United States of America
Well, I had seen several posts around the forums about having trouble getting this hybrid tuner to work with QAM. The most notable problems mentioned were:
1) TV Server sees the card as a Hauppauge 885 instead of 1250
1) scanning QAM channels wasn't picking up stations
2) bad quality on analog channels, since it's a software encoder rather than hardware
But I made the plunge anyway and bought this card because it's cheap, and I don't really NEED digital channels at the moment. But I DID want some experience working with QAM setup, guide information, etc so I could help out some of the U.S. users.
I'll just update this thread as I experiment this week. Maybe I'll eventually get things working, maybe I won't. I am just curious how far I can get. Maybe it'll be useful to someone else either way. Think of this as a blog more than a post for questions or answers.
Day 1 (Monday):
Card is installed in my dedicated TV/file server. Windows (Server 2k3 x64) detected the new hardware, and I pointed it the the driver folder on the install CD. (Version 3.1H) Windows found a suitable driver and installed. Device manager now lists the 1250. Shows as "Hauppauge WintTV HVR-1250 (Model 79xxx, Hybrid ATSC/QAM)". Driver date 9/28/2007, version 1.25.25271.0.
Open up TV Server config. Stop and start the service to re-detect cards. There it is it is indeed listed as a model 885 tuner card. Not sure if this is a problem, though. I did try another driver from the CD that Windows also listed as an option, but it still displays as an 885. (Note: I stopped the TVServer process, deleted the 885 in TV Server via SQL, then I changed the driver, then I started the service again.) I will accept this as "normal" and see what happens.
I set the 1250 up as a hybrid tuner, according to the wiki article so TV Server knows it's a hybrid, and only one of the two tuners can be used at a time. (Select the analog and digital tuners, right click, create group.)
Moving on to scanning. I am out of my league with regards to QAM, so I make it up as I go. I check the QAM box (obvious). But I have 5 options for frequency types.
No clue, but "qam standard" seems like a good one to start with. I use Charter Communications, Buffalo, MN; analog + digital. At least the locals are broadcast in Clear QAM, since a cable plugged directly into my TV finds some channels.
Start the channel scan. It's slow, and I am a little worried that it isn't finding channels right away, since I have 2.2, 5.1, 5.1, 9.1. But those channels aren't found. Let it finish scanning anyways.
Wow - it found over 100 channels. Interestingly, the channels it found don't line up with the channels the TV has. For example, the TV has 2.2 for public television. On the tuner card it's somewhere in the 90's. Only a couple of channels have actual names, and those Tv Server has marked as encrypted (but probably shouldn't be since they're named as the locals). Near as I can tell, I have to look at the channels one at a time, figure out what channel I am looking at, and rename. Daunting, but doable.
But what's this? On many of the channels, Preview gives me "ChannelIsEncrypted". Which is expected - they're the digital channels I would need a set top box for. Too bad they were detected. If those could be easily filtered, I would have far fewer channels to look through.
On some of the remaining channels, the very act of previewing them crashes the Tv Server config program. No error - it just disappears. And config doesn't save the channels I had unselected. So I re-do and save frequently.
When I called it quits for day 1, I have looked thought about 2/3 of the digital channels found and unchecked the channels that were encrypted. Some of the channels that worked I have re-named for my use.
Plans for Day 2, maybe into day 3, include: previewing the rest of the channels and getting rid of the ones that can't be displayed, re-scanning with the other frequency types, and trying to definitively identify what channels I am actually receiving.
Plans for later days include verifying that channels don't move around (exporting channels, re-scan, and see if any new channels are found or previously identified channels have shifted) and getting Schedules Direct guide data to work with this.
Day 2 (Tuesday):
Not much time to work on it today. But I did manage to get through the rest of the channels to preview, so I think I managed to unselect all the ones that were encrypted. The rest I have identified, and definitely got all the local clear QAM locals. Which is all I really need.
A couple of observations, though.
1) the Preview button continues to crash Tv Server config. Not the service, just the config program. No good pattern - sometimes a given channel will crash, sometimes it won't. It's hard to tell for sure, because sometimes when I select channel 'A' and it crashes, I restart config and preview channel 'B'. But it actually shows me 'A'. So I ended up having to stop and restart the service to clear it out during my manual channel identification. Slowed it down even more.
I actually found it far quicker to just run the MP client, select an unknown channel from the guide, and either get "no audio/video" meaning it was encrypted or not broadcasting, or get a picture. I could then flip through the digital channels on the TV to match them up. Worked much better that way. (I was on a bad wireless connection - next time I'll do this over wired to make it easier.)
2) I just noticed that a bunch of channels were also added to the Radio channel list. So I need to review those, as well. The TV channels included ~40 music channels (music plus a mostly static "slide show" and trivia), so I am curious what was identified as Radio. I am also curious if I can move the music TV channels onto the radio channel list. Just another thing to mess with.
Oh, and thanks for the insight, x4mer. I had noticed that on 1 or two channels that there was a major/minor, but I'll take a look for the rest. Mike make my life easier to jump into SQL Server to fix a few things up to my liking.
Day 3 (Wednesday):
Long day at work, so didn't spend more than 10 minutes looking at this. But I did learn two things.
1) Last week, I had set the RTSP = no option in my MediaPortal.xml file. This is needed to let comskip data be used to automatically skip commercial segments identified in a comskip file. I did this on three boxes, but the fourth (a laptop) I had not set it on. This was the one I tested on Tuesday where things worked, but poorly over wireless. last night, on a wired computer, I couldn't get any digital channels to tune. Always got "no audio/video". After I removed the rtsp=no option, it started working. So apparently, I can either stream digital video, OR skip commercials. I am going with digital video.
2) Looking in to x4mer's advice. Major/minor doesn't seem to be used in my market. I have no idea where the information is at, but major/minor was set to 0 for almost all channels. Even the ones that were obviously re-mapped. E.g. MP found a channel on physical channel 94 (TBSHD). My tv's digital tuner sees this channel at 94.1. But major/minor in MP says 0,0 for major, minor.
There were a FEW channels that had major/minor, but not many. I will continue to investigate this, and expect to have more time this weekend to really figure it out.
Current status: most digital channels I have manually identified, and they are in the channel list. I can tune the channels in no problem from the client, and the picture is very nice compared to analog. I still have no guide data (haven't even started on that front yet). But, the picture is a bit jerky on panning scenes. This was on my HD television that has a mac mini for a htpc, so it may not have the horsepower. I will try on a beefier computer to see if that's the reason. Or does that Tv Server specs matter here? I am using server-class hardware with just onboard video. (search the forum for "milhouse media server" for the exact hardware.) Do I need a good video card there, or just for the client? Not sure how to troubleshoott he jerkiness yet, but I think I will go for functionality first (e.g. guide data) and tweaking later.
Day 4 (Thursday):
Very little time to play again. I am reasonably confident that the HVR-1250 iteslf works fine with MP for digital channels. It seems to work with analog channels, too, though like others have noted, it is relatively poor quality because it's software encoding.
I did make another pass through the channels via the client. I get two different messages when a channel can't display. Error 1 is "channel is encrypted", which i take at face value - I can't see those without a STB. Error 2 is slower to display, and says "can't build graph". My current assumption is that these are "real" channels that just don't have any content at the moment. For example, I have noticed that with my TV's digital tuner, I have channels at 117.x and 118.x that seem to be PPV (based on occassion rewinds). I suspect that some of these channels were not broadcast yesterday because no one had purchased anything. So I left them in the guide list, and just removed the scrambled.
Another thing I did yesterday was to edit my Schedules Direct lineup. I added the digital cable lineup, and the plugin added the channels to the guide (or at least most of them - TBSHD and another channeldidn't get added for some reason). However, it added them as analog channels with a channel like 383. So it would work with a IR blaster and STB. I need to figure out how to point the guide information from schedules direct to the digital channels. Not trivial, I suspect.
I did do a couple of short records on the digital channels to make sure they were HD and not just standard digital broadcast. Sure enough, I have some 720 recordings and some 1080 recordings. Good news! I also verified that the stutter I saw the other day was on the 1080 channels. I think the Mac Mini does 720 fine, but struggles with 1080. My desktop (using on-board graphics) also struggles a bit. I might have to get some new video cards. Not sure what to do with the Mac Mini - might have to connect it to the CRT in the living room, and move the living room HTPC to the bedroom with the 1080p LCD. Not thrilled with the prospect...
Finally, just before I went to bed I started another scan using QAM Standard. Not sure how often those change, but this is my last scan on Standard. I will do additional scans this weekend using QAM Std Alternative, QAM IRC, QAM HRM, and QAM HRM + 3 just to see what happens.
Overall, I feel good about the progress and confident that I can get it all working to my liking.
To do:
-Additional channel scans as noted above
-Getting the guide data to work
-Cleaning up the channel list (e.g. I may remove the analog channels where I have a digital equivalent)
-Getting a better understanding of the relationship between channel scan data in MP and the TV's digital tuner (if any sense at all can be made)
-Figuring out how to configure MP and the channel information to actual directly select channels in MP (e.g. how do I type in 94.1 to get to TBS). If I replace the analog with their digital equivalent, this problem will go away. for example, TBS is at 15. TBSHD is at 94.1. I may just remove TBS, and make TBSHD "look like" 15. But I still want to figure out how I could do this.
-Changing recordings to hit the better quality digital channels
-Building a "how to" document for other MP QAM users
Day 5 (Saturday):
With a little luck, I'll finish the work today and get it working to my liking.
Channel scans:
QAM HRC: nothing found
QAM HRC+3: nothing foung
QAM IRC: found some channels, but seems to have re-discovered some channels already identified, so they end up in the list twice (and I have to clean up additional channels)
QAM Std Alternative: Same story - seems to be duplicates
Conclusion: If you first scan of QAM Standard seems to find all the channels you are expecting, stop there.
Most of today went toward trying to scan for and identify that last few channels I am missing. These actually seem to be pay-per-view channels, so no guide data and only worth watch if I get really lucky and turn one at while it is broadcasting, and it happens to be near the start. Still, I am trying to get the TV to match MP, so this is just completeness. Check to see if any PPV channels are broadcasting that I haven't found yet, scan, then open up the channels one-by-one in MP to see if I get a match.
I was able to speed up the process a bit once I realized that I got two different messages when tuner a channel from the guide. If the channel was scrambled, it's scrambled and I won't get it. If I get the "can't build graph", then it's a channel that is there, but isn't broadcasting at the moment. So I'd rename it to "something1", "something2", etc. Then I could check those un-identified channel when I saw another channel broadcasting. It worked.
Getting EPG information was easier than I expected for the digital channels (not PPV, of course). This is using Schedules Direct - not sure how I'd do it if I was getting EPG data elsewhere.
1) Add a new Schedules Direct lineup for the digital channels, and select the digital channels I am receiving in the clear. Let the EPG guide data download in MP - this will add the new channels, if I have the option set in the SD plugin.
Now, in MP, I've got channels that look like "781 KAREDT" that came from Schedules Direct. The channel number is for a digital tuner. I have a corresponding channel from the channel scan in TV Server that I manually identified and renamed, like "11.1 KARE HD".
2) Open up SQL Server. Cut the externalId field data from channel "781 KAREDT" - like 11867.15.schedulesdirect.org - and paste it to the "11.1 KAREHD" record. Repeat for all manually identified channels.
3) Go ahead and delete the SD-added digital channels, leaving your modified channels from the initial scan. Let the guide data download again. You should now have guide data for the digital channels!
The other thing I did today was clean up the Radio channels picked up in the scan. Every one I tried came back "scrambled", so I just deleted them all. However, I also wanted to try to move the Music Choice channels (see day 1) to Radio. So for every music channels I had identified above, and which were in the TV channels section, I went to SQL Server and changed IsRadio to True (from false) and IsTv to False from true. It worked.
Now I can go into Radio, and see the Music Choice channels. They don't work consistently across channels, but do work. They are slow to start after selecting. Some display song information. Some display that static page (e.g. trivia information) I mentioned above.
All in all, I think I am done.
1) TV Server sees the card as a Hauppauge 885 instead of 1250
1) scanning QAM channels wasn't picking up stations
2) bad quality on analog channels, since it's a software encoder rather than hardware
But I made the plunge anyway and bought this card because it's cheap, and I don't really NEED digital channels at the moment. But I DID want some experience working with QAM setup, guide information, etc so I could help out some of the U.S. users.
I'll just update this thread as I experiment this week. Maybe I'll eventually get things working, maybe I won't. I am just curious how far I can get. Maybe it'll be useful to someone else either way. Think of this as a blog more than a post for questions or answers.
Day 1 (Monday):
Card is installed in my dedicated TV/file server. Windows (Server 2k3 x64) detected the new hardware, and I pointed it the the driver folder on the install CD. (Version 3.1H) Windows found a suitable driver and installed. Device manager now lists the 1250. Shows as "Hauppauge WintTV HVR-1250 (Model 79xxx, Hybrid ATSC/QAM)". Driver date 9/28/2007, version 1.25.25271.0.
Open up TV Server config. Stop and start the service to re-detect cards. There it is it is indeed listed as a model 885 tuner card. Not sure if this is a problem, though. I did try another driver from the CD that Windows also listed as an option, but it still displays as an 885. (Note: I stopped the TVServer process, deleted the 885 in TV Server via SQL, then I changed the driver, then I started the service again.) I will accept this as "normal" and see what happens.
I set the 1250 up as a hybrid tuner, according to the wiki article so TV Server knows it's a hybrid, and only one of the two tuners can be used at a time. (Select the analog and digital tuners, right click, create group.)
Moving on to scanning. I am out of my league with regards to QAM, so I make it up as I go. I check the QAM box (obvious). But I have 5 options for frequency types.
- QAM HRC + 3
- QAM HRC
- QAM IRC
- QAM Standard
- QAM Std Alternative
No clue, but "qam standard" seems like a good one to start with. I use Charter Communications, Buffalo, MN; analog + digital. At least the locals are broadcast in Clear QAM, since a cable plugged directly into my TV finds some channels.
Start the channel scan. It's slow, and I am a little worried that it isn't finding channels right away, since I have 2.2, 5.1, 5.1, 9.1. But those channels aren't found. Let it finish scanning anyways.
Wow - it found over 100 channels. Interestingly, the channels it found don't line up with the channels the TV has. For example, the TV has 2.2 for public television. On the tuner card it's somewhere in the 90's. Only a couple of channels have actual names, and those Tv Server has marked as encrypted (but probably shouldn't be since they're named as the locals). Near as I can tell, I have to look at the channels one at a time, figure out what channel I am looking at, and rename. Daunting, but doable.
But what's this? On many of the channels, Preview gives me "ChannelIsEncrypted". Which is expected - they're the digital channels I would need a set top box for. Too bad they were detected. If those could be easily filtered, I would have far fewer channels to look through.
On some of the remaining channels, the very act of previewing them crashes the Tv Server config program. No error - it just disappears. And config doesn't save the channels I had unselected. So I re-do and save frequently.
When I called it quits for day 1, I have looked thought about 2/3 of the digital channels found and unchecked the channels that were encrypted. Some of the channels that worked I have re-named for my use.
Plans for Day 2, maybe into day 3, include: previewing the rest of the channels and getting rid of the ones that can't be displayed, re-scanning with the other frequency types, and trying to definitively identify what channels I am actually receiving.
Plans for later days include verifying that channels don't move around (exporting channels, re-scan, and see if any new channels are found or previously identified channels have shifted) and getting Schedules Direct guide data to work with this.
Day 2 (Tuesday):
Not much time to work on it today. But I did manage to get through the rest of the channels to preview, so I think I managed to unselect all the ones that were encrypted. The rest I have identified, and definitely got all the local clear QAM locals. Which is all I really need.
A couple of observations, though.
1) the Preview button continues to crash Tv Server config. Not the service, just the config program. No good pattern - sometimes a given channel will crash, sometimes it won't. It's hard to tell for sure, because sometimes when I select channel 'A' and it crashes, I restart config and preview channel 'B'. But it actually shows me 'A'. So I ended up having to stop and restart the service to clear it out during my manual channel identification. Slowed it down even more.
I actually found it far quicker to just run the MP client, select an unknown channel from the guide, and either get "no audio/video" meaning it was encrypted or not broadcasting, or get a picture. I could then flip through the digital channels on the TV to match them up. Worked much better that way. (I was on a bad wireless connection - next time I'll do this over wired to make it easier.)
2) I just noticed that a bunch of channels were also added to the Radio channel list. So I need to review those, as well. The TV channels included ~40 music channels (music plus a mostly static "slide show" and trivia), so I am curious what was identified as Radio. I am also curious if I can move the music TV channels onto the radio channel list. Just another thing to mess with.
Oh, and thanks for the insight, x4mer. I had noticed that on 1 or two channels that there was a major/minor, but I'll take a look for the rest. Mike make my life easier to jump into SQL Server to fix a few things up to my liking.
Day 3 (Wednesday):
Long day at work, so didn't spend more than 10 minutes looking at this. But I did learn two things.
1) Last week, I had set the RTSP = no option in my MediaPortal.xml file. This is needed to let comskip data be used to automatically skip commercial segments identified in a comskip file. I did this on three boxes, but the fourth (a laptop) I had not set it on. This was the one I tested on Tuesday where things worked, but poorly over wireless. last night, on a wired computer, I couldn't get any digital channels to tune. Always got "no audio/video". After I removed the rtsp=no option, it started working. So apparently, I can either stream digital video, OR skip commercials. I am going with digital video.
2) Looking in to x4mer's advice. Major/minor doesn't seem to be used in my market. I have no idea where the information is at, but major/minor was set to 0 for almost all channels. Even the ones that were obviously re-mapped. E.g. MP found a channel on physical channel 94 (TBSHD). My tv's digital tuner sees this channel at 94.1. But major/minor in MP says 0,0 for major, minor.
There were a FEW channels that had major/minor, but not many. I will continue to investigate this, and expect to have more time this weekend to really figure it out.
Current status: most digital channels I have manually identified, and they are in the channel list. I can tune the channels in no problem from the client, and the picture is very nice compared to analog. I still have no guide data (haven't even started on that front yet). But, the picture is a bit jerky on panning scenes. This was on my HD television that has a mac mini for a htpc, so it may not have the horsepower. I will try on a beefier computer to see if that's the reason. Or does that Tv Server specs matter here? I am using server-class hardware with just onboard video. (search the forum for "milhouse media server" for the exact hardware.) Do I need a good video card there, or just for the client? Not sure how to troubleshoott he jerkiness yet, but I think I will go for functionality first (e.g. guide data) and tweaking later.
Day 4 (Thursday):
Very little time to play again. I am reasonably confident that the HVR-1250 iteslf works fine with MP for digital channels. It seems to work with analog channels, too, though like others have noted, it is relatively poor quality because it's software encoding.
I did make another pass through the channels via the client. I get two different messages when a channel can't display. Error 1 is "channel is encrypted", which i take at face value - I can't see those without a STB. Error 2 is slower to display, and says "can't build graph". My current assumption is that these are "real" channels that just don't have any content at the moment. For example, I have noticed that with my TV's digital tuner, I have channels at 117.x and 118.x that seem to be PPV (based on occassion rewinds). I suspect that some of these channels were not broadcast yesterday because no one had purchased anything. So I left them in the guide list, and just removed the scrambled.
Another thing I did yesterday was to edit my Schedules Direct lineup. I added the digital cable lineup, and the plugin added the channels to the guide (or at least most of them - TBSHD and another channeldidn't get added for some reason). However, it added them as analog channels with a channel like 383. So it would work with a IR blaster and STB. I need to figure out how to point the guide information from schedules direct to the digital channels. Not trivial, I suspect.
I did do a couple of short records on the digital channels to make sure they were HD and not just standard digital broadcast. Sure enough, I have some 720 recordings and some 1080 recordings. Good news! I also verified that the stutter I saw the other day was on the 1080 channels. I think the Mac Mini does 720 fine, but struggles with 1080. My desktop (using on-board graphics) also struggles a bit. I might have to get some new video cards. Not sure what to do with the Mac Mini - might have to connect it to the CRT in the living room, and move the living room HTPC to the bedroom with the 1080p LCD. Not thrilled with the prospect...
Finally, just before I went to bed I started another scan using QAM Standard. Not sure how often those change, but this is my last scan on Standard. I will do additional scans this weekend using QAM Std Alternative, QAM IRC, QAM HRM, and QAM HRM + 3 just to see what happens.
Overall, I feel good about the progress and confident that I can get it all working to my liking.
To do:
-Additional channel scans as noted above
-Getting the guide data to work
-Cleaning up the channel list (e.g. I may remove the analog channels where I have a digital equivalent)
-Getting a better understanding of the relationship between channel scan data in MP and the TV's digital tuner (if any sense at all can be made)
-Figuring out how to configure MP and the channel information to actual directly select channels in MP (e.g. how do I type in 94.1 to get to TBS). If I replace the analog with their digital equivalent, this problem will go away. for example, TBS is at 15. TBSHD is at 94.1. I may just remove TBS, and make TBSHD "look like" 15. But I still want to figure out how I could do this.
-Changing recordings to hit the better quality digital channels
-Building a "how to" document for other MP QAM users
Day 5 (Saturday):
With a little luck, I'll finish the work today and get it working to my liking.
Channel scans:
QAM HRC: nothing found
QAM HRC+3: nothing foung
QAM IRC: found some channels, but seems to have re-discovered some channels already identified, so they end up in the list twice (and I have to clean up additional channels)
QAM Std Alternative: Same story - seems to be duplicates
Conclusion: If you first scan of QAM Standard seems to find all the channels you are expecting, stop there.
Most of today went toward trying to scan for and identify that last few channels I am missing. These actually seem to be pay-per-view channels, so no guide data and only worth watch if I get really lucky and turn one at while it is broadcasting, and it happens to be near the start. Still, I am trying to get the TV to match MP, so this is just completeness. Check to see if any PPV channels are broadcasting that I haven't found yet, scan, then open up the channels one-by-one in MP to see if I get a match.
I was able to speed up the process a bit once I realized that I got two different messages when tuner a channel from the guide. If the channel was scrambled, it's scrambled and I won't get it. If I get the "can't build graph", then it's a channel that is there, but isn't broadcasting at the moment. So I'd rename it to "something1", "something2", etc. Then I could check those un-identified channel when I saw another channel broadcasting. It worked.
Getting EPG information was easier than I expected for the digital channels (not PPV, of course). This is using Schedules Direct - not sure how I'd do it if I was getting EPG data elsewhere.
1) Add a new Schedules Direct lineup for the digital channels, and select the digital channels I am receiving in the clear. Let the EPG guide data download in MP - this will add the new channels, if I have the option set in the SD plugin.
Now, in MP, I've got channels that look like "781 KAREDT" that came from Schedules Direct. The channel number is for a digital tuner. I have a corresponding channel from the channel scan in TV Server that I manually identified and renamed, like "11.1 KARE HD".
2) Open up SQL Server. Cut the externalId field data from channel "781 KAREDT" - like 11867.15.schedulesdirect.org - and paste it to the "11.1 KAREHD" record. Repeat for all manually identified channels.
3) Go ahead and delete the SD-added digital channels, leaving your modified channels from the initial scan. Let the guide data download again. You should now have guide data for the digital channels!
The other thing I did today was clean up the Radio channels picked up in the scan. Every one I tried came back "scrambled", so I just deleted them all. However, I also wanted to try to move the Music Choice channels (see day 1) to Radio. So for every music channels I had identified above, and which were in the TV channels section, I went to SQL Server and changed IsRadio to True (from false) and IsTv to False from true. It worked.
Now I can go into Radio, and see the Music Choice channels. They don't work consistently across channels, but do work. They are slow to start after selecting. Some display song information. Some display that static page (e.g. trivia information) I mentioned above.
All in all, I think I am done.
