[vdr] unique channel id

["Rienecker, Fa. Evenio, ITS P, M" <C.Rienecker@deutschepost.de>]

Hello @ll,
sorry to once more raising this topic, but something went wrong with the way
1.1.16 was implemented.

To recall the intentions:
1. There are lots of tv- and radio-stations out there and I am sure
everybody identifies the stations by name.
2. There a a lot of combinations of tuning parameters: VPID, APID, SID and
sat-transponder(position + frequency + polarization). The later Information
might even by substituted with some sort of combination of sat-position,
TID, NID and/or ONID.

Now, if I want to set up a list of my favorite tv/radio-stations I want to
refer to them by name, nothing else.
But vdr only needs the tuning parameters, it doesn't need names to tune.

Now what is the unique channel ID ???
The unique channel ID was supposed to be an artificial unique number that
relates the channels in my personal list to the tuning parameters. This is
necessary to get rid of the intrinsic connection between channel and tuning
parameters present at the moment in vdr.

The benefits will be:
If a channel switches tuning parameters (like e.g. Studio Universal, Disney
Channel and Planet) you don't have to edit the channel list nor the timers
need to be updated. You just edit the list that maps tuning parameters to
unique channel IDs. This enables us to publish one master list for all vdr
users. The local channel list need not to be changed.
This scheme also covers the case of channels beeing substituted by another
one (like Chillout replaced Volksmusik) in a way that Chillout gets a new
unique channel ID and the entry for the unique channel ID related to
Volksmusik will be marked dead or temporarily unavailable in the tuning
parameter list. This way vdr may pop up a message to inform the user if
(s)he tries to tune to the now inactive channel.


How to construct a unique channel ID:
Don't use anything related to real world values. Especially tuning
parameters, because they _ARE_ changing.
Don't use plain channel names, because people use different names for the
same channel ('PRO7', 'PRO 7', 'Pro 7', 'Pro-7', 'PRO-7', ...)
The easiest Way would be to just start numbering, starting from 1 and add
new channels at the bottom of the list.
Artificial keys have proven to be the best way to perform a join over two
tables (the channel list and the tuning parameter list).

Of course there are channels available from different sources, i.e. various
tuning parameters. E.g. 'ARD - Das Erste' is available in Berlin from cable,
terrestrial, Astra, Hotbird and maybe more.
Basiccally there are two ways to handle this:
1. Assign one unique channels ID for each sourse and let the user decide
which one to use in his personal channel list.
2. Assign just one unique channel ID to ARD and make vdr aware of the
capabilities of the local equipment. E.g. VDR is configured to only receive
Astra and subsequently choses the tuning parameters related to Astra
ignoring the other ones matching the unique channel ID.

I don't want to offend anyone, but my personal opinion is that the way
1.1.16 is implemented we have introduced restrictions without gaining
benefits.

My suggestion would be something like this:
add a field 'unique channel ID' to the channels.conf, keep everything else
the same for compatibility reasons.
Actually the ca filed must still be used since this is something that might
dependend on the local setup.

channels.conf:
----schnipp----
:@1 RTL
RTL::::::::0:;1
RTL2::::::::0:;4
:@11 ProSiebenSat1
Sat.1::::::::0:;2
Pro-7::::::::0:;3
:@21 ARD
Das Erste::::::::0:;5
----schnapp----

And add a new file 'tuner.conf' that has the unique channel ID instead of
the channel names.

tuner.conf
----schnipp----
:Astra
1:12188:h:S19.2E:27500:163:104:105:0:12003
2:12480:v:S19.2E:27500:1791:1792:34:0:46
3:12480:v:S19.2E:27500:255:256;257:32:0:898
4:12188:h:S19.2E:27500:166:128:68:0:12020
5:11837:h:S19.2E:27500:101:102:104:0:28106
:terr Berlin
1:658000:I0C23D0M16B8T8G8Y0:T:27500:337:338:0:0:16405
2:658000:I0C23D0M16B8T8G8Y0:T:27500:385:386:0:0:16408
3:658000:I0C23D0M16B8T8G8Y0:T:27500:305:306;307:0:0:16403
4:658000:I0C23D0M16B8T8G8Y0:T:27500:353:354:0:0:16406
:telekom cable
5:410:M64:C:6900:101:102:104:0:28106
----schnapp----

CU,
Christian.



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