Feature patch - Reduce US OTA channel scanning time

[Gary Buhrmaster <gary.buhrmaster@…>]

In the US, as of 2009, all OTA digital transmissions were eliminated on channels 52 to 69 (the 700MHz frequencies reallocated to mobile services), with low power analog station transmissions being allowed to continue until the winner of the spectrum decided to utilize it. As of late 2015, all remaining LPTV analog stations were also eliminated from channels 52-69.

In the future, channel 51 has been designated as a "guard channel" (for mobile devices) and the FCC has suspended new assignments on that channel, and some stations are moving off, but it is still in use in some locations. Longer term, depending on the results of auction 1000/1001, additional channels may be eliminated, but that will likely take another 3-5 years to accomplish.

This is a very low priority issue, but may reduce the time spent for a channel scan with default settings (individuals can, as always, manually chose to only scan channels 2-51, but most likely do not know the current FCC assignments), although as channels scans are not common, the reduction in time is not overly significant (except, perhaps, in user experience).

(Note that unaddressed is that channel 37 in the US (and the same frequency range in many parts of the world) is designated for radio astronomy, and is unused for OTA broadcasting (although, this, too, may change with Auction 1000/1001)).

(completely) Untested patch follows to set the UHF range to 14-51 from 14-69 will be attached.

[Gary Buhrmaster <gary.buhrmaster@…>]

Patch to change US OTA frequencies

[Stuart Auchterlonie]

Milestone renamed

[Peter Bennett]

I tested this - With this fix, ota only scans channels 2-51 as designed, and successfully finds available channels as before. This reduces the scan time from what it was before.

[Gary Buhrmaster <gary.buhrmaster@…>]

In 01bdc02a2a896db6b9e2b3d0faf695a5a56b8ec7/mythtv:

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