Disable channel rescan?

Channels DVR Server
#1

Is it possible to disable automatic channel rescans, either at the HDHR tuner itself, or within the Channels DVR?

The reason I ask is because my local PBS station comes in loud-and-clear, but I'm on the fringe of being able to receive a neighboring PBS station. Most of the time, a channel scan does not pick up the neighboring PBS station, but every now and then, it does.

What happened to me this week is, apparently, a rescan happened and this neighboring PBS station got added, then when a pre-existing Pass did a recording, it picked the newly-added (neighboring) station rather than my local station. Since the signal level is marginal, the recording contained lots of errors and was unwatchable.

I've since fixed the problem by editing the Pass and entering my local PBS station's channel number.

#2

Short answer, NO.

This is a long-requested feature that SiliconDust does not care to address. The background scans are implemented in the device firmware itself, and therefore there is nothing that Channels can do about it.

This is especially frustrating for users of the Prime with tuning adapters, because the background scan does not wait very long for a channel to lock before the device will mark it as unsubscribed. While this may be the normally desired outcome, for SDV channels tuning can sometimes take a while, so the device is disabling channels that can actually be received.

There have been all manner of feature requests about this over at the SD forums. From making the background scans an option to be disabled, to adjusting the timeout needed for a channel lock, to even manually editing the device's lineup to add back erroneously disabled channels ...

Regardless of what the users request, because of SD's asinine decisions in their move to change the TV viewing paradigm, this problem has been ongoing for years.

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#3

Could one disable the 'extra' PBS Channel in the HDHR UI directly? In other words, if a recent scan picks up that 2nd PBS Channel, could you log into your HDHR and disable that channel? If so, would it remember that setting moving forward (whenever the channel was re-detected)?

#4

Easy fix - Just log in to http://my.hdhomerun.com/ and block the channel.

#5

While disabling the undesired channel seems easy, there have been problems with HDHR's firmware:

  • Background scan picks up a new (undesired) channel
  • Channel is marked Disabled in Channels/HDHomeRun web UI
  • Subsequent background no longer finds the channel, so it is removed from lineup
  • A third background scan finds the previously disabled and removed channel, and adds it back to the lineup as a new and enabled channel, even though it was previously Disabled

The problem with Disabled status not remaining across background scans is one that some users are still having problems with. And even if a stable firmware is released that solves this issue, it doesn't address the underlying issue: Allow us to disable the unwanted background scans!

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#6

This describes my scenario. The channel comes and goes from one channel scan to the next.

I'm now looking into whether I can use curl with an "http://" URL directed at my HDHR tuner to block the channel, and then put that into a cron job.

#7

Can you just edit the pass so it only uses the correct PBS channel? I've done this myself.

#8

I think this might work:

curl -XPOST http://${HDHR_IP}/lineup.post?favorite=x${CHAN}

I believe that ought to disable channel ${CHAN} on the device at ${HDHR_IP}, but I can't test right now.

You might also find this repository helpful: https://github.com/garybuhrmaster/HDHRUtil

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#9

Yes, this is ultimately what I did. But was wondering if there were a way to avoid having to do that.

#10

You could try weakening the signal even more using a notch filter, such as this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Notch-Filter-Negative-CATV-Channel-Trap-Channel-12/223738773834?hash=item3417dec14a:g:UFUAAOSwlhpZfRlC

Be sure to figure out which physical channel the station is on, which could be different than the channel number it appears as in your TV lineup.