Trouble getting both Hauppage HVR 2250 tuners to work. (1 Viewer)

[billmi]

I've just installed Media Portal a couple of days ago, and am impressed with its capabilities so far.

My HTPC is running Windows Vista with a Hauppage HVR 2250. When I first set it up, I was using Windows Media Center for ATSC OTA with a small antenna. Eventually I couldn't get signal any more, I think the pre-amp for the antenna died. While I liked Media Center's easy to navigate and reliable interface, an important thing I learned from that set-up though is that it only ever used one of the 2250's two tuners.

I've now decided to use the HTPC to get the clear QAM channels from my cable provider, and after an hour of frustration realized that Media Center in Vista won't tune them in like Win 7 Media Center, and while MS has a cumulative Media Center upgrade for Vista, I can only download it if I run a Genuine Windows Authentication program that they no longer support. So, I looked for open source alternatives and happily found Media Portal.

I quickly got my channels configured in Media Portal TV Server Configuration (v 1.4.0.0). Getting program listings in was a bit more of a challenge, as the wiki pages I found on the topic didn't quite match the version of the xml file that was in the distribution, but between my wife and I we managed.

TV Server configurations sees my multiple hybrid tuners, showing me ATSC, analog, etc. as if they were all separate tuners. I've got a pair of ATSC tuners showing up on the list. When I tried changing channels while recording a show, it worked - once. After that, each time I try, I get an error in Media Portal popping up to say that there is not a card available, and I'm unable to change channels for viewing live unless I stop the existing recording session.

I've followed the instructions for hybrid card configuration in the wiki (http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...er_Configuration/02_TV_Servers/1_Hybrid_Cards) and additionally I have increased the "Number of IPTV cards" setting from 1 to 2 (not shown in the Hybrid Cards page, I assume this is a newer feature) and gone so far as to de-activate all but the two ATSC tuners, but no matter what I've tried so far I've not managed to get both tuners to allow me to watch one channel while recording another.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[mm1352000]

Hello and welcome billmi

I suspect you may have missed the TV mapping part:
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...Server_Configuration/03_TV_Channels/2_Mapping

This configuration is used to tell TV Server which channels each tuner can tune. You'd want to link all your channels to both ATSC tuners. To do that, select the tuner up the top, select all the channels on the left, then click ">" to link them to the tuner. Repeat for the second tuner and you should be good to go.

I note that unlike WMC, MediaPortal's TV Server actually allows you to record/timeshift more than one channel with a single tuner in certain circumstances. In other words, with your two tuners you can record/view at least two channels simultaneously. There is a caveat - you'll need MP 1.5 to do it with ATSC tuners as unfortunately there was a bug in earlier versions that disabled the feature.

mm