The first few obstacles to understand/appreciate/consider are:
- Background scanning. The default is for this to be enabled. So if you subsequently select a channel that is on transponder that also has the channel you don't want, they will be re-added. So consider what option you want to have.
- SDT errors. Some channels have wrong details on the tables.
- Clear before scan. The limitation of this function is that it only clears the transponders it scans. If the the transponder on "dead channel" is no longer listed in the satellites.xml file, it will not be probed and those channels will not be cleared.
- It is inadvisable to manually modify bouquets created by ABM. If determined to do so, best to hijack them. This is done by editing the names of the individual bouquet files and then the corresponding entries in register of all bouquet files (bouquets.tv) . ABM bouquets are prefixed with "userbouquet.abm", so change/remove the "abm".
I would recommend saving the existing bouquets to the PC before making changes. OWIF bouquet editor will also allow you to export them.
Question is how do I have just channels that are working shown.
Remove services and then rescan. To remove services
Option 1. Up (next to OK) > Green (satellites) > Highlight/Select the satellite > Menu > remove selected satellite > Confirm action
Option 2. Stop Enigma2 with an "init 4" command. Then delete lamedb file in /etc/enigma2. Do it by command line or by FTP. Restart by sending "init 3" command
Note: The entries in bouquets that no longer exist in lamedb will shown as N/A
Also what is the easiest scan to do that will return only all free channels.
Use manual scan instead of automatic scan. You can select the option to scan free services only.
Alternatively, if the providers are served by AutoBouquetsMaker, you can configure ABM to scan but not create bouquets and enable the FTA only mode. Benefits of this are:
1. The FTA flag errors on the SDT can be overidden.
2. It is quicker. As an example, instead of waiting for 10+ minutes for a scan of 28.2, it can be done in less than a minute.
The downside of using ABM is that it reads the tables and does not probe every transponder. So people out of footprint or with reception issues will end up with services they cannot receive. Most recent example of this is BBC SW HD which seems to be on a transponder some people are not receiving properly.
lamedb will then only contain working channels. It does not matter whether using OWIF bouquet editor or Dreamboxedit/Dreamsat/E-Chanenlizer to do the editing.