HDHomeRun Prime Detect Channels Question

[KeithAbbott]

My favorite MLB team is no longer being broadcast on FSN, they are standing up a brand new cable channel instead. I do not really use the SD software, I run SageTV/OpenDCT to watch and record content from my Primes. OpenDCT is a network encoder that directly interfaces with the Prime; I don't know the technical details, but I would think that OpenDCT sends a command to the Prime with the desired channel number and after tuning to that channel the content is streamed back to OpenDCT.

So my question is about the need for the "Detect Channel" functionality (from the Prime webgui). Will the Prime stream content from a channel if the cable provider added that channel after the last "Detect Channel" was performed? I guess another way to ask the question is what exactly is the purpose of the Detect Channel function? What does the scan do behind the scenes?

If I recall correctly, pressing Detect Channel results in a scan that takes one to two hours. I would prefer to wait until I can verify that the new channel has been added before I trigger that scan, since I have no idea how many days or weeks it will take for the channel to become available.

[jasonl]

The channel scan determines the subscription and DRM status of channels to put them in the channel lineup file that many apps use to know which channels are available. I'm not sure if OpenDCT uses that or not. I think it was still SageDCT the last time I had a CableCARD tuner working with SageTV .

[KeithAbbott]

So if the channel has become available and is not DRMd, the Prime would be able to stream it over ethernet whether or not a channel scan has been performed since the channel was added, correct?

Also, when the AVC icon is displayed for a channel, does that imply MPEG-4 format? Is it possible that channels flagged as AVC will utilize the MPEG-2 format?

[Cabal]

Also, when the AVC icon is displayed for a channel, does that imply MPEG-4 format? Is it possible that channels flagged as AVC will utilize the MPEG-2 format?

Yes. No.

AVC = H.264 = MPEG-4 Part 10.

[signcarver]

I would check to see if it shows up by adding ?show=all at the end of the lineup url (may also wish to change .html to .json which would be required to see tuning info). Since you mentioned "hours" for scan, I would assume you have a TA (or HSC) which would disable the "tuning" parameter so a scan may be necessary to possibly pull it in (occasionally they may actually add the channel to the map which the ?show=all should show but it may just be a placeholder for SDV or iptv by stating a frequency of 999MHz but not all markets use that "placeholder" system so may not be in the map at all and if a TA is attached it won't show such info as all requests go through the TA and the tuning information may periodically change so it would be pointless to provide such tuning information. It also would not surprise me if the channel is iptv only (which also occasionally uses that placeholder in some markets).

In theory a scan isn't needed to attempt to tune the channel but it may not be as apparent to why such attempt failed without a scan and it is also possible they have failed to provision your card as being subscribed to the channel (asking them to fix that these days "could" really mess things up though they should be able to easily fix such, the cablecard support for many isn't that great these days). In some markets these channels are not live 24/7 (though many will have some barker screen to keep it up 24/7).