Page 1 of 1

Automatically match stations to channels

Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2019 1:32 am
by mogulman
I just started using EPG123. It seems to be working fine. I'm using OTA. I don't have the scheduled task to do Automatically Match Stations to Channels. Should I? What exactly does this do? I don't really understand the description in the guide.

Re: Automatically match stations to channels

Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2019 4:08 am
by garyan2
For OTA, there is really no benefit. The automatically match feature really benefits the cable/satellite users for channel lineup changes.

For example:
CNN is on channel 1001 on your provider, but they decide to move it to channel 1501.

With automatch enabled, when the lineup changes, the guide will automatically follow the change... CNN will be removed from 1001 and will be added to 1501.
With automatch disabled, CNN will be removed from 1001, but it will not be added to 1501. It will effectively disappear from the guide.

If automatch is combined with the "Automatically download new stations..." option, then the guide will follow all changes, to include additions, as they are downloaded from Schedules Direct. This relies on Gracenote/Schedules Direct to be on their game which is where the downside of this setup lies.

If CNN moved from 1001 to 1501, but the lineup downloaded from SD still has it on 1001, then on every update the guide will show CNN on the wrong channel until the lineup is corrected. If automatch were disabled in this case, then you could manually match CNN to 1501 and it would stay there.

Re: Automatically match stations to channels

Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2019 9:55 pm
by mogulman
So this doesn't help if new channels become available?

or if a virtual OTA channel moves to a different real channel? (hopefully this won't be happening again)

Re: Automatically match stations to channels

Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2019 5:52 am
by garyan2
mogulman wrote: Wed Oct 02, 2019 9:55 pm So this doesn't help if new channels become available?

or if a virtual OTA channel moves to a different real channel? (hopefully this won't be happening again)
Not for new OTA channels, no. For cable/satellite, they will already have 9,999 channels configured on their tuners so any new channels can be assigned immediately. With OTA, the tuners are not set up with all possible combinations of physical channels or logical channels and sub-channels. The only way to get the "new" channels will be to go to settings->TV->TV Signal->Scan for More Channels. For OTA there will always be some manual intervention needed for new channels.

For every other scenario, enabling the automatch and auto download options may help and certainly won't hurt except for what was mentioned if the lineup from Gracenote/SD is not up-to-date.