# HOWTO: Get Tivo working with Chorus Digital Cable in Ireland...



## handelaar (Mar 10, 2006)

We know that you can use a Tivo in Ireland with Sky Digital's Ireland package. Having moved over here I can't get Sky (rented property on the third floor of a building in Cork) but I can get Chorus Digital. So here's what I did.

What you need:

* A networked Tivo
* The ChannelMap extension for Tivoweb
* Tivoweb itself, obviously (I have 1.9.4)

I ran a new Guided Setup, choosing BT1 as my postcode and 'Aerial + Digital Cable/Terrestrial' / NTL cable / 'Digital Basic' package as the service options. 

Pick all the channels you receive at the right point of the Guided Setup (don't worry about channel numbers yet).

My Digi cable box is a Chorus-provided Sagem unit which is fully compatible with the Sagem code 20037 available when setting up the remote control (2 leading zeros, no 'enter' required, I picked 'medium' for speed because I'm cautious like that).

So now we have SCART video passthrough, and the remote codes work, but all the channel numbers are wrong.

Next, use ChannelMap in Tivoweb to move each of your channels from the current assigned number to the one your cable box uses instead. This will take you a while.

Commit your changes to the 'Digital Basic' lineup and reboot your Tivo.

Use ChannelMap's backup to save your remappings. It saves a file called ChannelMapScript.tcl in your tivoweb-tcl tree. Retrieve it by ftp to your local hard drive. 

Using a text editor which understands Unix line breaks (I use jEdit - get it from jEdit-dot-org), check the resulting file. Remove the channels you don't have, and check especially that BBC1 and Channel4 do not appear twice (the Ulster cable mappings have these two twice, and you want to remove the references to them which have channel numbers in the 900s).

Save this altered channelmapscript.tcl, again with unix line endings, and ftp it back to where you found it.

From Tivoweb/ChannelMap, you can now "restore" your saved channelmappings, commit them to the Digital Basic package again, and reboot for a second time.

You now have a fully functioning Tivo with a few channels missing. TV3, TG4, Channel 6, and MGM Movies are not in the Tivo channel guide. 

For each of these:
* Select the channel number manually
* Push the record button on your Tivo and record a few seconds of video
* Stop recording.


You can now add these channels in 'Channels you receive' (they won't be named but they will appear as blank, guideless channels on your lineup). Feel free to delete the four useless recordings you made at this point.

End result:

* All but 4 of your cable channels are selectable, recordable, the whole Tivo thing.
* You have four channels which Tivo doesn't have guide data for and which therefore won't be DVR-enabled.
* Sky News and Sky One will have UK, not Irish, guide data -- which is a problem for about 2 hours per day between them (but who records the news?).

That's good enough to be getting on with. If anyone can offer tips on how to assign TV3-and-TG4 data from the Aerial lineup top the Digital Basic lineup, I'm all ears. NI has both available on UHF but none of the UHF channel assignments are correct in the Republic.

Comments/feedback encouraged...


John Handelaar
Cork


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## handelaar (Mar 10, 2006)

Answering my own post...

TV3 and TG4 exist in the terrestrial (UHF) data sets for Northern Ireland. This means they have MFS resource IDs hiding away in the depths of the MFS Browser in Tivoweb.

Find them.

Then use 'add-channel.tcl' (Google it) to insert a new channel into your lineup at the right channel number using the station resource ID and your Digital Cable lineup's resource ID as command-line parameters.

Presto: I've now got TV3IRL and TG4 assigned as new channels in the right lineup and all is well in the world. And Mrs Me can now record season passes to a bewildering array of shows whose names start with "Law and Order".


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## handelaar (Mar 10, 2006)

(OT: ) Woo. This thread is now #1 in Google for 'tivo ireland cable'. My work here is done.


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## ad_jack (Jul 20, 2007)

where can i find the addchannel.tcl module?


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