ATSC Card Owners: Come here for Support (1 Viewer)

[akajester]

GraphEdit seems like a good tool, except it didn't work for me. I couldn't connect the pins. No matter how I did it, the pins couldn't agree on a connection. I think it's time to throw the VBox card in the trash can and try a different card. These cards just don't seem to be compatible with Media Portal. Does anyone have any suggestions for a card that has a reasonable posibilty of working?

Thanks.

Get a hauppauge card. Even the cheapest ones work from what I've read here! Mine worked flawlessly but it was $125. The hvr-2250. Dual atsc or ntsc tuners on one port. really sweet.

 

[moab]

GraphEdit seems like a good tool, except it didn't work for me. I couldn't connect the pins. No matter how I did it, the pins couldn't agree on a connection. I think it's time to throw the VBox card in the trash can and try a different card. These cards just don't seem to be compatible with Media Portal. Does anyone have any suggestions for a card that has a reasonable posibilty of working?

Thanks.

Get a hauppauge card. Even the cheapest ones work from what I've read here! Mine worked flawlessly but it was $125. The hvr-2250. Dual atsc or ntsc tuners on one port. really sweet.

I agree.
I use Hauppauge 1600 which works great. This card has separate ATSC tuner and NTSC tuner.
Now I know a bit more I would go with the 2250 which is cheaper than buying 2 1600 cards and reduces cabling.
The advantage of a second card is to record TV and watch TV concurrently.
I recently found out that the February 2009 all digital deadline only applies to "non-rural" areas. Which is lame.
My analogue (NTSC) signal quality for both Antenna and Cable TV are appauling. I can't wait until it goes all digital.
FYI - I use the Hauppauge 1300 for capturing RC jack inputs from VHS tape player! This is useful for converting old tapes to digital video file using Mediaportal.

 

[neognat]

You both are probably right. I don't need the frustration that I'm having from trying to make this card work. I do have a couple Hauppauge NTSC cards that are both working well. I am using a PVR-150 for capturing VHS tapes via S-Video and it is working well.

I also just recently heard about the "non-rural" exception. I wonder what "non-rural" means. I live about 60 miles from the transmitters at the nearest city. I'm on a hill with a roof-top, mast-mounted UHF antenna that is working well. I'm about to add a VHF and FM antenna. The signal is surprisingly good.

 

[moab]

You both are probably right. I don't need the frustration that I'm having from trying to make this card work. I do have a couple Hauppauge NTSC cards that are both working well. I am using a PVR-150 for capturing VHS tapes via S-Video and it is working well.

I also just recently heard about the "non-rural" exception. I wonder what "non-rural" means. I live about 60 miles from the transmitters at the nearest city. I'm on a hill with a roof-top, mast-mounted UHF antenna that is working well. I'm about to add a VHF and FM antenna. The signal is surprisingly good.

I bought an ATSC HDTV antenna and set that up. It works well seeing as the signal is usually appauling in my somewhat hilly area. I should have bought a double sized antenna and signal booster. I would recommend the double antenna and booster after my experience and from reading reviews. For the extra $100 it is well worth it to gaurantee crystal clear HD (assuming you have a good TV).

On a sided note; I had comcast cable TV installed recently and the NTSC channels look unwatchable compared to the digital channels. I am suprised that people pay for this.

 

[akajester]

You both are probably right. I don't need the frustration that I'm having from trying to make this card work. I do have a couple Hauppauge NTSC cards that are both working well. I am using a PVR-150 for capturing VHS tapes via S-Video and it is working well.

I also just recently heard about the "non-rural" exception. I wonder what "non-rural" means. I live about 60 miles from the transmitters at the nearest city. I'm on a hill with a roof-top, mast-mounted UHF antenna that is working well. I'm about to add a VHF and FM antenna. The signal is surprisingly good.

I bought an ATSC HDTV antenna and set that up. It works well seeing as the signal is usually appauling in my somewhat hilly area. I should have bought a double sized antenna and signal booster. I would recommend the double antenna and booster after my experience and from reading reviews. For the extra $100 it is well worth it to gaurantee crystal clear HD (assuming you have a good TV).

On a sided note; I had comcast cable TV installed recently and the NTSC channels look unwatchable compared to the digital channels. I am suprised that people pay for this.

From my research, hd antennas are no different than regular antennas. I bought a 8ft mast antenna from RadioShack and put it up in my garage attic, hanging it from strings to aim it. I've had excellent signal on both analog and atsc, and fm. I think it was about $40 after a sale and coupon. I wouldn't spend over $50 on an antenna unless someone else was installing it.

 

[neognat]

Well... I've had good luck with antennas. At first, I built one out of coat hangers and fencing wire. It was really ugly, but I wanted a proof of concept before I spent any real money. I live 78 miles south of Spokane, Washington and the terrain is very hilly between here and there. A tech person from one of the Spokane UHF stations became interested in my project and advised me along the way. My home-made antenna worked well, but I bought a Channel Master 4228 for aesthetics, if nothing else. The signal quality is excellent. I have the antenna on a 15 foot mast at the peak of my roof. I also have a mast-mounted signal amplifier. I have a VHF/FM antenna that I'm going to add to the mast. The existing amplifier is also a combiner, so everything is in place. The only problem right now is the foot of snow on the roof. The new VHF/FM antenna is going to have to wait for a while. It is rated at 100+ miles, so I should be able to pull in VHF digital channels as well as the UHF. I do need to buy an ATSC card that I can get to work. I'm going to give the VBox DTA-150 one more try in a new build computer. If that doesn't work, I'm looking at the cards from Hauppauge as recommended in previous posts.

 

[danmccune]

How do you add an ATSC channel?

MP with QAM does not automatically detect all the same channels my TV does. I want to manually add a few channels to TV Server. When I add an ATSC channel, I don't know all the parameters. I know the major and minor channel from my TV, but that isn't enough for MP. If I add a channel and only give the major and minor channel information, the first problem I notice is the error "Channel not mapped to a card".

Does anyone have experience manually adding an ATSC channel?

Thanks
Dan

 

[traker]

Hi everyone,
I tried to look through this ATSC post, but a lot of pages.
So has anyone used the AverTV Combo PCI-E(white box)?
My set up is MP 1.0 w/tv server, Asus p5e-vm do board, ATI Radeon HD 4850 Vista ULT 64 bit, 2GB ram, 120GB o/s hd, 1.5tb raid 10 data,dual core e8400 cpu,wireless n network, and a sony blu ray rom player and of course the tv tuner.Sound output via HDMI and works great. My problem is mp does not see the ATSC turner, sees the analog. I can tune the few channels that are available, play most of them, oh, my ant is a digital ant. So I hook up to the atsc input and nothing. I install the 64 bit driver, in the device manager I see 3 devices bridged, capture, tuner- all have the card name/ATSC on them, but I think that is just the way the card is listed. I think there should be another tuner listed? Its a dual turner card, right? Thanks for the help.

 

[danmccune]

QAM is missing ATSC channels

Version 1.0
XP Pro SP3
TV Card: Leadtek HDTV200H

Here is more information on my problem.

I tried to all 5 QAM scans: HRC+3, HRC, IRC, Standard, and Alternative. The tv.log for all 5 scans is attached. When I read the tv.log file, I can see where channel 108 and at least two subchannels are found, but they never show up in my channels list. Channel 108-1 and 108-2 are two HD channels I can find with my QAM TV, but not with MP on my PC.

I also notice something else peculiar when importing channel lists. For each of the 5 QAM scans, I exported the results, cleared the channel list, and ran the next scan. I then imported each list one at a time to examine which channels were found. TV Server reports numbers much larger than what appears in the channel list. For example, my Standard list is 181 channels long. When I imported that list, MP reported something like 259 channels were imported. Where are the other ones?

So where did channel 108 go, and what are all these extra channels I'm not seeing. I am able watch digital stations and even one 720i channel, but there are at least 4 other HD channels that I cannot get. Does this problem point to my card, configuration, bad scanning?

I hope someone can shed some light on this issue because I have one day left to return the card.

Thanks

 

[moab]

Version 1.0
XP Pro SP3
TV Card: Leadtek HDTV200H

Here is more information on my problem.

I tried to all 5 QAM scans: HRC+3, HRC, IRC, Standard, and Alternative. The tv.log for all 5 scans is attached. When I read the tv.log file, I can see where channel 108 and at least two subchannels are found, but they never show up in my channels list. Channel 108-1 and 108-2 are two HD channels I can find with my QAM TV, but not with MP on my PC.

I also notice something else peculiar when importing channel lists. For each of the 5 QAM scans, I exported the results, cleared the channel list, and ran the next scan. I then imported each list one at a time to examine which channels were found. TV Server reports numbers much larger than what appears in the channel list. For example, my Standard list is 181 channels long. When I imported that list, MP reported something like 259 channels were imported. Where are the other ones?

So where did channel 108 go, and what are all these extra channels I'm not seeing. I am able watch digital stations and even one 720i channel, but there are at least 4 other HD channels that I cannot get. Does this problem point to my card, configuration, bad scanning?

I hope someone can shed some light on this issue because I have one day left to return the card.

Thanks

I am impressed by your patients. Doing the 5 scans must have taken all day!

First I would verify that your TV capture card is able to receive and decode the channel 108-1 and 2 signal.
I assume that your TV capture card came with TV watching software. Run the software and make sure it detects the 108-1 and -2 digital channels. If that works then it must be a MP issue. If it fails then it is a TV card issue so make sure you have downloaded the latest driver from manufacturer etc.

On you question about the missing channel counts, I noticed that mediaportal calls some of my channels radio channels and they are in there. Take a look in your radio channels in TV server config, are the missing channels in there?

My Hauppauge card finds channels fine and I have no missing ones.
My #1 issue is getting the EPG to work.