[vdr] Re: Passive mode of VDR/EPG scan schedule for saving electricity

[Marcus Kuba <marcus@kuba4u.de>]

Am 03.05.2002 20:10:16, schrieb Carsten Koch <Carsten.Koch@icem.de>:

>> Well, the big disadvance of an on demand EPG scan is that it takes a
>> real long time. 
>
>In my experience: not true.
>What I saw on the Sky Digibox was excellent. 

I don't think you can compare this with VDR.
AFAIK the digibox uses a proprietary EPG and not the
normal DVB-standard one which is provided by the tv 
stations. I don't know how the Sky-EPG is actually
implemented, but I'd imagine that it's broadcast for all
sky-stations on all sky-transponders so it will be always
available on-the-fly.

>It took less than a second to update the 8 channels
>listed per OSD page. Even if I paged forward by several
>days to a point that was definitely not in any cache, 
>it took less than 3 seconds to update the 8 channels 
>listed per OSD page.

The same may be true with VDR when you always have
groups of channels on the same transponder. But when
you have channels from different providers/on multiple
transponders (which is normally the case when you want
the 'whats on now/next'-screens), it is impossible to retrieve
the data for all those channels without retuning/switching.

>I am not against an (optional) scan that fills and
>updates the EPG cache all the time, but I honestly
>believe that an additional demand-driven EPG info
>lookup would be a big improvement.

The problem of that will be that it can not provide you with
information on all channels. Only the channels on the current
transponder will be available, unless you stop the current
programme and let the card retune in the background or
find a way to use one of the proprietary EPGs from several
receiver-manufacturers (Technisat, Panasonic..)

Greetings,   Marcus