Help - Moving a digital cable channel line-up to basic cable channel

[PSUtivo]

My cable company broadcasts TechTV on digital channel 303, and also basic cable channel 39. For some reason, however, they only tell Tribune about the digital channel, so there's no listings for channel 39 in my guide data. They've been doing this double listing for over a year now, and despite my calls and emails to both my cable co. and tivo, the problem remains.

Is there a way to make my SA Series 1 Tivo use the guide data from channel 303 for channel 39? I don't have a digital box for this room so I can't use the tivo to record 303.

I was reading about the add-channel.tcl script, but i'm unsure about using it to get a digital channel's lineup to work with a basic cable channel.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

[captain_video]

I used to have a similar problem with my ReplayTV. I travelled around the country for about two years for the contract I was working under and I carried a ReplayTV with me wherever I went. I was usually in one place for about 4 weeks at a time which made it worthwhile. Unfortunately, the hotel chains I stayed in (ExtendedStay America) had a proprietary channel lineup that they pulled from the satellites that didn't correspond to any of the local cable systems. I just looked for a local cable lineup that contained all the same channels that were picked up on my room TV and set up the Replay accordingly. This allowed me to at least get the guide info for all the channels I could record in my room.

I made up a cross-reference list that compared the cable channels to the actual channel numbers the shows were being broadcast on in my room. I would have to set up almost every show I wanted to record manually but I was able to at least record them. If a show on the channel I wanted happened to be scheduled at the same start and stop time as a show in the guide then I just picked the show out of the guide for ease of recording. Of course, the show title didn't correspond to what was actually recorded but I was able to keep pretty close track of the recorded shows based on the date and time of the recording.

[TroyCarpenter]

Below is a script that will add a *station* to your lineup. Actually, it doesn't really add a channel, it changes the station pointer from an unused channel in the lineup to the station that you want.

For example, I want to add station DISN to my lineup since it is not there. On my Tivo, I would go to TivoWeb and click on the ChannelMap module. From that list, I would find a channel in my lineup that is NOT being used. For example, I have GAS in my lineup that is not used. I look down for channel GAS in my lineup (GAS in first column, Extended Basic A in the third column on my particular Tivo) and look at the channel object. In my case, that number is 2231/6095. Next I find the station object for DISN. I find any row with channel DISN, look in the last column and get the Station Object. Again, in my case it is 2182/-1

What the script below does is marry those two numbers. You will see that the script below takes in two arguments. The first argument is the channel object number of the unused channel (in my example 2231/6095, but in the script the 2231 part is hard coded. You will need to replace 2231 in my script with your own number). The second argument is the station object number of the station you want, but you don't need the final /-1 part. In my example that would be 2182.

So the script below would be executed as follows:

tivo> addchannel 6095 2231

When I execute that script, I now have Disney Channel as channel 47.

Now, here's the important part: You need to change lineups to a different lineup and then back to your new one for the change to take effect. I leave it up as an exercise for the reader to know how to change lineups.

Once you have played the lineup shuffle, use the TivoWeb ChannelMap module to move your new station to the correct channel number. It is now no different than remapping any other channel.

Here's the script:

#!/tvbin/tivosh
source /tvlib/tcl/tv/mfslib.tcl
set arg1 [lindex $argv 0]
set arg2 [lindex $argv 1]
set db [dbopen]

RetryTransaction {
#  REMEMBER TO CHANGE 2231 TO THE CORRECT NUMBER
set theObject [db $db openidconstruction 2231 $arg1]
set newsta [db $db openidconstruction $arg2 -1]
dbobj $theObject set Station $newsta
}

dbclose $db

Note, I do not claim total responsibility for developing this script...I had help from Enigma2175. Anyone can follow the saga in the following thread:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...threadid=76911

Oh, and if your service is anything like mine, Tivo will periodically change your lineup back. Specifically whenever your cable company makes a change, your lineup will be set back and you will need to do this again. When that happens, you WILL need to do all the steps over because the Channel Object number will be different, although I believe that the station object does not change.