ATSC Card Owners: Come here for Support (4 Viewers)

[moab]

Hi there, first I will apologize for necro-ing a 2+ year old thread, but I am not sure where else would be a good place to ask.. I read through about 20 pages of this 50 page thread, I hope I have not missed a fix already posted.

I've been wrestling with MediaPortal for a couple days now. I want to use it as a backend for XBMC to watch TV, however I'm having difficulties getting MediaPortal to pick up TV signals with a Hauppauge 2250. I get ATSC cable TV from Comcast (zip code 55110) and as far as I can tell the tuner and appropriate drivers are working I just don't pick up near the number of channels I should (I have 15 of about 60?). The computer was put together about a week ago, all new pieces but running old WinXP Sp 3. Any ideas where I'm losing channels?? The tuner and graphics cards worked fine with Win8 Media Center a few days ago so they are ok.

Thank you for your attention!

The basic comcast package i have only broadcasts about 15 digital channels. The 30 others are analogue. I live in a rural area so they are a long way from the digital switch over. That only happened in big urban areas.
If your situation is similar then you need a dual tuner card atsc + analogue. Or separate cards.
Check all the channels on the regular TV by pressing the info button. That will give you signal type data to confirm if your missing channels are analogue.

 

[lumpy]

You are experiencing what is called "Encrypted QAM" and comcast is good at that. in fact the FCC gave them permission to encrypt everything, so do not be surprised that in the next year you lose all the channels.

This is why I dont use mediaportal or any other DVR anymore and cancelled cable TV. I pay for netflix and hulu instead and save about $80.00 a month and dont have to maintain a DVR anymore.

I feel your pain as I have been there and there is no solution other than abandoning recording completely.

 

[2BitSculptor]

lumpy, do you live in an area where you cannot receive over the air broadcast? I get roughly 26 digital channels (some duplicate networks from more than one city) via my rooftop antenna. I'm 45-50 miles from any broadcaster, but there is mostly open rural areas between. Movies I rent, or buy pre-viewed. Cannot justify laying out the money for cable/sat.... and MediaPortal is just too useful in keeping my movies, TV shows and music organized, and still hooks me up to online media..

best regards,

 

[x4mer]

If it were a case of encryption, the scan would still find them,they just wouldn't be viewable. Do you end up with piles of unviewable channels after a scan?

Cable doesn't use ATSC, only over the air does. Ensure the scan is in QAM mode.

 

[Circe44]

The basic comcast package i have only broadcasts about 15 digital channels. The 30 others are analogue. I live in a rural area so they are a long way from the digital switch over. That only happened in big urban areas.
If your situation is similar then you need a dual tuner card atsc + analogue. Or separate cards.
Check all the channels on the regular TV by pressing the info button. That will give you signal type data to confirm if your missing channels are analogue.

I live close to Minneapolis/St. Paul, my cable was supposed to have been switched to digital last year. The machine I am working with is connected to the cable box, so hopefully encryption won't be a problem? Pressing 'info' on the Comcast remote tells me the number and the callsign of the channel

If it were a case of encryption, the scan would still find them,they just wouldn't be viewable. Do you end up with piles of unviewable channels after a scan?

Cable doesn't use ATSC, only over the air does. Ensure the scan is in QAM mode.

I did scans in both ATSC and all the QAM channels. About half the channels came from ATSC the other half came from the QAM scans (I was under the impression that QAM was encrypted ATSC? hmm..) Note that not all the channels I picked up are actually viewable...

 

[Circe44]

After thinking about this a bit more, I went back and redid the ATSC tests and I got 0 signals. Then I redid the QAM tests and got 0 signals. I have not TOUCHED the MediaPortal files. To my knowledge, the only thing I have installed in the last 2 days was Flash.

I think I'm done with MediaPortal. Thanks for the help, guys.

 

[mm1352000]

After thinking about this a bit more, I went back and redid the ATSC tests and I got 0 signals. Then I redid the QAM tests and got 0 signals. I have not TOUCHED the MediaPortal files. To my knowledge, the only thing I have installed in the last 2 days was Flash.

Could it be because the tuner was in use in another application?

I think I'm done with MediaPortal. Thanks for the help, guys.

Good luck with whatever other software you try.

For anyone else reading this in future:

1. It is better to start a thread -->here<-- than revive such an old thread.
2. Post your log files as per the instructions -->here<-- so we have the information we need to be able to help.
3. If you use the analog *and* digital (ATSC+QAM) tuners on an HVR-2250 (or any other "hybrid" tuner for that matter), make sure you configure the two tuners as a hybrid as described -->here<--. Attempting to use the analog tuner(s) and digital tuner(s) without doing this will almost certainly result in problems.
4. Analog tuners do not have much use in the US anymore unless your cable provider still has analog cable channels (this is getting rarer and rarer), you're attempting to connect your cable box to your PC, or you want to receive FM radio.
5. Let scans run all the way through. I know it is tempting to stop them, however the scan is done by physical channel (ie. not by the channel numbers that your cable box or TV show you) so you would not necessarily expect to find channels on the first dozen scans.
6. For scanning a digital cable connection, scan with a digital "ATSC" tuner and enable "Tune QAM instead of ATSC". Most folks should select "QAM Standard" or "QAM HRC". If they don't work or some channels are missing, try the other options.
7. For scanning for digital over-the-air channels from an aerial (ATSC), scan with a digital "ATSC" tuner and do *not* enable "Tune QAM instead of ATSC".
8. For scanning an analog cable connection, can with an "analog" tuner, select the appropriate country, and select "cable" as source type.
9. When connecting a cable or satellite (eg. DirecTV, Dish) set top box to a PC, follow the instructions -->here<--. Note this is a complex setup. Not recommended for beginners.
10. If your ***digital*** (ie. ATSC or QAM) scans don't find any channels (or you're missing most of them), check the "preferred network provider" setting -->here<-- and try switching to "ATSC". Note "generic" is recommended if it works.
11. Channels found via a cable (QAM) scan are unlikely to have proper names. This is because cable providers usually only provide the name info via a so called "OOB" (out of band) channel that PC tuners can't receive. Consider yourself *extremely* lucky if you get proper names. Otherwise, it is a case of trial and error to see which channels can be received and what they are actually called. Sorry - every other piece of software except WMC and HDHomeRun config/QuickTV have this problem. Blame the cable providers. Tip: test the channels that have green icons next to them. The ones with red icons are almost certainly encrypted.

mm