Ah yes, my apologies I did that terrible forum thing of leaving the thread hanging!
My setup is still working even after this long with almost zero maintenance so rock solid.
The 'trick' is that you need to use TVHeadend (TVH) for the tuning and to create a channel list / playlist for Channels. I think you could skip this and point Channels at the Twin direct, but the Digibit Twin doesn't have an interface for tuning (the quad does), and Channels doesn't support SAT>IP tuning, so if you don't use TVH you need to manually craft the channel list and my attempts weren't 100% successful. But no matter as TVH doesn't seem to be particularly resource intensive to run alongside Channels, it's just quite complicated to set up in the first instance.
So to continue you need to have a working instance of TVH on the same network as the Digibit and the Channels server. I won't go into details here (unless you want me to), but I highly recommend using Docker for both as it is easier to spin up / restart.
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Enable the Advanced or Expert UI in Configuration > General > Base
This enables some menu items that are needed for future steps.
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Go to Configuration > Channels / EPG > EPG Grabber Modules and ensure that ONLY Freesat and Freesat EIT are enabled.
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This setting does grab the EPG that is embedded in the streams, but it's not actually used in the end. It is required later to get the Freesat bouquets which are the sets of regional Freesat only channels, which are important later.
Remember you have to hit save after making each change.
(Leaving the other grabbers on probably won't do anything, but we don't need them.)
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Now you're ready to tune so first go to Configuration > DVB Inputs > Networks, and Add a new network of Type DVBS. Tick Enabled, call it Freesat (or whatever), then in Network Discovery select New muxes + changed muxes. Leave everything else as defaults.
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A mux is basically a signal on a particular frequency from the satellite that contains multiple channels and also data about other muxes. This configuration means when we do a tune it will update the list of muxes it uses to tune. (Sort of 
)
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Then go to Configuration > DVB Inputs > Muxes, and Add a new mux. Pick Freesat in the Network box, then enter the following:
/ - Frequency = 11425000
/ - Symbol Rate = 27500000
/ - Polarization = H
/ - Modulation = QPSK
/ - FEC = 2/3
Then click Save.
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This sets the main Freesat 'home' mux, which contains the data for all the other muxes that contain Freesat channels. This is useful because if you just did a full scan of all the muxes on the satellite, you'd get hundreds of channels for other providers - notably Sky, but also many European channels, which makes creating the channel list much harder later.
So at this point you should just have a single mux in the list.
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Now go to Configuration > DVB Inputs > TV Adapters and you should see your Digibit Twin listed. If you're on the same network and no weird bridging or firewalls going on it will be auto detected. If not, you've got a different problem!
You should see two Tuners - #1 and #2, but they will have 4 'positions' underneath. I think this is something for motorised dishes, which won't be a thing for Freesat.
Pick the first one, and it will show the details on the right, first of all Enable it, then set Satellite positions to 1, then Save at the bottom. Repeat for the other tuner.
Then go to Position #1 under one of the Tuners, again Enable it, but then select Freesat under the Networks. Repeat for the other Position on the other Tuner.
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This binds those tuners to the Freesat network, and the configuration we've just set up.
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A useful thing here is to reveal the TVH log so you can make sure things are happening. This is a bottom pane on the interface, so reveal it by hitting the very tiny two up chevrons/arrows in the bottom right. At this point there is likely not a lot in there right now.
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Now go back to Configuration > DVB Inputs > Networks and click to select the Freesat network. Click 'Force Scan' in the sub menu, you should start to see activity in the log at the bottom.
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What is happening now is that TVH will tune the Digibit to the mux we configured earlier, which will then provide many other muxes for it to look for Freesat channels.
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Now you can switch to Configuration > DVB Inputs > Muxes and you will see many many more muxes - almost 70. You'll also see in Scan status that some are IDLE, some are PENDING and some are ACTIVE.
TVH is now scanning every mux for services (channels), which you'll see how many it finds in the Services column, or you can switch to the Services tab to see them all as they are found.
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Note that Freesat shares muxes with other networks, so even though we've limited the muxes to only Freesat ones, there will be many more services found than channels on Freesat.
Important thing here is that Services are kinda like Channels, but in TVH language Channels are the 'configured' Services so separate.
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Wait for TVH to scan all muxes and they all go to IDLE.
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This is where it gets slightly awkward. Part of the DVB specs is the concept of a Bouquet, which is a selection of channels for a particular service or segment of a service. So here, it would be all the Freesat channels in a certain region - like Meridian, Thames, etc. We can use this to avoid having to go through all the Services found (which is about 770 at this point) and manually adding them to our Channel list. Also, there are repeats of channels for regions and even between services (e.g. there are many C4's) but TVH doesn't make that very clear. So this is a nice shortcut.
BUT! I don't know why, but TVH won't find the Freesat bouquets that are broadcast on the home mux unless we force it too. It finds all the Sky ones and some others, but they are useless here (as most of the channels in them are encrypted).
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To force find the bouquets, go to Configuration > DVB Inputs > Services and find the service called BBC NDRA. You might have to show All in the bottom right. It should be on mux 11425H (the home mux).
You should now 'play' this 'channel' by opening the stream in a new window (this is important!) - so right click on the little play button on the far left and open in a new tab/window. You may then also have to select the tab to start the stream - but NOTHING WILL PLAY - this is ok!
In the log you should see a message that it is tuned to the channel.
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Now wait, maybe up to a couple of minutes, but eventually a long list of the Freesat bouquets should appear in the log. Once they appear you can close the BBC NDRA stream if you want.
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(Tip - the BBC NDRA channel isn't special, I don't even know what it is - you just have to play any service on the 11425H mux to have TVH find the bouquets.)
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Now we have the bouqets we have to choose which one we want in order to build the channel list. Go to Configuration > Channel / EPG > Bouquets and scroll until you come to the list of Freesat bouqets. Again you might need to select All in the bottom right.
These may not be that obvious as they don't contain Freesat in the name, so look in the Source column for the reference to dvb-freesat.
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There are three sets - an HD set, an SD set and one called G2. You want the HD set for HD content (duh) and ignore the G2 set as thats just a copy of HD set but with extra data content that TVH/Channels doesn't support.
Anyway, under the HD set find the bouquet for your region and then tick the box to the left, and hit Save.
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Again, TVH won't now automatically map the channels, so you need to do step 11 again - 'play' the BBC NDRA channel in a new window, wait a few minutes and you should see the log say it has mapped the channels from the bouquet. Success!
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Go to Configuration > Channel / EPG > Channels and you should now see the Freesat channels and only the Freesat channels for your selected region (bouquet). Roughly 180 with the radio and +1's. The TVH configuration is done!!!! You don't need to touch anything else.
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Now we need to point Channels to this channel list we've created in TVH. This is super simple!
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Open the Channels web interface on http://x.x.x.x:8089. Under the Source section near the top right, hit Add source, and then Custom Channels.
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Note that Channels says it supports SAT>IP, and it does kinda but it doesn't support SAT>IP tuning which is why we have to use TVHeadend. Even if it did, I doubt it would ever support bouquets which makes channel selection a nightmare so TVH is really useful here.
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In the Custom Channels setup, give it a Nickname like Freesat, then the stream format is MPEG-TS.
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Under Source, select URL and then you need to point it at the TVHeadend box using the following URL:
http://x.x.x.x:9981/playlist/channels.m3u (obviously x.x.x.x being the IP of the TVHeadend server)
You have to point at the channel m3u and not anywhere else!
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Under Options, I have it set to refresh daily, prefer channel number and logo from M3U, and Limit to 2 streams.
The last config is important as Channels needs to know how many tuners there are on this Source, in this case 2, so that it doesn't try to watch/record too much and have failures.
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For XMLTV Guide - you could set this to grab the EPG from TVHeadend if you want - as TVH will extract it from the channels themselves, but I've found it to not be as rich as the one Channels provide (and which you're sort of paying for), so I would ignore this field and leave it blank. Also sometimes it won't do series link with this method.
Save the Source and it should then show how many channels it found - the same number in TVH.
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Then you need to configure the guide provider (EPG) for the source. There are different ways to do this, and I can't remember what it looks like from a blank slate, but essentially you put in your postcode, and it gives you choices and you pick the appropriate Freesat regional one! Do not pick Freesat from Sky. Should be fairly obvious but note this is what Channels uses to match guide data to channels so if you pick the wrong one it may mismatch so you could get the wrong guide data on a channel.
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Provided you picked the right one you can now review Manage lineup from the little drop down gear menu. On the left are the channels from TVH, on the right are the channels matched from the downloaded guide data. It should auto match basically every channel if you've done this right!
You can do a visual check by making sure the Channel name on the left matches the logo and ID on the right.
You can stop here, or you can then use standard Channels features to favourite or hide channels you don't want to see on the Channels clients. For example if you scroll down you can hide all the regional variants that you might not want to watch.
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Thats it! Once you leave that screen, Channels will download the guide data, and if you swtich to the Live TV > Guide or open a Channels app then you should see a fully populated guide and can tune and watch any of the Freesat channels!
Phew - that was pretty epic. Once you know it, it's actually pretty simple and this has worked solid for me for almost a year now with little attention after this configuration.
Really hope this helps someone! Probably a ton of tips in here for non-Freesat but DVB-S users as well cos TVH is not the most intuitive software.
p.s. I might move this to a Github Gist so its is more discoverable.
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