United States of America
I'm not currently using an antenna, I've got cable service. My tuner card has 2 built in tuners, one for ATSC and the other is (not sure what it is called) for just any input. If i put a coax cable in the atsc input it will find a few channels, if i put in the cable input to it i cant get any digital channels (not really sure why, my TV only has 1 input and gets both digital and standard).Since i've disabled the ATSC tuner my tv is working fine, hopefully an antenna will help
ATSC Card Owners: Come here for Support (4 Viewers)
- Thread starter Commodore 64
- Start date
Since you are on cable tv - only the major networks will be available in most cases (results will vary as when I did have cable I was able to get DiscHD, TNTHD and others) and depending on your cable franchise may be heavily compressed. Most likely your TV has support for QAM too, as most "digital" tv's do. There are Encrypted QAM and Unencrypted QAM, 95% of pc tuners can only do Unencrypted QAM. PC tuners generally need more of a signal to get a lock than built in tv tuners or set top boxes. Is there anyway you can check signal strength (either via tv, set top box or pc software)?
Do you live in a heavily populated area (apartment building, near apartments etc) or do you live out in the booneys? If so, log what times you notice the drop outs. It could be the fact that more people are turning on their tvs reducing the cable signal (possibly). I had this issue when I lived in an apartment and the circuit was overloaded. During the day it would be fine, then come around 6PM, it would fluctuate beyond means. Cable co would do nothing because it was at "max" power (mmm Simpsons).
For your card...the top input (analog aka NTSC), will not receive any digital channels. This is one tuner built only for analog (ie for cable tv channels 2-99 with out a set top box in most cases). The next input is the digital input (aka ATSC) and you can only get digital channels on this input - aka HD channels in some cases. With digital, you get a picture or you dont. Maybe you get a pixelated picture (blocks, choppy), this is the case of bad signal just on the verge of locking in. In this case, the more people turning on the tv, the less likely you will be able to lock your digital channels.
For your TV, it does have two tuners, but uses an internal splitter to get a feed to the two tuners with one input. Not always the best solution, but simple for the customer.
What are the "few" digital channels you are getting? I would assume you should get CBS, FOX, NBC, ABC, PBS and maybe CW (and possibly others). Plus, "On Demand" channels are unencrypted - at least it was in our franchise. So is someone on your circuit started playing a movie from On Demand, I could pick it up if I scanned for new channels. Cool, but then once it was done playing, I had a dead channel.
I hope this made sense and did not confuse anyone.
FWIW, I have an OnAir GT and I just bought a HDHomeRun - on its way. So I will be able to record two channels and watch another - wohoo!! - I just now need more HardDrive space - .5TB is not cutting it!
Do you live in a heavily populated area (apartment building, near apartments etc) or do you live out in the booneys? If so, log what times you notice the drop outs. It could be the fact that more people are turning on their tvs reducing the cable signal (possibly). I had this issue when I lived in an apartment and the circuit was overloaded. During the day it would be fine, then come around 6PM, it would fluctuate beyond means. Cable co would do nothing because it was at "max" power (mmm Simpsons).
For your card...the top input (analog aka NTSC), will not receive any digital channels. This is one tuner built only for analog (ie for cable tv channels 2-99 with out a set top box in most cases). The next input is the digital input (aka ATSC) and you can only get digital channels on this input - aka HD channels in some cases. With digital, you get a picture or you dont. Maybe you get a pixelated picture (blocks, choppy), this is the case of bad signal just on the verge of locking in. In this case, the more people turning on the tv, the less likely you will be able to lock your digital channels.
For your TV, it does have two tuners, but uses an internal splitter to get a feed to the two tuners with one input. Not always the best solution, but simple for the customer.
What are the "few" digital channels you are getting? I would assume you should get CBS, FOX, NBC, ABC, PBS and maybe CW (and possibly others). Plus, "On Demand" channels are unencrypted - at least it was in our franchise. So is someone on your circuit started playing a movie from On Demand, I could pick it up if I scanned for new channels. Cool, but then once it was done playing, I had a dead channel.
I hope this made sense and did not confuse anyone.
FWIW, I have an OnAir GT and I just bought a HDHomeRun - on its way. So I will be able to record two channels and watch another - wohoo!! - I just now need more HardDrive space - .5TB is not cutting it!
solas989
i went to the website and once you try to click on the download button the screen goes to new window and everything on it is in chinese. the scrren looked like "page can not be displayed) but in chinese.
do u no of any other spultions to my problem.
i went to the website and once you try to click on the download button the screen goes to new window and everything on it is in chinese. the scrren looked like "page can not be displayed) but in chinese.
do u no of any other spultions to my problem.
All I can suggest is start at their main website and look for downloads. You can also google your tuner with "BDA driver" and see if you cant down load from there. BDA drivers are the key to getting a tuner to work. We need to make sure your system has the BDA driver installed.
As a final option...you can go HERE to see if a BDA driver is already installed on your system. This is how I verified I had a BDA driver as my tuner is not on the supported list.
As a final option...you can go HERE to see if a BDA driver is already installed on your system. This is how I verified I had a BDA driver as my tuner is not on the supported list.
- January 31, 2009
- 1
- 0
fusion hdtv5 lite qam?
Hi,
I have three hdtv5 lites in a machine, MP sees all of them but scanning QAM doesn't come up with any channels.
Does MP do QAM tuning with the fusion cards?
Which of the QAM scans tunes the cards?
Is there any issue with having three of the cards in one machine?
Any help is appreciated...
Hi,
I have three hdtv5 lites in a machine, MP sees all of them but scanning QAM doesn't come up with any channels.
Does MP do QAM tuning with the fusion cards?
Which of the QAM scans tunes the cards?
Is there any issue with having three of the cards in one machine?
Any help is appreciated...
Homebuilder...most US Cable companies use QAM Standard in MP. For all us ppl asking which QAM selection, I start with Standard.
In general, there is usually no issues with multiple tuners (minus HDHR tuners).
Other than that, I can not help much more because I dont have the fusions.
Solas
In general, there is usually no issues with multiple tuners (minus HDHR tuners).
Other than that, I can not help much more because I dont have the fusions.
Solas
Hello, will have a long post here so please bear with me.
I have read through almost this whole thread regarding ATSC cards and I have a few questions I was hoping to get answered. I have tried unsuccessfully multiple times to install MP with no luck getting it working and wanted to see if I am doing something wrong.
My system is:
Motherboard PCCHIPS goal3+
2gig processor
500MB pc3200
Radeon HD 2400 pro 500MB edition
Dvico fusion HDTV7 cool
Vista with SP1 installed and all updates + hotfixes
MP 1.0.0.0 or whatever comes in the latest download on the download page
Questions:
1. What the heck is an RC candidate or an SVN?
2. Should I be installing a more updated version of Media portal and where do I get it?
3. Should I be installing an updated mediaportal TV server?
4. Is clear QAM now supported? I'm sorry just confused.
5. Because my card is ATSC/NTSC/radio do I need to disable the NTSC and Radio if I am trying to pick up cable unencrypted QAM channels through fios?
I also built my own BDA graph using graphedit using the instructions on the FAQ and will include that when I get home with my log files. Sorry, I'm actually at work right now
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Derek
I have read through almost this whole thread regarding ATSC cards and I have a few questions I was hoping to get answered. I have tried unsuccessfully multiple times to install MP with no luck getting it working and wanted to see if I am doing something wrong.
My system is:
Motherboard PCCHIPS goal3+
2gig processor
500MB pc3200
Radeon HD 2400 pro 500MB edition
Dvico fusion HDTV7 cool
Vista with SP1 installed and all updates + hotfixes
MP 1.0.0.0 or whatever comes in the latest download on the download page
Questions:
1. What the heck is an RC candidate or an SVN?
2. Should I be installing a more updated version of Media portal and where do I get it?
3. Should I be installing an updated mediaportal TV server?
4. Is clear QAM now supported? I'm sorry just confused.
5. Because my card is ATSC/NTSC/radio do I need to disable the NTSC and Radio if I am trying to pick up cable unencrypted QAM channels through fios?
I also built my own BDA graph using graphedit using the instructions on the FAQ and will include that when I get home with my log files. Sorry, I'm actually at work right now
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Derek
Hello everyone! I almost got my whole MP setup and now I'm running into the biggest headache so far. I've deleted my channels 3 times trying to figure out the proper way to do this but, the TV Guide is driving me nuts. I just put in a HVR-1600 and I'm able to tune and scan channels just fine with it. What I need to know, what is the proper way to get all your channels paired together between an analog, atsc, and the hd-pvr source? I tried deleting all my channels in my channel line up right after putting in the card and then letting SD re-download all the HD-PVR channels. Then I scanned using both the clearQAM tuner and the analog tuner and got myself channels 2-78 on the analog and a crap ton of Unknown ######-## (# represents freq.). So, then I renamed all the analog channels to match the call sign of everything SchedulesDirect had d/led for the HD-PVR. I then went through the painstaking process of figuring out what each of the clearQAM Unknown's were and named them the appropriate channel and callsign. I then went into combinations and combined all the channels across the cards with the equivalent from the HD-PVR. What I ended up with was a giant mess of a TV guide that wouldn't stay in the right order and weird duplicates kept on popping up even though I had everything in there only once. Am I doing this all wrong???
I have a similar issue.
I have 1600 HVR + Comcast + Schedules Direct.
You might want to try using the MC2XML tool as some users report good results. It can be configured to pull EPG from Schedules Direct. The advantage to using this over using the Schedules Direct plugin is that you get to map the channels yourself using the XMLTV plugin. Also it is a command line tool so you can create a windows task and run it when you like. The issue with the Schedules Direct plugin is that it maps channels automatically and I can't see or control how it maps.
The other big issue I have is that after I do my channel scan I get about 100+ scrambled channels. I have to manually test each channel make a note of the dudds, then delete the dudds. I don't have a cable box so I cannot decode the channels.
It is irritating that it labels most channels as Unknown ######-##. My TV has a tuner and it has none of these issues. Somehow the TVs tuner filters out the scrambled channels and labels the working channels with a valid channel number.
Ok, I've figured this all out and I'm going to write a little howto here. I have a HD-PVR and an HVR-1600. I've got the HD-PVR hooked up to the component outputs of a Comcast HD Digital Cable box and the HVR-1600 has both of it's tuners hooked up to the coax cable in my place (one for ATSC/clearQAM and the other for analog cable). Now, I'm going to start off that this is the method that worked best for me. If you have a different method that ended up working, I suggest you add it as an addendum to this post for others to learn from in the future as this was a giant pain in the butt to do. Once again, this is my setup for the above mentioned hardware, if you don't have a HD-PVR, some of this might not pertain to you and you might need to setup your SchedulesDirect another way. Also, these instructions are for the TVServer configureation and not MediaPortal. Anyway, on to the install instructions:
1. Download the SVN version of MediaPortal and TVServer3 for the HD-PVR here. (At the time of this writing the newest version was for SVN version 12/22/08. If the version has changed, this might change my instructions.)
2. Install and configure MediaPortal as you normally would. There's plenty of good guides on how to do this.
3. Install TVServer3.
4. Open up TVServer configuration. First thing you'll want to do is do a channel scan on your HVR-1600 on the ATSC/clearQAM side. Check the checkmark box that says you'll be looking for clearQAM instead of ATSC and switch the dropdown to QAM Standard and run your channel scan. Go play some video games, smoke a cig, goto a movie, whatever. This is going to take awhile.
5. Once all the scanning is completed, go into Channels and you'll see a ton of Unknown XXXXXX-XX channels. Here comes the PITA part. You'll need to click on the green dot next to the channel (Make sure to not click on the channel name as there's a weird bug in this section of the TVServer that if it goes to rename the channel and you just press enter to get out of renaming, the channel will save itself with no channel name at all). Once you have the first channel highlighted, click Preview. If it comes up Channel is Scrambled or Unable to Start Graph, delete the channel. If you actually come up with something on the channel you'll have to figure out what it is. There's 2 ways to go about this. If you have a 2nd TV and your HTPC is close to it, you can just preview the channel and try to figure out what channel it is on. Or, you can open AOL's TV listings and try to hunt down the program on via the channels branding or what show is currently playing. Once you figured out what channel it is, go ahead and close the preview window and then click Edit to change the name of the channel. Name the channel something legible. I chose channel number and callsign.
6. Go through the painstaking process to name all of these channels. Delete any channels you don't plan on having in your lineup. Once done, click on the export button in the Channels window and save the file to your desktop. Call it clearQAM linup.xml or something that you'll recognize it by.
7. Uninstall TVServer. I do this to clean the database and start over from scratch. I don't want any of the clearQAM info in here yet. On that note, when uninstalling, make sure to answer yes to cleaning out the database.
8. Install the TVServer again. This time you want to setup your blasting for you cable box. I ended up installing the modified ServerBlaster plugin found here, and activated it in the TVServer configuration. Now, something I noticed in my install is that my HVR-1600 ended up taking over blasting after I installed it (HD-PVR was the first card I had installed). You'll have to figure out using BlasterCFG.exe provided by the Hauppauge software as to which one it's currently blasting with. I suggest reading the forum for where the plugin came from for support.
9. Install the Schedules Direct plugin. Make sure you have an account with SD and you've created a lineup on their website. Program in your necessary information into the plugin (username, password, and automatically download channel listing on next TVServer startup).
10. Restart the TVServer service by either rebooting your computer or Start --> Run --> services.msc and right clicking on the TVService and clicking Restart.
11. Watch the tv.log file and when it's completely done with downloading the channels and before it starts to download schedule information, you'll want to disable the SD plugin in TVServer, click Ok to exit and save your changes to TVServer and then stop the TVServer service.
12. Open back up TVServer Config and start the TVServer service if it asks.
13. Map all of the newly found channels to your HD-PVR.
14. Open up the analog input of the HVR-1600 and set connection type to Cable, set your country (these instructions are for the US), and leave radio sensitivity to Medium. Run a scan for channels.
15. Once that scan is done, go into Combination under Channels and combine everything from your HD-PVR to its equivalent that was found during the analog scan. If you had some channels you didn't want to combine, delete them now. (Ex. channels that you turned off in your SD lineup)
16. Open up the ATSC input of the HVR-1600 for channels scanning, checkmark that you want to search for clearQAM and not ATSC and run another scan using QAM Standard. Go do something else while this is going.
17. Ok, at this point you should have all your HD-PVR channels and your analog channels combined in the Channels listing and now a whole bunch of Unknown XXXXXX-XX channels. If your configuration is any different, you missed a step.
18. Open up the original exported channel list from step #6 with Excel. You'll want to open it in XML mode (I'll make this clearer when I get home tonight. Unfortunately, my remote desktop connection is down). Once the file is open, scroll to the right until you see a column heading of Frequency. Click on the drop down next to Frequency and scroll up a little bit in the list and select Sort Ascending. Now, you'll want to highlight the columns between the name of the channel column (about 7 columns to the left of Frequency) and the Unknown name that MP gave it (about 4 columns to the right of Frequency). When finished you should have the name of the channel you gave it right beside that Unknown XXXXXX-XX name that MP gave it.
19. Go through your Excel list and TVServer and name all your Unknown XXXXX-XX channels to the name you gave them earlier. Delete any Unknown or channels that you don't plan on matching that are left over. (Also, when renaming channels, see my note about renaming channels in step #5)
20. Go into Combinations under Channels again and combine all your newly renamed clearQAM channels with the HD-PVR.
21. Turn back on the SchedulesDirect plugin and let it download schedule information.
22. Go into MediaPortal and test.
Note: I ended up switching my card priority from HD-PVR, ATSC/clearQAM, analog to ATSC/clearQAM, HD-PVR, analog after this whole setup due to the fact that I wanted it to record on the card that had access to some HD channels, but not all of them first and be able to leave open my HD-PVR which can receive all the channels.
After my whole channel lineup was named and combined, everything was in numerical order in the TV Guide, all channels had information, and I can record on 3 different channels at once (as long as the channels were within the ranges of the cards for being available). Yes, moab, this is a true Dual Tuner card!!! W00T!!!
I hope this helps someone in the future trying to do a multi-card setup with clearQAM. If you have any questions or comments about this, post them here or send me a private message and I'll try to help. I'll be updating this howto as time permits and info changes.
P.S. Moab: Mine came up with tons of scrambled channels too. Comcast is only required to provide channels in clearQAM format that you would be able to normally get OTA. That being said, they also don't have to make it easy to retrieve those channels either. I have a cable box and those channels are still scrambled for me too. I believe you'd need a cablecard capable tuner in order to get anything off of these channels.
P.P.S - To help find items on the clearQAM scan you can also get an idea of where you're going to find channels by using this resource provided by SiliconDust. It might cut some time off your searching. It will give you the Major / Minor of where the channel is at, just not the frequency. Just a thought.
P.P.P.S - I was doing some thinking about this and if you don't have an HD-PVR, but you would like to use these setup instructions for some other device, you'd just setup the SD plugin for the appropriate info for the external device. I leave mine to SVHS1 due to it not making a difference when matching the channels to the HD-PVR. If, for instance, your main card was a DVB-S or Analog, you could just set the necessary settings there in the SD plugin to do the initial channel download and match them to the appropriate card. (Ex. set the default external device to Tuner.) The rest of the instructions should be pretty similar.
1. Download the SVN version of MediaPortal and TVServer3 for the HD-PVR here. (At the time of this writing the newest version was for SVN version 12/22/08. If the version has changed, this might change my instructions.)
2. Install and configure MediaPortal as you normally would. There's plenty of good guides on how to do this.
3. Install TVServer3.
4. Open up TVServer configuration. First thing you'll want to do is do a channel scan on your HVR-1600 on the ATSC/clearQAM side. Check the checkmark box that says you'll be looking for clearQAM instead of ATSC and switch the dropdown to QAM Standard and run your channel scan. Go play some video games, smoke a cig, goto a movie, whatever. This is going to take awhile.
5. Once all the scanning is completed, go into Channels and you'll see a ton of Unknown XXXXXX-XX channels. Here comes the PITA part. You'll need to click on the green dot next to the channel (Make sure to not click on the channel name as there's a weird bug in this section of the TVServer that if it goes to rename the channel and you just press enter to get out of renaming, the channel will save itself with no channel name at all). Once you have the first channel highlighted, click Preview. If it comes up Channel is Scrambled or Unable to Start Graph, delete the channel. If you actually come up with something on the channel you'll have to figure out what it is. There's 2 ways to go about this. If you have a 2nd TV and your HTPC is close to it, you can just preview the channel and try to figure out what channel it is on. Or, you can open AOL's TV listings and try to hunt down the program on via the channels branding or what show is currently playing. Once you figured out what channel it is, go ahead and close the preview window and then click Edit to change the name of the channel. Name the channel something legible. I chose channel number and callsign.
6. Go through the painstaking process to name all of these channels. Delete any channels you don't plan on having in your lineup. Once done, click on the export button in the Channels window and save the file to your desktop. Call it clearQAM linup.xml or something that you'll recognize it by.
7. Uninstall TVServer. I do this to clean the database and start over from scratch. I don't want any of the clearQAM info in here yet. On that note, when uninstalling, make sure to answer yes to cleaning out the database.
8. Install the TVServer again. This time you want to setup your blasting for you cable box. I ended up installing the modified ServerBlaster plugin found here, and activated it in the TVServer configuration. Now, something I noticed in my install is that my HVR-1600 ended up taking over blasting after I installed it (HD-PVR was the first card I had installed). You'll have to figure out using BlasterCFG.exe provided by the Hauppauge software as to which one it's currently blasting with. I suggest reading the forum for where the plugin came from for support.
9. Install the Schedules Direct plugin. Make sure you have an account with SD and you've created a lineup on their website. Program in your necessary information into the plugin (username, password, and automatically download channel listing on next TVServer startup).
10. Restart the TVServer service by either rebooting your computer or Start --> Run --> services.msc and right clicking on the TVService and clicking Restart.
11. Watch the tv.log file and when it's completely done with downloading the channels and before it starts to download schedule information, you'll want to disable the SD plugin in TVServer, click Ok to exit and save your changes to TVServer and then stop the TVServer service.
12. Open back up TVServer Config and start the TVServer service if it asks.
13. Map all of the newly found channels to your HD-PVR.
14. Open up the analog input of the HVR-1600 and set connection type to Cable, set your country (these instructions are for the US), and leave radio sensitivity to Medium. Run a scan for channels.
15. Once that scan is done, go into Combination under Channels and combine everything from your HD-PVR to its equivalent that was found during the analog scan. If you had some channels you didn't want to combine, delete them now. (Ex. channels that you turned off in your SD lineup)
16. Open up the ATSC input of the HVR-1600 for channels scanning, checkmark that you want to search for clearQAM and not ATSC and run another scan using QAM Standard. Go do something else while this is going.
17. Ok, at this point you should have all your HD-PVR channels and your analog channels combined in the Channels listing and now a whole bunch of Unknown XXXXXX-XX channels. If your configuration is any different, you missed a step.
18. Open up the original exported channel list from step #6 with Excel. You'll want to open it in XML mode (I'll make this clearer when I get home tonight. Unfortunately, my remote desktop connection is down). Once the file is open, scroll to the right until you see a column heading of Frequency. Click on the drop down next to Frequency and scroll up a little bit in the list and select Sort Ascending. Now, you'll want to highlight the columns between the name of the channel column (about 7 columns to the left of Frequency) and the Unknown name that MP gave it (about 4 columns to the right of Frequency). When finished you should have the name of the channel you gave it right beside that Unknown XXXXXX-XX name that MP gave it.
19. Go through your Excel list and TVServer and name all your Unknown XXXXX-XX channels to the name you gave them earlier. Delete any Unknown or channels that you don't plan on matching that are left over. (Also, when renaming channels, see my note about renaming channels in step #5)
20. Go into Combinations under Channels again and combine all your newly renamed clearQAM channels with the HD-PVR.
21. Turn back on the SchedulesDirect plugin and let it download schedule information.
22. Go into MediaPortal and test.
Note: I ended up switching my card priority from HD-PVR, ATSC/clearQAM, analog to ATSC/clearQAM, HD-PVR, analog after this whole setup due to the fact that I wanted it to record on the card that had access to some HD channels, but not all of them first and be able to leave open my HD-PVR which can receive all the channels.
After my whole channel lineup was named and combined, everything was in numerical order in the TV Guide, all channels had information, and I can record on 3 different channels at once (as long as the channels were within the ranges of the cards for being available). Yes, moab, this is a true Dual Tuner card!!! W00T!!!
I hope this helps someone in the future trying to do a multi-card setup with clearQAM. If you have any questions or comments about this, post them here or send me a private message and I'll try to help. I'll be updating this howto as time permits and info changes.
P.S. Moab: Mine came up with tons of scrambled channels too. Comcast is only required to provide channels in clearQAM format that you would be able to normally get OTA. That being said, they also don't have to make it easy to retrieve those channels either. I have a cable box and those channels are still scrambled for me too. I believe you'd need a cablecard capable tuner in order to get anything off of these channels.
P.P.S - To help find items on the clearQAM scan you can also get an idea of where you're going to find channels by using this resource provided by SiliconDust. It might cut some time off your searching. It will give you the Major / Minor of where the channel is at, just not the frequency. Just a thought.
P.P.P.S - I was doing some thinking about this and if you don't have an HD-PVR, but you would like to use these setup instructions for some other device, you'd just setup the SD plugin for the appropriate info for the external device. I leave mine to SVHS1 due to it not making a difference when matching the channels to the HD-PVR. If, for instance, your main card was a DVB-S or Analog, you could just set the necessary settings there in the SD plugin to do the initial channel download and match them to the appropriate card. (Ex. set the default external device to Tuner.) The rest of the instructions should be pretty similar.