Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
Let's suppose that (like me) you live in an area where you can pick up more than one TV region (in my case Wales from Mynydd Machen and West from Mendip - I could take Wales from Wenvoe but it is easier to combine Mendip and Mynydd Machen because of the channel groups and polarisation, there is less risk of the two aerials interfering with each other).
The headline advice is: don't. I have proven categorically that AR recording does not work if you are viewing a channel from the wrong region (or the wrong region was viewed last) when a pending recording is waiting for the AR flag. Consequently trying to tune multiple regions restricts one's options to using auto-padding not AR.
However, if you accept this limitation, multiple regions can be managed with precautions - as I have been successfully doing for the last several weeks, recording the daily local news bulletins on both regions without failure. The following applies to two regions. Whether it can be extended to three or more regions I don't know. It will also not apply to mixing reception from two different national authorities where service IDs etc conflict (eg England and Ireland) - the EPGs wipe each other out rather than complementing each other.
First thing is tuning, and manual tuning is recommended for complete control. The obvious thing is to choose one region as your primary for the full complement of services, and the other region as secondary for services carrying regional programmes only. In my case that means Mendip/West as primary with Mynydd Machen/Wales just for BBC1 Wales, BBC2 Wales, and ITV Wales (I have no interest in S4C - it's all in Welsh boyo!).
When tuning multiple regions, the tuning process asks which region you require - that selects the primary, and the duplicate channels from the secondary region get located at LCNs 800+. The problem with this is they get allocated replacement LCNs on a first come first served basis* so depending which multiplex you happen to tune first will decide which service gets 800. I want 800=BBC1Wales, 801=BBC2Wales, 802=ITVWales - and this can be achieved with the right procedure*.
The first thing is to ensure the tuning is cleared out (abort an automatic scan) and the Wales multiplexes are tuned first, only BBCA and D3&4 are necessary. This puts the Wales channels on their preferred LCNs with 1=BBC1Wales, 2=BBC2Wales, 3=ITVWales. Go into "edit channels" and delete all the others.
Now tune the full set of West multiplexes, but make sure BBCA then D3&4 are tuned first, and choose England when it asks which service you prefer. Now the West services will occupy their preferred LCNs, and the Wales services re-allocated at 800+ in the order they are displaced*. Thus we get 800=BBC1Wales, 801=BBC2Wales, 802=ITVWales. I then go through and delete all the subscription/shopping/children's/IPTV/text/adult/gay/sex/chat crap - taking care not to delete 200, 301, 302, 303 (which are required to support BBC Red Button).
(Note it would probably be possible to get the Wales services allocated to 801, 802, 803 by introducing a sacrificial service to be displaced to 800 and then deleting it, but I have not bothered to work the procedure out.)**
The precautions for recording from multiple regions are first (as noted above) ensure you have padding times set (to disable AR - I use -1+5). Secondly it is necessary to ensure EPGs from both regions are kept up-to-date - if a channel from both regions is not actually viewed (recording is not enough when not using AR) on a regular basis, the data will become stale, updated transmission times will not be picked up, and the data runs out completely after a week (see Things Every... section 4).
This means setting up a manual daily reminder timer for a 20 minute period on (say) BBC1 West and another one for BBC1 Wales, preferably in the early hours so as not to interfere with normal operations. My settings are BBC1 Wales 0400-0419 and BBC Red Button 0420-0440, Red Button being a data channel which will reduce the load on the hard drive, and spanning the OTA search time therefore eliminating OTA updates***.
Note that I also have my HD-FOXes tuned for West and Wales, but I don't use them to record so it is not an issue.
* Note that with custom firmware, the tunefix package can achieve the same thing by simply running an auto-tune and rebooting - see https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/tune...tion-and-maintenance.6639/page-10#post-103846. UPDATE: It turns out auto-tunes in these circumstances are impractical - see post 38 (click).
** See update post 33 (click).
*** Using reminder schedules in this way also prevents the EPG data becoming stale. See https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/accurate-recording-ar-padding-and-lost-series-links.858/.
The headline advice is: don't. I have proven categorically that AR recording does not work if you are viewing a channel from the wrong region (or the wrong region was viewed last) when a pending recording is waiting for the AR flag. Consequently trying to tune multiple regions restricts one's options to using auto-padding not AR.
However, if you accept this limitation, multiple regions can be managed with precautions - as I have been successfully doing for the last several weeks, recording the daily local news bulletins on both regions without failure. The following applies to two regions. Whether it can be extended to three or more regions I don't know. It will also not apply to mixing reception from two different national authorities where service IDs etc conflict (eg England and Ireland) - the EPGs wipe each other out rather than complementing each other.
First thing is tuning, and manual tuning is recommended for complete control. The obvious thing is to choose one region as your primary for the full complement of services, and the other region as secondary for services carrying regional programmes only. In my case that means Mendip/West as primary with Mynydd Machen/Wales just for BBC1 Wales, BBC2 Wales, and ITV Wales (I have no interest in S4C - it's all in Welsh boyo!).
When tuning multiple regions, the tuning process asks which region you require - that selects the primary, and the duplicate channels from the secondary region get located at LCNs 800+. The problem with this is they get allocated replacement LCNs on a first come first served basis* so depending which multiplex you happen to tune first will decide which service gets 800. I want 800=BBC1Wales, 801=BBC2Wales, 802=ITVWales - and this can be achieved with the right procedure*.
The first thing is to ensure the tuning is cleared out (abort an automatic scan) and the Wales multiplexes are tuned first, only BBCA and D3&4 are necessary. This puts the Wales channels on their preferred LCNs with 1=BBC1Wales, 2=BBC2Wales, 3=ITVWales. Go into "edit channels" and delete all the others.
Now tune the full set of West multiplexes, but make sure BBCA then D3&4 are tuned first, and choose England when it asks which service you prefer. Now the West services will occupy their preferred LCNs, and the Wales services re-allocated at 800+ in the order they are displaced*. Thus we get 800=BBC1Wales, 801=BBC2Wales, 802=ITVWales. I then go through and delete all the subscription/shopping/children's/IPTV/text/adult/gay/sex/chat crap - taking care not to delete 200, 301, 302, 303 (which are required to support BBC Red Button).
(Note it would probably be possible to get the Wales services allocated to 801, 802, 803 by introducing a sacrificial service to be displaced to 800 and then deleting it, but I have not bothered to work the procedure out.)**
The precautions for recording from multiple regions are first (as noted above) ensure you have padding times set (to disable AR - I use -1+5). Secondly it is necessary to ensure EPGs from both regions are kept up-to-date - if a channel from both regions is not actually viewed (recording is not enough when not using AR) on a regular basis, the data will become stale, updated transmission times will not be picked up, and the data runs out completely after a week (see Things Every... section 4).
This means setting up a manual daily reminder timer for a 20 minute period on (say) BBC1 West and another one for BBC1 Wales, preferably in the early hours so as not to interfere with normal operations. My settings are BBC1 Wales 0400-0419 and BBC Red Button 0420-0440, Red Button being a data channel which will reduce the load on the hard drive, and spanning the OTA search time therefore eliminating OTA updates***.
Note that I also have my HD-FOXes tuned for West and Wales, but I don't use them to record so it is not an issue.
* Note that with custom firmware, the tunefix package can achieve the same thing by simply running an auto-tune and rebooting - see https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/tune...tion-and-maintenance.6639/page-10#post-103846. UPDATE: It turns out auto-tunes in these circumstances are impractical - see post 38 (click).
** See update post 33 (click).
*** Using reminder schedules in this way also prevents the EPG data becoming stale. See https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/accurate-recording-ar-padding-and-lost-series-links.858/.
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