Issue with Houston Comcast, and multiple sources

[ybrew]

I've got 3 types of tuners....

1) analog cable
2) digital cable w/ box
3) HD Homerun/QAM

When we had time warner in Houston, I didn't have an issue. There were two digital timewarner lineups I could use. I chose one for my digital cable box and enabled the channels I wanted for that lineup, and chose a different digital cable lineup for my hd homerun, and only enabled the few unencrypted channels I got.

And I used the analog cable lineup for my 5 analog feeds.

But since Houston went to comcast officially sometime in the last week or two, I've got a problem. I only have two comcast lineups. 1 analog lineup and 1 digital cable lineup.

I can't use the same digital cable lineup for my digital box and my hd homerun. If I try to do so, the 3 sources (cable box, hd homerun 1 & 2) all use the same lineup. My Hd homerun suddenly thinks it can tune HBO.

So how do I work around this? What do other folks in houston do?
I could switch my hd homerun to OTA, but the signal is better from the cable, so I'd prefer not to do that.

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by ybrew

So how do I work around this? What do other folks in houston do?
I could switch my hd homerun to OTA, but the signal is better from the cable, so I'd prefer not to do that.

There are no other CC EPG's that you could pick from, perhaps a niehboring city? Maybe even put in zip code for another town, anything to get a different EPG. What channel number it lists in the EPG isn't a problem, only that it has the correct callsigns, and has the timezone feed as your other EPGs. Your gonna have to remap the channels for the HDHR anyways.

If you still can't find one, maybe tell Sage that the HDHR is OTA and use an OTA lineup, but actually feedthe HDHR cable. You have to remap channels anyways, and you'd be able to remap your locals, but would not be able to remap any cable channels that the CC may have left open-QAM'ed.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

There are no other CC EPG's that you could pick from, perhaps a niehboring city? Maybe even put in zip code for another town, anything to get a different EPG. What channel number it lists in the EPG isn't a problem, only that it has the correct callsigns, and has the timezone feed as your other EPGs. Your gonna have to remap the channels for the HDHR anyways.

If you still can't find one, maybe tell Sage that the HDHR is OTA and use an OTA lineup, but actually feedthe HDHR cable. You have to remap channels anyways, and you'd be able to remap your locals, but would not be able to remap any cable channels that the CC may have left open-QAM'ed.

Well, ya know, i only REALLY care about ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX, so using OTA and remapping (which i need to do anyway) seems like a good solution.

I'll play with it tonight sometime.

thanks for the help!

[jkohn]

Originally Posted by ybrew

Well, ya know, i only REALLY care about ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX, so using OTA and remapping (which i need to do anyway) seems like a good solution.

I'll play with it tonight sometime.

thanks for the help!

In some areas of Houston you may be giving up several dozen channels on the HDHR by doing this (I get over 70). If you really only care about the OTA locals I guess that's OK, but IMHO this isn't a very good solution and Sage should really fix the underlying limitation so that people don't have to come up with hacks like this to work around the issue.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by jkohn

In some areas of Houston you may be giving up several dozen channels on the HDHR by doing this (I get over 70). If you really only care about the OTA locals I guess that's OK, but IMHO this isn't a very good solution and Sage should really fix the underlying limitation so that people don't have to come up with hacks like this to work around the issue.

I haven't rechecked how many I get since the switch to comcast.
For now, only the locals are important. It's a pain to watch the HD recordings now because the only place I can really watch them is my laptop, or my laptop connected to my projector. My server isn't fast enough to transcode (actually it was ONCE, but usually it's pretty bad stuttering).
I'm sure my opinion will change once the HD Media Extender is released.


But I should still be able to pick a lineup in a neighboring city in central timezone and be OK.

Not ideal for sure, but I can work around it.

[bznotins]

I have been playing with my HVR-1600 QAM tuner and found that Comcast Houston has a great lineup on clear QAM. I'll post my full channel list when I get home but I was surprised to see things like ESPNHD and ESPN2HD among the freebies. MNF last night in HD was quite the treat.

Oh and kudos to Sage for the channel remap feature. I only have analog cable service at home and use those listings for my two analog tuners (HVR-1600 and ATi eHome Wonder) and then use the Comcast Digitial Lineup for my HVR-1600 QAM tuner. I find where ESPNHD shows-up in the digital listings and then remap it to my physical QAM channel and then remap it again to 33.1 logical, right after ESPN SD. Now when I'm channel surfing all the HD channels are right next to their SD counterparts in my listings.

Quite the product here and to Sage for enabling QAM support with the HVR-1600! Also to Comcast for having such a thorough QAM lineup available!

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by bznotins

I have been playing with my HVR-1600 QAM tuner and found that Comcast Houston has a great lineup on clear QAM. I'll post my full channel list when I get home but I was surprised to see things like ESPNHD and ESPN2HD among the freebies. MNF last night in HD was quite the treat.

Oh and kudos to Sage for the channel remap feature. I only have analog cable service at home and use those listings for my two analog tuners (HVR-1600 and ATi eHome Wonder) and then use the Comcast Digitial Lineup for my HVR-1600 QAM tuner. I find where ESPNHD shows-up in the digital listings and then remap it to my physical QAM channel and then remap it again to 33.1 logical, right after ESPN SD. Now when I'm channel surfing all the HD channels are right next to their SD counterparts in my listings.

Quite the product here and to Sage for enabling QAM support with the HVR-1600! Also to Comcast for having such a thorough QAM lineup available!

Please post that lineup soon! I've had my hdhomerun turned off for the summer months while I did some other configuration changes. But I need to reactivate it soon. Prison Break starts monday so I gotta have everything setup really soon.
thanks!

[bznotins]

Originally Posted by ybrew

Please post that lineup soon! I've had my hdhomerun turned off for the summer months while I did some other configuration changes. But I need to reactivate it soon. Prison Break starts monday so I gotta have everything setup really soon.
thanks!

Yeah I happened to flip through the Prison Break reruns on Sunday night in HD and they sure did look purty!

If you want a start, this post has most of the Comcast lineup. I found that when scanning for channels I got more than what's listed here. After going through each channel and watching for a few moments, I found the stuff like ESPN2HD and WGN, etc.

Finally that post has the channel numbers in "XX-ABC" format. I found that Sage detected them as "XX-C". And then when mapping physical channels to the digital lineup I had to use "XX-0-C" format.

Of note is that when Sage was doing it's scan it missed FOX-HD for some reason. I figured out where it should be in the lineup and mapped the digital FOXHD listing channel to the physical channel where I thought FOXHD should be and it picked it up. So who knows how many other channels Sage "misses" when it's doing the initial scan! I plan on going back to my Hauppauge WinTV app to see what channels it found that Sage might not have.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by bznotins

Yeah I happened to flip through the Prison Break reruns on Sunday night in HD and they sure did look purty!

If you want a start, this post has most of the Comcast lineup. I found that when scanning for channels I got more than what's listed here. After going through each channel and watching for a few moments, I found the stuff like ESPN2HD and WGN, etc.

Finally that post has the channel numbers in "XX-ABC" format. I found that Sage detected them as "XX-C". And then when mapping physical channels to the digital lineup I had to use "XX-0-C" format.

Of note is that when Sage was doing it's scan it missed FOX-HD for some reason. I figured out where it should be in the lineup and mapped the digital FOXHD listing channel to the physical channel where I thought FOXHD should be and it picked it up. So who knows how many other channels Sage "misses" when it's doing the initial scan! I plan on going back to my Hauppauge WinTV app to see what channels it found that Sage might not have.

gratz. Just ordered an 8-way cable splitter. I'll probably set mine up as soon as that comes in. I'll actually have 7 active tuners at that point (2 HD Homerun, 2 set top boxes, 3 analog cable).

I should be ready.

[bznotins]

Originally Posted by ybrew

gratz. Just ordered an 8-way cable splitter. I'll probably set mine up as soon as that comes in. I'll actually have 7 active tuners at that point (2 HD Homerun, 2 set top boxes, 3 analog cable).

I should be ready.

I trust it's an amplified splitter? I can't imagine being able to split cable 7 times and have enough signal strength left for digital tuners...

[ybrew]

http://www.yourbroadbandstore.com/pr...php?pid=711480


I also have an inline amp I can use before connecting the cable to this splitter.

What I've done prior to this:

Inline amp connected to channel master 4 way splitter.
4 way splitter split like this:

1 line to set top box
1 line to set top box
1 line split 3 ways to 3 analog tuners
1 line to hd dvr set top box 150 feet away in detached garage

Left no where for my hd homerun to go. I'm confident and hopeful this will work well.

[bznotins]

Here's the lineup I've been working with. It's based off the original that was posted in the thread noted previously:

('Delete') is just a personal note to myself because it's Spanish programming and me no habla.

74-1 USA
74-2 ESPN
74-3 TNT
74-4 some spanish channel (Delete)
74-5 cnn
74-6 hallmark
74-7 golf
74-8 msnbc
74-9 travel channel
74-10 court tv
74-11 weather channel
74-12 discovery
75-1 tbs
75-2 spike
75-3 a&e
75-4 abc family
75-5 cnbc
75-6 bet
75-7 cnn headline news
75-8 espn2
75-9 tlc
75-10 cartoon network
75-11 scifi
75-12 nick
76-1 E!
76-2 comedy central
76-3 history channel
76-4 HGTV
76-5 FX
76-6 Fox News
76-7 WE
76-8 Lifetime
76-9 fsn
76-10 VH1
76-11 MTV
76-12 Food network
77-1 bravo
77-2 versus
77-3 LMN
77-4 AMC
77-5 Natl Geographic
77-6 ESPN Classic
77-7 Animal Planet
77-8 TVLand
77-9 Oxygen
77-10 ESPN News
77-11 Soap Net
77-448 Lifetime Real Women
86-1 PBS-HD
86-2 KRIV-SD
86-3 KTRK-HD (ABC-HD)
86-4 KTRK-SD (ABC)
86-5 KTRK-Weather Now
86-6 Delete
87-1 KHCW-HD (CW-HD)
87-2 KPRC-HD (NBC-HD)
87-3 KPRC-Weather Now
87-4 Delete
87-5 KHCW-SD
88-1 Delete
88-2 Delete
88-3 some spanish channel Delete
88-4 KHOU-SD (CBS)
88-5 ESPNHD
89-1 KHOU-HD (CBS-HD)
89-3 KRIV-HD (FOX-HD)
89-4 KTRK-SD (ABC)
90-1 ch 61? Delete
90-2 My-20
90-3 KHCW-SD (CW)
90-4 KPRC-SD (NBC)
91-1 ch 55?
91-2 ???
91-3 Daystar
91-4 USA-HD
91-5 ???
91-6 KRIV-SD (FOX)
91-7 ???
91-8 ???
104-1 WGN
104-3 ???
105 Food
106 Ion
107 ESPN2HD

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

There are no other CC EPG's that you could pick from, perhaps a niehboring city? Maybe even put in zip code for another town, anything to get a different EPG. What channel number it lists in the EPG isn't a problem, only that it has the correct callsigns, and has the timezone feed as your other EPGs. Your gonna have to remap the channels for the HDHR anyways.

If you still can't find one, maybe tell Sage that the HDHR is OTA and use an OTA lineup, but actually feedthe HDHR cable. You have to remap channels anyways, and you'd be able to remap your locals, but would not be able to remap any cable channels that the CC may have left open-QAM'ed.

I may try this next.

I've got an antenna hooked up to my hdhr, and the pic is pretty good, and I HONESTLY only care about abc, cbs, nbc & fox. I can't keep up with the recordings i'm doing on those channels so adding more now really isn't a big deal.

but the pic isn't perfect. Sometimes I'll get pixelation on one or two channels. I either need a better antenna or something.

But my question though - what are other folks in houston doing?
I'm really curious about folks with one or more cable boxes connected to tuners, one or more analog connections AND one or more HD Homerun or similar tuners? I really wish we had a third comcast lineup to choose from.