How to stop constant HDhomerun scanning and channels being added

Playground Hardware
#43

I have these challenges inside one market.

#44

I didnt mean specifying a channel, what i meant was this. I have 10.1 NBC and 35.1 as a low power translator for NBC. Problem is that the tanslator has a very weak signal and i dont want it to be used for passes. If i favorite 10.1, that channel will be preferred for any pass that is recorded on nbc. I dont have to manually specify the channel in the pass. The nice thing is that if for some reason 10.1 wont tune, then 35.1 will be used.

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#45

Does anyone know if the firmware or an internet call triggers a rescan? If you were to block internet access to the hdhr via router settings would that stop the rescans? I’m pretty sure that an ota Hdhomerun will work with internet, I don’t know about the primes.

#46

Baked in the firmware and the background scans are done every 3 days +/- 12hrs

#47

Bummer, so much for that idea.

#48

I even asked SD if I scripted doing manual scans every 48hrs, would it reset the timer for the auto background scans and was ignored by their support. Even if it worked, I would have to check scheduled recording times so the scripted channel scans wouldn't run during a scheduled recording and I would be increasing the channel scan frequency from once every 3 days to once every 2 days and that increases the odds it would happen during a cable outage. Then add Murhpy's Law.

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#50

I primarily use OTA, with multiple hdhr connected to two different antennas.

  • Each HDHR has the lineup setup so that that channels it should record are favorited, the ones it should only record if another HDHR is unavailable are enabled but not favorited, and the ones it should never record disabled. Since there are 2 antennas connected to different HDHR, some HDHR have favorite channels that are disabled channels on other HDHR. This ensures that recordings are always using the channels I want on the HDHR connected to the antenna I want (100% quality).

  • My "Favorites" is a custom Channel Collection with the exact channels I want, in the order I want. I do also have other Channel Collections, but primarily have my clients set to the "Favorites" Channel Collection.

  • HDHR can scan and rescan all day for all I care. Channels records using the channels I prefer and my client's favorites always shows the channels I prefer.

I've been doing this for many years now. I am surprised that some users haven't figured it out yet.

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#51

The problem is that Prime tuners can actually lose their channels during a channel scan because of a slow time to tune and the device timing out. When that happens, it doesn't matter if the channel was marked as a favorite or not, because the device is telling Channels that you are no longer allowed to tune the channel, so all recordings using that channel will now fail.

I am glad that your OTA tuner setup works for you, but the Prime is a different type of device that works differently from the other OTA tuners when it is paired with a CableCARD, and doubly so when a tuning adapter is introduced.

#52

I know this isn't optimal, but could it be worth triggering a rescan at 3am every day to just make sure you don't go more than 24 hours without channels working?

I guess this could be an interesting thing to add to OliveTin: If a HDHR shows 0 channels, issue a rescan once an hour...

#53

In my situation this would not have worked. My issue was with SDV channels being lost because the tuning adapter took too long to get a lock. If SD modified their firmware to allow disabling the scans or to allow for specifying the timeout, this wouldn't be an issue. (Or better yet, do what is actually expected with CableCARD devices: let the user/DVR manage which channels are available. In SD's infinite wisdom of being “user friendly” and performing these scans, they are making things worse.)

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#54

I've got an idea, how about having a default re-scanning schedule, as intricate as you'd like, but allow the user to only have manual rescans if that's they want? I'd really like to have control of the scanning frequency. You could have whatever intricate scanning timing that Silicon Dust would like as default, and we could simplify the heck out of that if we had a reason to change it?

Just a thought -:). I don't understand why this isn't under the user's control, if that's what they want? Right now I've got my "Favorites" as was suggested, and am using that collection in the Guide, but not a totally satisfying solution. Seems pointless to me to have all this scanning going on for the way that I want to use my OTA DVR.

#55

Because the hardware tuner firmware is handling the scanning, and there is no way for the user to affect this. It has been specifically removed from the users' control by SiliconDust, the makers of the hardware.

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#56

I'm not going to use manual scans on my PRIME since using an M3U source does what I need.
If anyone wants to play with manual scans, here are my notes from when I tried it 8 months ago.

HDHR Manual channel scanning

Automatic background scans cannot be disabled or scheduled and happen every 72 hours (+/-12), so every 60-84 hours.

To manually scan;
Start the scan: hdhomerun_config [device id] set /lineup/scan start
or
Start the scan: curl -XPOST http://[device ip]/lineup.post?scan=start

Check the progress of the scan: hdhomerun_config [device id] get /lineup/scan
or
Check the progress of the scan: http://[device ip]/lineup_status.json
{"ScanInProgress":0,"ScanPossible":1,"Source":"Cable","SourceList":["Cable"]}

Get the result of the scan: http://[device id].local/lineup.json?show=found
or
Get the result of the scan: http://[device ip]/lineup.json?show=found

Abort the scan: hdhomerun_config [device id] set /lineup/scan abort
or
Abort the scan: curl -XPOST http://[device ip]/lineup.post?scan=abort

NOTES:
Will doing this scan reset the background scan timer? If yes, do every 48 hours (same time every two days) so it happens on our controlled schedule.

Problem if channels are missing during daily guide refresh (09:00-11:00). How to avoid that?

HDHR channel scan took about 10 minutes (9 minutes 53 seconds). What could max time be?
curl -XPOST http://192.168.1.7/lineup.post?scan=start&source=Cable

Check status until scan complete ("ScanInProgress":0)
curl -XGET http://192.168.1.7/lineup_status.json
{"ScanInProgress":1,"Progress":0,"Found":0} @ Sun, 03 Sep 2023 01:51:22 GMT
...
{"ScanInProgress":1,"Progress":99,"Found":530}
{"ScanInProgress":0,"ScanPossible":1,"Source":"Cable","SourceList":["Cable"]} @ Sun, 03 Sep 2023 02:01:15 GMT

Ensure we have the correct number of subscribed channels.
curl -XGET http://192.168.1.7/lineup.json?show=found
returns json array of 530 subscribed channels (Subscribed <> 0)

If 0 channels, notify and rescan (every hour? for how long?).

After recovering, have Channels DVR rescan the network for devices (it normally checks every 2 hours).
curl -XPOST http://192.168.1.4:8189/devices

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#57

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