in Channel Manager the results.



Again, this can be accomplished manually be disabling all the backend syncronization and manually configuring each channel, so I have a work around. I was just curious if it works for anyone else outside of the default numerical order or if its just me.

[SoCalXMBC]

Wait... hold off.... It just imported the channels in near perfect order.. I need to figure out what change is being honored.. too many moving parts.

Spoke too soon. I rebooted the machine and imports suddenly changed, The ordering was better, but it seems its still not consistent with the WMC.



The order is still off however now the actual tuning channel numbers match the virual remapped numbers in wmc... but they are still not ordered as they are in wmc, only the first 4 then it skips and the next 2 then its all out of whack again.

[bluenote]

I organize my channels with wmc and xbmc honors them.

[SoCalXMBC]

Do you pay for cabletv and let WMC associate the EPG automatically to the channels? I'm looking for things that may be different to help isolate where the disconnect may be.

[krustyreturns]

Yeah, if you order channels in wmc by number, and then change the order for certain channels, wmc assigns 'fake' channel numbers to the moved channels in order to give you the order you want. Serverwmc also orders by these fake channel numbers so you should get the same channel order in xbmc.

There may be a ordering bug if you choose the swmc option of 'full service name', I need to check that.

Anyway keep us posted, its been ages since we looked at channel order so possible something we did since then broke it.

[SoCalXMBC]

If I have ServerWMC setup as either of the following I expected it to order by number or full service name





However both the settings above result in the same import which is out of name order, but in order of tuning channel:



The above is true not matter what the XMBC import or synchronization setting is set to. And it doesnt matter what the ServerWMC Order Channels By setting is set to either. (I restarted the service between each settings change)


I just returned to my original setting after trying every premutation:



And now all of a sudden, the list is no longer partially correct but now fully correct, but slightly different than the last time I ran this same setting:



This is now entirely correct... so why did this same setting last time give me a partial mix mash or results that do no seem to jive with any setting? It seems somewhere there must be a behavior that is mixing up the data. and cycling full circle through all the settings fixed it, even though its the same settings I was on to begin with.

Regardless... I finally got what I was after.

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Hah! If I wasn't a developer myself, I would have smashed my head in a wall already... but I know exactly how it is tracing through weirdness, looking for a misplaced character wondering why something is acting funny but still compiles And with so many handoffs in play, its hard to know whats happening where, out of debug mode, or attached to the process. Cheers!

[krustyreturns]

I took a look at this today, what I found:

1. Some of the weird behavior you may have been seeing is that serverwmc currently requires a restart if you change the channel order (name vs number). I had forgotten that. I will fix this in the next release, so that this is no longer required.
2. There was a bug that if you chose 'Full Service Name' for channels it still sorted by callsign. This has been fixed.
3. I can't recall if you are using gotham or not, but I noticed in looking at this today Gotham has gotten rid of the 'Use channel order from the backend', option. So in gotham I can only order by channel number. Does anyone know if this option has moved in Gotham? Or is it just dead?