ATSC Card Owners: Come here for Support (3 Viewers)

[schnortz]

Hauppauge HVR-2250 QAM issues

I have searched and read the forums, but I can not seem to find a solution to my problem. So if a solution has been posted, I apologize in advance. I am using Windows 7 32-bit with the Hauppauge HVR-2250 using Charter cable.

I know our cable is sending out plenty of QAM channels (most encrypted, but enough that aren't) because my TV picks them up along with the Pinnacle HDTV 800i (using its own software). I bought the HVR-2250 for its two tuners along with its hardware encoding of analog (which the 800i doesn't and MediaPortal requires) for the cable stations unavailable as unencrypted QAM. I am not using a cable box.

Haupp driver 7.3.0.26198 (7/16/08) - from CD (I believe its also known as 4.7 on their website)
With this driver, the ATSC/QAM tuner shows up twice (good thing as it is a dual tuner) as ATSC Hauppauge WinTv-7614 BDA ATSC/QAM Tuner (Type: ATSC). But by scanning for QAM using all five settings, no channels are found. In fact, the scan just races through the QAM (unlike my TV & 800i) in about one minute. More specifically, the first physical channel at 75000 QAM256 takes the longest (no results) before it zips through the rest of the frequencies. All the results come up red and are listed as QAM64. It seems to me that QAM256 is being completed ignored or unrecognized.

Now for comparison I've been checking out MCE within Windows 7. I installed PlayReadyPC_x86 to enable QAM support. With this driver, the digital tuner is not recognized either... which from my research was the reason for...

Haupp BETA drivers 7.5.6.26364 (12/29/08) and 7.5.27.27007 (1/9/09)
MP TV-Server: Now the tuners are unlisted under the TV-Service drop down menu, but do show up as Hauppauge WinTv-7614 BDA ATSC/QAM Tuner twice (Type: Unknown). Since I can not select them, I can not scan for channels.

MCE: Recognized that I had 2 digitial tuners along with 2 analog tuners. Needed to manually enter the channels for local stations, but community channels were found automatically. (It almost makes you think that Charter doesn't want you to know about the free local HD channels.) For all practical purposes, the HVR-2250 works fine in Windows 7 Media Center.

My goal was to use MediaPortal as my media server for my 780-g based machine. However, the availability of Windows 7's MCE for the next few months and its ability to now use QAM (unlike my OEM-version of Vista on another machine) is forcing me to reconsider.. I have spent so much time installing, experimenting, updating, and reading forums to resolve this issue that this version of MCE already does. The reason I have put this much effort into getting MP to work is I thought the addons/plugins/features had greater potential.

I would appreciate any help I could get. Thanks.

 

[biga48197]

ok i have a twinhan atsc hybrid usb 2.0 tv stick 7240. I have been trying to use MP . but I dont have the slight idea were to start. I tried looking for my particular tv tuner but i didn't find it. could some please help me

 

[solas989]

Did you look here? THis is how I added my USB GT tuner...Granted it is not a hybrid...but the same general steps are there...plus it shows how to setup hybrids.

ok i have a twinhan atsc hybrid usb 2.0 tv stick 7240. I have been trying to use MP . but I dont have the slight idea were to start. I tried looking for my particular tv tuner but i didn't find it. could some please help me

Let us know




I dont have this exact problem (my tuner is not a hybrid) but sometimes I do get the No Tuner Available error (not recording anything at time). This is usually after I tried to tune a channel that lost signal. For example my WRGT-FOX station is only 425KW and is not a fully licensed station so its power varies depending on what they want to show. If it drops and my tuner/media portal fails to catch it, it will lose connection to the tv service. The first thing I would do is close MP and open TV Server Config - this will ask you to launch TV Service. Then just close and get back into MP. Sometimes MP catches the fact that it looses signal...sometimes not. I dont know if it is because of my tuner or mp code...either way...

Other than that, I can not be of much more help...is there a way in your driver/driver software to force the tuner to be ATSC...I read on the 2250's you can do that but could be entirely wrong. My next tuner is going to be the HDHomeRun once I get a real antenna for my attic.

1st Post. Great app!

Having an atsc problem though. Searched around, and I can't find something similar. I'm running P4 3.0Ghz, GeForce 6800GT, and two HVR-950 USB tuners (these show up as HVR-980 with the latest hauppauge drivers). Also using NVidia Purevideo for video decoder and AC3Filter for audio. When I first installed, everything went great, and I used the system without trouble for a week or so. These tuners are dual tuners with ATSC and analog. TV-Server-Configuration would recognize them, and there were two entries for each card - one for ATSC and one for analog. I disabled analog card entries because I don't care about that, and just used the two ATSC cards. Yesterday, I went to use it and it said there were no tuners available. I had nothing scheduled to record. Going back to TV-Server-Configuration, it was now saying the ATSC cards types were DVBT and the disabled analog card entries showed types of "Unknown". I fiddled around with restarting the machine, plugging and unplugging the tuners, rebooting windows, restarting the TVServer service, etc. And eventually it reconized them as ATSC cards again. I used it until today, and it's doing the DVBT thing again, and I cannot get it to recognize them as ATSC cards.

Frustrating, because aside from this issue MP has worked flawlessly on my system.

Any ideas or help most appreciated.

Good Luck

Solas

 

[biga48197]

ok how do you get to the window that says MediaPortal - TV-Server Configuration. because all mine says is MediaPortal - configuration

 

[keith2045]

What is your channel signal quality? When my signal drops out, I do notice MP does not handle it all the time correctly...but then sometimes neither does my OnAir GT USB tuner. My one FOX channel will work great but then bam...no signal and sometimes MP doesnt pick it and and ask to tune previous channel.

Just a thought and that is ALL it is.

Solas

I'm having issues with my ATSC tunner, i have an Hauppauge WinTV HVR 1600 with the latest drivers. I'm running version 1.0 (stable) of MP and the TVServer. I got it to scan for channels and it found them but i have some random issues with it. Sometimes i'm able to view those channels, other times when i select them MP locks up. Also when i go into the TV server configuration and select the card to scan again the configuration locks up. I should say that it doesnt work most of the time, i have to reboot my machine several times before it will work again, and then it will just stop working after a little while. I'm not sure which log files to post, here is the system it is running on:

Motherboard MCP61P (ELITEGROUP)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6GHz (Dual-Core)
1GB DDR2, 320GB SATA II HDD
Hauppauge WinTV HVR 1600
ASUS EN8400GS SILENT/HTP/512M GeForce 8400 GS 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16

Any thoughts?

Ditto.
Poor signal quality messes things up with my 1600 card. If so then try a signal booster and better antenna.
I did read that a txt file in C:\ will stop it re-polling the channel to get a better signal. Sadly I cannot remember the file name. It was something like ChannelNoRescan.txt. Can anyone recall the file name.

I will pick up an antenna and see if that helps (i need to get one anyway), but i have just noticed that it will lock up any channel at random. I just disabled the ASTC feature and it seems to be working fine.

 

[solas989]

IF you have TV Server installed (default with v1.0 install), then it is located at

...\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal TV Server\SetupTv.exe

(usually C:\Program Files\)

ok how do you get to the window that says MediaPortal - TV-Server Configuration. because all mine says is MediaPortal - configuration

 

[biga48197]

ok still having some big issues here. Why wont MP recongize my tv yuner. I now it works because i have hooked it

on my laptop and have ran it with the software that came out the box on my desktop. but when I try to run MP

and go to the tv section it tells me no tuner card installed. but when I turn MP off and start running the program

that came with the tuner it works just fine.

The reason I am going with MP is because the interface is like 10x better then the one that came in the box with tuner.

The type of tuner I have is a twinhan atsc hybrid usb 2.0 tv stick 7240


So if any one how to resolve this issue please let me know.

 

[solas989]

keith2045 - go to antennaweb.org or tvfool.com and see how far away you are from your digital towers. Then go to fcc.gov to see if those towers are operating at full power. My FOX example...it is in the same physical location as my CW tower - both digital. But the FOX tower does not have its full license and is operating only at 425KW...the CW tower has their full license and is operating at the full 5000KW.

Then you can decide which antenna you want based on those websites - I just ordered a DB4 antenna to place in my attic. What antenna are you using now?

It sounds a lot like signal cut out to me base solely on what you wrote.

Solas

biga48197 - i dont know anything about that tuner...but a quick question...do you know if it has a BDA driver?

 

[biga48197]

solas989 I don't now what a bda driver is. could you explain.

 

[solas989]

I dont know if it comes installed or not via the cd. A BDA driver is a "different" driver than is used by the software you installed from the cd. It is a "univeral" driver that MP will use to access your tuner. There is alot more technicalities than that, but I tried to keep it simple.

I did a quick google and found THIS LINK. It references their BDA drivers so I would at least start there and install it (unless you know for sure the BDA driver is there). Then restart the TVService (either system services or simply restarting the pc). Then see if MP TV Server recognizes it.

Solas

OK that link didnt work...copy paste this one...
http://www.twinhan.com/download_driver&software.asp