AltEPG

This sounds barmy but bear with me!....

Is there a way to trick TiVo when changing channels to go to a different channel than the one input by the user? For example, on a sky setup, when I enter 101 to goto BBC1 via the remote, I would like TiVo to actually change to 143 BBC1HD.

Could the answer be as simple as removing bbc1 ? (non hd)

positor1 wrote:Could the answer be as simple as removing bbc1 ? (non hd)

.. And the non HD itv, ch4 and ch5 ? Yes, but swmbo still wants to use 101, 103 - 105. For seasons passes I've used the HD channels

Found the solution... A module for TWP exists called ChannelMap, which should do what I want. Time to try it out.

The number displayed / typed is always the number sent to the digibox over IR

Only way to alter that would be to modify the IRblast hack which resends IR after each channel change.
You could modify it to send 143 shortly after the TiVo has sent 101

Alternatively I'm sure I read that the sky box was going to have that functionality at some point? (moving HD to 101) - did that never happen?

Yes, I thought Sky had flipped the HD channels to SD too!

I have Sky & Freeview but I don't use a Sky set-top-box, so i'm not entirely sure what has been done on their own boxes. I use a linux satellite receiver for the sky channels, and I have the option to flip the HD channels to the SD channel numbers, so sky1 hd is on 106 instead of 170.
I actually prefer to keep them as they were though and am glad with this type of receiver this is a choice rather than having it forced on me. I'm used to the channel numbers and BBC HD is not regional which means forcing London news down your throat is great only if your a southerner

That's why I select the Sky SD line-up when I use the AltEPG Guided Setup, its doesn't stop me from getting the HD channels, it just means everything is in its original place before sky started messing around with flipping channels (which incidentally is to try and boost the viewing figures of HD channels because they were surprised how many people really can't be bothered to seek out the HD version) 3D has been an even bigger disappointment, shocker eh?

Channel map is only for realigning channels numbers, not for what I wanted. As mikerr says I'm going to have to look at irblast and modifying it.

Sky has swapped the hd/sd channels around for sky channels eg sky1 but not for the 3 hd terrestrial channels, the swap only applies if your subscribe to the hd pack - which I don't.

I don't understand people that 1) pay for the hd pack, 2) don't watch hd channels if they've paid for the hd pack!

Another complication is that the HD versions aren't always exactly the same schedule as the SD versions, depending on your region.

If tivo is showing a guide for ITV1North and the box is showing ITVHD, you might not get the right guide data displayed...

Velocitysurfer wrote:I don't understand people that 1) pay for the hd pack, 2) don't watch hd channels if they've paid for the hd pack!

You'll be amazed just how lazy people are and how much they pay for without using or needing it!
Its what companies like sky rely on, thats why sky's aggressive marketing campaign is second to none!
Make the deals sound attractive just to get people on-board, knowing full well, when the offer expires, most people will do nothing about it!

I've lost count of the amount of times I've had conversations with people saying things like they were paying for the top sky package for years and never even bothered watching sport or the movie channels as examples!

Its similar to Gym subscriptions and why they charge joining fee's. They know most people are going to join after xmas, go for a few months at most and take several months before they decide to cancel

mikerr wrote:Another complication is that the HD versions aren't always exactly the same schedule as the SD versions, depending on your region.

If tivo is showing a guide for ITV1North and the box is showing ITVHD, you might not get the right guide data displayed...

A far worse problem happens from the guide data side of things. To fix the guide data for a showing on ITV, if we need to change an Episode that's in a timeslot to a different Episode, it has to be done 33 - count that, thirty-three - separate times! Once for each of:
ULSTER
ITV1BOR
ITV1BS
ITV1WA
ITV1WCY
ITV1WE
ITV1YOR
STVNTH
STVHD
STVSCO
UTVHD
ITV1ANG
ITV1CEN
ITV1CHA
ITV1GRA
ITV1HDC
ITV1HDG
ITV1HDL
ITV1HDS
ITV1LON
ITV1STH
ITV1TVN
ITV1TVS
ITV1TYN
ITVP1CE
ITVP1LN
STVP1
ITVP1GB
ITVP1SE
STVNTHP1
ITVP1WE
UTVP1
ITVP1YT

This is 10 minutes mouse-clicking just to edit a single timeslot. So don't be surprised if there is a reluctance to fix errors on ITV!

@mrtickle

Surely that is just down to poor software for editing the guide data, obviously I'm not privvy to the details but an option to edit all ITV1s at once sounds like it would make sense.

It's not poor (it already does loads) - but keeping the service going for everyone has to be the top priority. It's like spinning plates.

We have greatly benefited from years of work by the Oztivo team. Without that being freely given to us I doubt we'd have an alpha test altEPG service ready now! But they didn't have the regional variations we did (or just chose not to support them), so didn't add that function to TVGuide. By contrast we do, and have tried to support everything. So editing multiple showings at once is something we will have to add later, as you can imagine I'm keen for this to be done but keener that the higher priority things are done first