All posts by js
Below are all of js's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Nicanor C. Menendez: hmmm, lets see...
[1. only you has every seen or reported this 'problem']
A response from the author of SmartDVB in a support thread called "Unknown unicode character in EPG title crashes scheduled rec":
"I managed to find the culprate. Seems to be an EOM (End Of Media character, 0x19 UTF8). What it's doing there"
http://www.smartdvb.net/bb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1717
[2. all the main transmitters have analysers and decoders monitoring every aspect of the output]
If that was true the garbage wouldn't be there.
{3. the programme companies, broadcasters, and the subtitle contractors all monitor direct off-air]
Have you even looked at the events I listed?
[4. this website and the people on it are not connected with the broadcasters in any way]
The attempts to get this through by direct messaging failed, probably because the recipient had the same misconceptions as you. Here it's on permanent public display.
[maybe its time to find another hobby?]
Maybe you should. Your grammar is amiss. There should be an apostrophe in "its" as it's a short form of "it is".
Rather ironic that ninety percent of the errors are misrepresentations of an apostrophe.
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Chris.SE: Yes, as long as it isn't a SkyQ type LNB on the dish, it should be fine.
But as you know, Channel 4 HD is no longer available on Freesat and the only music channel left is Spotlight TV.
I have an output from a quad LNB connected to my LG TV.
Freesat UHD, which is flagged so that it doesn't appear in the channel list, is available by entering 998, which brings up the Astra UHD Demo.
Apparently the new Freesat 4K boxes don't show Freesat UHD, which I think is a bit mean.
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Another day, another dollar - nah, strike that.
Another day, another ERROR - yeah, thats right. Oops, did I leave out an apostrophe? What does "thats" mean? Is it a word? Nope.
There are so few EIT errors on Com7 precisely for that reason. The regular EIT off DVB-T has a ton more errors but nearly all get eliminated in the Huffman coding of the EIT on DVB-T2 multiplexes, leaving behind nonsense words with missing apostrophes and expressions without the intended quotes.
The same is true for the rendering of EIT data on typical DVB devices; they will ignore the faulty characters, the only sign remaining being the ungrammatical nature of the text.
Here's the error stats for the BBCA EIT:
There are 138 invalid codes in the current EIT:
invalid code, count, percentage
0x0B, 10, 7.25%
0x10, 2, 1.45%
0x19, 116, 84.06%
0x1C, 5, 3.62%
0x1D, 5, 3.62%
There are 133 events with invalid codes in the current EIT.
The Culprits:
Format:
service_name, number of events containing errors
CBBC, 1
CBeebies, 6
BBC Radio 4 Ex, 3
CBBC HD, 1
RNIB Connect, 3
ADULT Studio 66, 39
That's TV, 37
That's TV, 37
CBeebies HD, 6
Back to Com7:
Invalid Character Codes in the EIT off Com7 National multiplex Arqiva C. Date: 2020/10/23 02:58:52
It has become apparent through observation that invalid bytes in the Freeview EIT text strings are the low-order bytes of the Unicode General Punctuation Block:
Of course only bytes less than 0x20 qualify as invalid codes in the context of EIT text strings.
Since about April 2018, the following invalid codes have been found in the Freeview EIT text items:
0x01, substitute: {0x01} -> Unicode Character: "EM QUAD" (U + 2001)
0x08, substitute: { } -> Unicode Character: "PUNCTUATION SPACE" (U + 2008)
0x0B, substitute: {} -> Unicode Character: "ZERO WIDTH SPACE" (U + 200B)
0x10, substitute: {-} -> Unicode Character: "HYPHEN" (U + 2010)
0x13, substitute: {--} -> Unicode Character: "EN DASH" (U + 2013)
0x14, substitute: {---} -> Unicode Character: "EM DASH" (U + 2014)
0x18, substitute: {L'} -> Unicode Character: "LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 2018)
0x19, substitute: {R'} -> Unicode Character: "RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 2019)
0x1C, substitute: {L''} -> Unicode Character: "LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 201C)
0x1D, substitute: {R''} -> Unicode Character: "RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 201D)
There are 16 invalid codes in the current EIT:
invalid code, count, percentage
0x0B, 5, 31.25%
0x10, 9, 56.25%
0x1C, 1, 6.25%
0x1D, 1, 6.25%
There are 15 events with invalid codes in the current EIT.
The Culprits:
Format:
service_name, number of events containing errors
CBBC HD, 1
CBBC HD, 1
CBBC HD, 1
CBBC HD, 1
CBBC HD, 1
CBBC HD, 1
CBBC HD, 1
CBBC HD, 1
CBBC HD, 1
CBeebies HD, 6
Events with invalid codes in the eight-day EIT off multiplex Arqiva C at 2020/10/23 02:58:52:
#1: CBBC HD, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: title = "Dragons: Race to the Edge", description = "Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti{-}Thor. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x10
#2: CBBC HD, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: title = "Dragons: Race to the Edge", description = "Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti{-}Thor. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x10
#3: CBBC HD, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: title = "Dragons: Race to the Edge", description = "Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti{-}Thor. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x10
#4: CBBC HD, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: title = "Dragons: Race to the Edge", description = "Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti{-}Thor. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x10
#5: CBBC HD, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: title = "Dragons: Race to the Edge", description = "Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti{-}Thor. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x10
#6: CBBC HD, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: title = "Dragons: Race to the Edge", description = "Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti{-}Thor. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x10
#7: CBBC HD, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: title = "Dragons: Race to the Edge", description = "Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti{-}Thor. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x10
#8: CBBC HD, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: title = "Dragons: Race to the Edge", description = "Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti{-}Thor. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x10
#9: CBBC HD, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: title = "Dragons: Race to the Edge", description = "Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti{-}Thor. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x10
#10: CBeebies HD, Fri 23 Oct 09:15 - 09:25: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Cheshire Cat{}. Dog and Pug go to Buckingham Palace, where they meet Queen Victoria. She is looking for her mysterious Cheshire cat, who keeps disappearing. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
#11: CBeebies HD, Fri 23 Oct 14:20 - 14:25: title = "Tinpo", description = "Shshsh!! It's Hack-Po's day off and she wants to read her book...if only she can get a bit of {L''}shshsh!!!{R''}. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error bytes: 0x1C, 0x1D
#12: CBeebies HD, Fri 23 Oct 14:25 - 14:35: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Camping{}. Dog and Pug decide to go holiday and use Granny Pug's guide to camping. They visit a music festival, a jungle and the top of a mountain. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
#13: CBeebies HD, Sun 25 Oct 08:50 - 09:00: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves a Small Adventure{}. Dog loses his voice, so Pug has to read a book. Pug goes on an adventure with the bookshop mice to enter the body of Dog and find his heart and tummy. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
#14: CBeebies HD, Tue 27 Oct 14:25 - 14:35: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Don Quixote{}. Pug needs a story about how to be brave, so Dog and Pug meet the great Spanish knight Don Quixote and his partner, Sancho Panza. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
#15: CBeebies HD, Wed 28 Oct 14:25 - 14:35: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Amazing Facts{}. Dog and Pug are talking about facts, and they go on an adventure to check one of Pug's. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
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Chris.SE: Thanks, might give it another try. At the moment there is an easy to see error that I can point to:
CBBC, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: "Dragons: Race to the Edge"
"Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti{-}Thor. [S]"
Here there should be a hyphen between Anti and Thor, a Unicode 2010 hyphen, but the Freeview EIT has an invalid code 0x10 in its place.
As a result, Anti-Thor appears as AntiThor on Freeview, the invalid code being discarded by the device, or, in the case of EIT off DVB-T2, by the Huffman coding process.
On Freesat, the Unicode hyphen is present and correct:
CBBC, Fri 30 Oct 18:20 - 18:40: Dragons: Race to the Edge
Return of Thor Bonecrusher. Snoutlout accidentally brings to life Thor's evil twin, Anti-Thor. Also in HD. [S]
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Chris.SE: To be clear, it wasn't a hyphen that was discarded, but the invalid code that Freeview erroneously transmitted in its place.
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Chris.SE: Absolutely, give it a go! I'm sure you'll find it interesting. The dish/LNB kits on ebay are very cheap, if you are able to DIY. You need do a SE view free of high trees or other blockages to an altitude of about 25 degrees.
I'd go for a zone2.
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ASTRA/BSkyB Diffs:
5829 = Pick HD returns for FTA footy - I could be wrong - unlikely but it's not impossible!
No idea what 5231 is, yet:
Comparing files List ASTRA 05-11-2020 13 01.txt and List ASTRA 05-11-2020 18 01.txt
************************ CHANGED ************************
SERVICE NAME TYPE EPGID SID TSID ONID FREQ.P ENC EIT PROVIDER BOUQUETS LCN
EPGID Change, Bouquet Change, LCN Change
Hi-Impact TV 1 0000 22617 2094 2 11538V 0 1 BSkyB 000000000000000
Hi-Impact TV 1 1102 22617 2094 2 11538V 0 1 BSkyB 111111111111111 184
************************ NEW ************************
SERVICE NAME TYPE EPGID SID TSID ONID FREQ.P ENC EIT PROVIDER BOUQUETS LCN
5828 1 0000 5828 2011 2 11915H 0 1 BSkyB 000000000000000
5231 25 0000 5231 2029 2 12266H 0 1 BSkyB 000000000000000
5829 25 0000 5829 2034 2 12363V 0 1 BSkyB 000000000000000
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Paul.: Right and now called 'PrimeVideo HD' and only available on Commercial bouquets - pubs - if any are/were open!
BSkyB info for it:
"Watch the Autumn Nations Cup 2020, live on PrimeVideo HD. To view, please contact Sky Business and upgrade your subscription at no additional cost. Visit sky.com/business/rugby for full details."
Current BSkyB EPG:
PrimeVideo HD Sat 21 Nov 13:50 - 17:15 : Live Autumn Nations Cup: ENG v IRE
England take on Ireland at Twickenham in Group A in the second weekend of matches from the Autumn Nations Cup.
ASTRA/BSkyB Diffs:
Comparing files List ASTRA 10-11-2020 13 01.txt and List ASTRA 10-11-2020 18 01.txt
************************ CHANGED ************************
SERVICE NAME TYPE EPGID SID TSID ONID FREQ.P ENC EIT PROVIDER BOUQUETS LCN
EPGID Change, Bouquet Change, LCN Change
5828 1 0000 5828 2011 2 11915H 0 1 BSkyB 000000000000000
5828 1 1828 5828 2011 2 11915H 0 1 BSkyB 000000000000010 1031
EPGID Change, Bouquet Change, LCN Change, Encryption Flag Change
5231 25 0000 5231 2029 2 12266H 0 1 BSkyB 000000000000000
5231 25 1231 5231 2029 2 12266H 1 1 BSkyB 000000000000010 1020
EPGID Change, Bouquet Change, LCN Change
5829 25 0000 5829 2034 2 12363V 0 1 BSkyB 000000000000000
5829 25 1829 5829 2034 2 12363V 0 1 BSkyB 000000000000010 1032
also
Comparing files List ASTRA 11-11-2020 18 01.txt and List ASTRA 12-11-2020 11 01.txt
************************ CHANGED ************************
SERVICE NAME TYPE EPGID SID TSID ONID FREQ.P ENC EIT PROVIDER BOUQUETS LCN
Renamed, Bouquet Change, LCN Change
5231 25 1231 5231 2029 2 12266H 1 1 BSkyB 000000000000010 1020
PrimeVideo HD 25 1231 5231 2029 2 12266H 1 1 BSkyB 000000000111110 437,1020
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10994H was vacated by ITV on 5 Nov and had been transmitting just Null Packets and SI tables, since.
A report on DS said '10.994 H, 22.000, 5/6, DVB-S, QPSK (was at "No channels found") is now at "No signal found"' so I took a look.
My usual transport stream analyser showed masses of errors, with the full complement of 8192 PIDs appearing within a few seconds.
Looking at it with CrazyScan showed zero bit error rate and a 17dB S/N - an excellent signal.
I recorded a sample in CrazyScan. The recording, "stream.ts", was 234,190,848 bytes long and compressed to 34,134,678 bytes using 7zip
Byte frequency analysis showed a uniform distribution. I stripped out the sync bytes to produce stream.ts.bin.
stream.ts.bin was found to consist of a repeated block of the same 8,388,607 Random Numbers.
It was - and is - exactly the same transmission of Random Numbers I had seen on Winter Hill C31 on 22 July in the middle of the night.
https://ukfree.tv/transmitters/tv/Winter_Hill/PGSTART2000/irt932027#b932027
A file containing the Random Sequence, "block.bin" of length 8,388,607, was found to be incompressible, "compressing" to 8,389,252 bytes.
https://marknelson.us/posts/2012/10/09/the-random-compression-challenge-turns-ten.html
10994H was removed from the ASTRA NIT yesterday but is, at time of writing, still transmitting this random sequence.
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Thursday 22 October 2020 3:13AM
Last ditch attempt here to alert the monkeys at DUK and BBC to the fact that they are transmitting garbage:
Invalid Character Codes in the EIT off Com7 National multiplex Arqiva C. Date: 2020/10/22 02:11:42
It has become apparent through observation that invalid bytes in the Freeview EIT text strings are the low-order bytes of the Unicode General Punctuation Block:
Of course only bytes less than 0x20 qualify as invalid codes in the context of EIT text strings.
Since about April 2018, the following invalid codes have been found in the Freeview EIT text items:
0x01, substitute: {0x01} -> Unicode Character: "EM QUAD" (U + 2001)
0x08, substitute: { } -> Unicode Character: "PUNCTUATION SPACE" (U + 2008)
0x0B, substitute: {} -> Unicode Character: "ZERO WIDTH SPACE" (U + 200B)
0x10, substitute: {-} -> Unicode Character: "HYPHEN" (U + 2010)
0x13, substitute: {--} -> Unicode Character: "EN DASH" (U + 2013)
0x14, substitute: {---} -> Unicode Character: "EM DASH" (U + 2014)
0x18, substitute: {L'} -> Unicode Character: "LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 2018)
0x19, substitute: {R'} -> Unicode Character: "RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 2019)
0x1C, substitute: {L''} -> Unicode Character: "LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 201C)
0x1D, substitute: {R''} -> Unicode Character: "RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 201D)
There are 9 invalid codes in the current EIT:
invalid code, count, percentage
0x0B, 7, 77.78%
0x1C, 1, 11.11%
0x1D, 1, 11.11%
There are 8 events with invalid codes in the current EIT.
The Culprits:
Format:
service_name, number of events containing errors
CBeebies HD, 8
Events with invalid codes in the eight-day EIT off multiplex Arqiva C at 2020/10/22 02:11:42:
#1: CBeebies HD, Thu 22 Oct 09:15 - 09:25: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Puzzles{}. In their adventure, Dog and Pug meet Granny Pug, who makes them solve three puzzles. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
#2: CBeebies HD, Thu 22 Oct 14:25 - 14:35: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Bedtime Baboon{}. Dog and Pug go on an adventure to help Bedtime Baboon get all the young children around the world to sleep. They have to sprinkle moondust everywhere. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
#3: CBeebies HD, Fri 23 Oct 09:15 - 09:25: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Cheshire Cat{}. Dog and Pug go to Buckingham Palace, where they meet Queen Victoria. She is looking for her mysterious Cheshire cat, who keeps disappearing. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
#4: CBeebies HD, Fri 23 Oct 14:20 - 14:25: title = "Tinpo", description = "Shshsh!! It's Hack-Po's day off and she wants to read her book...if only she can get a bit of {L''}shshsh!!!{R''}. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error bytes: 0x1C, 0x1D
#5: CBeebies HD, Fri 23 Oct 14:25 - 14:35: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Camping{}. Dog and Pug decide to go holiday and use Granny Pug's guide to camping. They visit a music festival, a jungle and the top of a mountain. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
#6: CBeebies HD, Sun 25 Oct 08:50 - 09:00: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves a Small Adventure{}. Dog loses his voice, so Pug has to read a book. Pug goes on an adventure with the bookshop mice to enter the body of Dog and find his heart and tummy. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
#7: CBeebies HD, Tue 27 Oct 14:25 - 14:35: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Don Quixote{}. Pug needs a story about how to be brave, so Dog and Pug meet the great Spanish knight Don Quixote and his partner, Sancho Panza. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B
#8: CBeebies HD, Wed 28 Oct 14:25 - 14:35: title = "Dog Loves Books", description = "Dog Loves Amazing Facts{}. Dog and Pug are talking about facts, and they go on an adventure to check one of Pug's. [S] [HD]", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x0B