Hauppauge 1600 and Fios Connectivity (1 Viewer)

[TDF]

1st of all just want to say hi as I'm new to the forum.

I have just setup Mediaportal 1 rc3 on WinXp Sp3 on my PC at home. I have the hauppauge 1600 tuner card and I have hooked it up to FiOS. The TV Server finds the card fine and I can scan in the channels....problem I am having is after the channels have been scanned in, only a handful of them work....most of them have an "encoded" error when I try and view them.

I guess my question is how would you hook up FiOS to the card to get the channels to work? Do I take the cable from the Set top box and plug it into my PC or do I plug it in Directly, bypassing the box.

I am EXTREMELY new to the whole HTPC front and this is the 1st one i have built.

Thanx in Advance for any advice offered

 

[TDF]

I've been poking around here and seeing the references to the IR Blaster for channel changing. If I'm reading this right I need to set it up so that the channels are changed on the box and not through the Media Portal software....

 

[CUE]

TDF... I'm a newbie also but your TV card I believe is a Clear QAM card. From the manufactures website on the TV card you have it says... "Watch and record clear QAM digital cable TV. Clear QAM digital TV are unencrypted digital TV channels" ... I can't help but then wonder that the channels you are having issues with are not Clear QAM channels as FIOS is 100% digital and your TV card can not decode the signal of those channels. Maybe a quick call to Verizon (LOL... quick call to Verizon) to verify these channels would help.

 

[TDF]

CUE thanx for the info...i did some digging with verizon and it looks like they have very few Unencrypted QAM channels....just the locals, which are the only ones that I can seem to tune in.

They recommend getting a cable Card from them at an additional cost of $3.99 a month that will allow me to recieve the other channels.

might just see if I can use the IR Blaster function to get it to work. But I haven't given up quite yet

 

[CUE]

Well... then I think we're in the same boat... What can you do with that cable-card? I don't believe it's a card that will fit in your computer right from Verizon. If I understand correctly what they mean. That card is a card that fits in your TV itself and not the computer... and finding the correct PC hardware isn't proving easy. From MP site... open this link and scroll down till you get to the part on "CI/CAM" TV-Server/tvcards - MediaPortal Wiki Documentation ... Don't know about FIOS (I'm jealous... still waiting on FIOS... stuck on COMCAST) but my cable box has a smart-card... got to find something to work with that card. But on the other-hand... I'm still working on getting my existing TV player software to work MP. Paid channels costs too much to just give up on. The answer is out there somewhere....

 

[milhouse]

In the U.S., there are very few good options for getting encrypted channels into your PC. That's what cable cards were supposed to do, but the few hardware setups that support it (and are restriced to MCE because of the decryption crap) simply don't work very well.

For analog and clear QAM, directly pluging the cable into the 1600 should be fine. For the encrypted stuff, you simply have to use the cable box, IR blaster or serial cable, and capture card. If it's SD, you could use the inputs on the 1600. If it's HD you'd have to look at something like the HDPVR (search the forums - may be supported now).

I am really jealous of the Europeans on the forum that can get cable and satellite, even encrypted stuff, with a CAM and smart card.

 

[CUE]

Hey Milhouse... when you wrote, "For the encrypted stuff, you simply have to use the cable box, IR blaster or serial cable, and capture card."... I don't mind keeping my DVR Cable box but then how would a capture card work with MP? Or should I say... does a capture card work with MP instead of a TV tuner? If that works... it would solve all my problems.

 

[TDF]

As stated before I'm new at the HTPC thing...but what is the difference between a tuner card and a capture card?

I'm assuming that on the 1600 I will now be taking the output from the fiOS set top box that used to go to the TV and plugging it into the tuner card on the PC and just tune it to Channel 3 and then change all of the channels on the Set top Box.

 

[CUE]

HHHmmmmm... Please let me know if that works. As I understand... what you just described using the FIOS box... you wouldn't need a TV card but instead ... a capture card. But I can't tell you if a capture card would work in MP... I've already asked that question of Milhouse. A tv Card reads and decrypts multiple TV channels... a capture card basically just takes in a single video stream and makes its available on a PC. Catpure cards are normally used by people that have Camcorders and want to either play/record/edit those videos on their PC.

One last thing... you wouldn't be able to schedule recordings with a capture card because it couldn't tune to the channel you want. You probably couldn't use the MP tv guide as well.

 

[milhouse]

Sorry - I keep switching terms on you. "For the encrypted stuff, you simply have to use the cable box, IR blaster or serial cable, and capture card" should have been "For the encrypted stuff, you simply have to use the cable box, IR blaster or serial cable, and external input on tuner card". A true capture card on takes input from another sources and encodes it. The HD PVR is an example of a capture card.

It's a question of quality. Sending out a signal from the STB to the 1600 over S-video won't support HD. The HD PVR captures the signally digitally, and supports the HD signal from your STB.

TDF is correct for standard def channels - S video cable to the 1600 and change channels on the STB, This doesn't work for HD (or at least scales it down to SD). Don't use the coax (channel 3) output. It's a pain that way, vs the Svideo or RCA.

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/general-talk-233/initial-support-hauppuage-hd-pvr-45382/ has information on using MP with the HD PVR.