Sky Q Lnb Freesat
Marybelle Bailey
Sorry to resurrect again, but is this still the case (this is the most recent post I could find)? After clearing out and starting again, I'm playing the 11425H mux in VLC, but no bouquets are displaying. However, I don't have a BBC Olympics service either (used to have, I think). All the usual BSkyBs are listed. I have two "Freesat info" Services on 11425H and 11428H. Playing either doesn't seem to do anything.
To get the freesat Bouquets you have to have the Over-the-air: UK: Freesat EPG Grabber module enabled. If you want to use a different EPG for yuour main channels (e.g. XML) then set the Priority of UK: Freesat one down to 1 and set your other grabber higher, I have mine set at 5.
Not with DVB-S, and not with Channels. But before I used Channels I did something similar with Tvheadend (another DVR software ingesting M3U playlists) and find their approaches similar. Unfortunately I don't have anything concrete to offer.
I've come across information for several SAT>IP 'servers'. They also look viable from a technical perspective, 8 tuners is attractive, but tracking down one to purchase seems to be a challenge. The VBox products are definitely more 'user friendly' though, which may be important if I have to ask a family member to help fix something when I'm traveling.
Found this thread as I'm struggling to get my Digibit Twin working with channels DVR. I've tried and failed so many different options for months now I've almost given up! Would be super grateful if you could share how yours is setup
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.
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.)
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 )
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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!
Open the Channels web interface on :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.
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.
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.
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.
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.