Linux TV stuff for Freeview from Crystal Palace

If you use Linux TV applications and receive your Freeview (DVB-T) signal from the main London transmitter, you might find these files useful:

uk-CrystalPalace file for scan updated 14 April 2020 (including the introduction of HD channels 55 and 56). This is available in legacy format too.
The dtv-scan-tables package in many distributions is out of date, and you can substitute these file for those in the distribution.
channels.conf for Crystal Palace, in channel order updated 27 Oct 2020 (SD channels only, i.e. no HD) following the changes to ITV Be+1, Horror Channel, and Quest+1 on 27 October.

Modifying the scan utility from dvb-apps to output Freeview channel numbers

The dvb-apps utilities are very useful, and the scan utility is the one I use to scan for new stations on the multiplexes.
Most applications seem to use the zap output format, which doesn't contain the Freeview channel number (e.g. BBC FOUR is channel 9).
At least one application (vlc) can take the channels file as an input, and then its playlist is the list of channels. In this playlist the channels appear in the order they appear in the channels file, so it would be great if the channels were in Freeview channel number. But scan can't do that. Well, a quick patch and it can! Saves me the hassle of sorting the channels file by hand.

Getting the source

You can either download a tarball from http://linuxtv.org/hg/dvb-apps/archive/tip.tar.bz2 or use Mercurial to make a copy of the upstream repository:
hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/dvb-apps/

Patching

You need to apply my scan patch. Then rebuild scan (I just run PERL5LIB=. make in the util/scan subdirectory).

Usage

With the patched version of scan, when using the -u switch with the (default) zap output format each station's name is preceded with the Freeview channel number and a hyphen. So rather than the output looking like:

BBC ONE:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:600:601:4164
BBC TWO:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:610:611:4228
ITV1:481833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_1_2:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:520:521:8261

it will now look like:

1-BBC ONE:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:600:601:4164
2-BBC TWO:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:610:611:4228
3-ITV1:481833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_1_2:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:520:521:8261

You probably don't want the stations to be named like this in the channels file, so what I do is run:
scan -u /usr/..../uk-CrystalPalace | sort -n | sed -e 's/^[0-9]*-//'
and now I have a channel list sorted by Freeview channel number.

Last updated: 27-October-2020