New HDHomerun and many questions!!!

[pvr599]

I just bought a HDHomerun and am still trying to figure out what exactly I can do with this thing. Let me start by tell you about my hardware:

1 PVR150 - Coax from the wall
1 PVR500 - Both digital boxes
1 HDHomerun - Coax from the wall to both tuners
1 MVP -
1 USB-UIRT

1 HDSTB
2 Digital Boxes

I have WOW cable service in Detroit

I've hooked up the HDHR and before I get to the questions on picture quality and studdering, I wanted to set this up the best possible way first.

I was able follow the directions and scan for channels. I was able to find 5 local stations and all the music channels I get with digital cable.

I don't watch alot of local channels except for the news and some shows that usually start in the fall. I've found myself watching through the HDSTB more than anything recently for the premium movie channels in HD, DiscoveryHD and On Demand. It has pretty much defeated the purpose of building this SAGE box. I don't want to give it up.

I've spent everyday for a year fiddling with it to get it just right, then I had to go out and get a Plasma to screw things all up

I don't really care to record the premium channels in HD and from what I've heard I can't do it anyways (although, it would be nice and probably make things alot easier).


I've been reading ALOT about all the problems and solutions, but I am still confused by the acronyms and what they mean.

QAM?

OTA - I know this is Over The Air, but does that mean an antenna or just a coax from the cable company straight in. If the second is true, what would Analog be?


Can I hook a digital box into the HDHR and get digital channels too (not the premiums, just what I get through digital basic)? Is the HDHR ONLY for local channels or is there more you can do with it that I don't know about?

One other problem I was having after hooking it up and getting the HD to working Sage was (and I'm pretty sure this is a problem by everyone) that When I try to change channels in the higher numbers (eg...400 HBO), Sage won't change the channel on the digital box. My question is, does this have something to do with merits I've been reading about or the way I setup my channel lineup or is it something else? In the setup, when I select Local (Over-The Air) I get the choices of
Detroit - Analog
Detroit - Digital
Detroit - Local
Per the instructions I used Digital. When I setup the Digital boxes to the PVR500 I used WOW Detroit Digital - Plymouth. I don't know if these are the same. I just think something might be wrong here after reading about what some people suggested to use a different linup. Geez, does that make sense?

How does this all effect the MVP? I'm pretty sure I can't watch HD recordings over it, but does that mean I have to record 2 versions of the show in case I want to watch from the MVP location or from the server?

I've read about people using VLC. I use it to watch DVD movies, but how are people using it to watch HD and what is the purpose?

Do most of you have a signal amplifier? I have many splits and I've been tossing around the idea of getting one. If you do, can you recommend one?

My question is how would "YOU" set this up?

Sorry for all the questions, but I've been reading for weeks and still haven't been able to put this all together with the best combination.

Thanks a ton,
Dana

[paulbeers]

I'm going to tackle your questions but if I miss a few i apologize.


First off QAM is HDTV over cable. I don't remember what the acronym stands for, and to be honest never cared. I just know what it is.

Secondly, no you can't hook your STB to the HDHomerun.

As far as what can the HDHomerun get: Technically it can get any channel your cable provider allows you to get. What I mean by that is anything that isn't encoded which is pretty much just your locals (oh and the digital music channels as you have found). Anything else is probably encoded. Very few of us are fortunate to have unencrypted ESPN (for example).

I can't help you with your tuning issue over 400, so I will leave that to someone else.


As far as the MVP, if your system is powerful enough, it can transcode the HD stream on the fly. Unfortunately this takes a beefy server and if you can't do it on the fly you can convert the video "on the side" and watch it when it is done. This will create two recordings (one as the original HD stream and one "low def"). otherwise you can just capture an HD stream and use your PVR150 to capture the video in SD.

The HDhomerun can use VLC, in fact it should be how you figured out what channles you can get on your HDHomerun. On my server I use VLC to verify the HD Stream from my HDHomerun.

If you have split your coax a lot, I would recommend a GOOD amplifier. I use a Signal Vision. It isn't the best (much better than the old Radioshack one it replaced), but SVI is what my cable company uses so I figured it wouldn't cause them to balk if they came to my house and saw it (unlike my Radioshack one did).

[pvr599]

Paul,
Thanks, that answered alot of questions. I didn't really care what the acronym was for either. I just felt like I needed to know what it meant.

VLC, I didn't use it at all to find out the channels. All I did was scan for channels in Sage when I was setting it up. Is there instructions somewhere on how to use VLC this way? Even when I tried to get HD over Firewire, I couldn't figure out how to change channels in VLC for testing. Maybe I could get another channel or 2.

About the splitter, I had WOW out here today because I wasn't getting Showtime HD for some reason, that's beside the point. I asked him to check my signal strength on through the HDbox and he said it was close to perfect. Is that something I can go by? I have the signal split twice before the HD box.

The only question you didn't answer was about the trouble with channel changing. Has someone else had this type of problem?

Thanks a ton AGAIN Paul!!!

EDIT: I JUST figured out how to "Launch VLC" from the HDHomerun Config app. Now I have a new question, I haveuam-hrc 3 choices for Channel 8vrb, qam and qam-hrc. Is there one over the other I should pick?

[pvr599]

Forget my edit about, I followed the instructions here: http://www.silicondust.com/trac.fcgi...s/sagetv_cable
but there is this part
For example:

Channel: qam 74
Program: 7: 5.1 KPIX-HD
Program: 9: 2.1 KTVUHD

The information that you need for SageTV is the program name, the physical channel number, and the program number.

In the above example there are two programs:

* KPIX-HD = physical channel 74, program number 7.
* KTVUHD = physical channel 74, program number 9.

I don't get anything like that for my channels. Mine look like this:
Channel qam: 93
200: 1008 200 - ABCHD
201: 1008 201 - CBSHD

I don't understand the remapping part. I don't have a Channel 93 and when I go to 200 it looks like this 200-WXYZDT

I don't know what to do now.

[paulbeers]

Okay the remapping is the "tough part". What you need to do is go into Sage and add the HDHomerun and add an EPG for the HDHomerun. I think I just used the OTA Channel lineup for my area since the only available channels I could get thru QAM were the same as the OTA channels. Then in the screen where you tell Sage which channels your device uses there is a "map" or maybe it is "remap" (I setup my HDHomerun about a month ago and to be honest can't' remember everything I did). You can then remap the physical channel to something like 115-4 (in my case our ABC channel is located on channel 115 and sub channel 4, hence the 115-4).

I hope that helps?

[pvr599]

Thanks, unfortunately that doesn't help much in my situation. How do I find out which channel and sub channel when the HDHomerun configuration looks like this:

Channel QAM: 93
200: 1008 200 - ABCHD
201: 1008 201 - CBSHD

Channel QAM: 102
203: 1008 203 NBCHD
204: 1008 204 KBDDT

Channel QAM: 113
205: 1008 205 PBSHD
206: 1008 206 WMYDT

Channel QAM: 117
202: 1008 202 FOXHD

How did you get the "4" in 115-4?

[leirret66]

Originally Posted by pvr599

Thanks, unfortunately that doesn't help much in my situation. How do I find out which channel and sub channel when the HDHomerun configuration looks like this:

Channel QAM: 93
200: 1008 200 - ABCHD
201: 1008 201 - CBSHD

Channel QAM: 102
203: 1008 203 NBCHD
204: 1008 204 KBDDT

Channel QAM: 113
205: 1008 205 PBSHD
206: 1008 206 WMYDT

Channel QAM: 117
202: 1008 202 FOXHD

How did you get the "4" in 115-4?

in your case if the the list you posted has the channel you wan the you need to remaped the like this

117-202 FoxHD
113-205 PBSHD
113-206 WMYDT
and do on hope that helps you

[Polypro]

In Sage, select Remap>Physical Channel

Use your keyboard and type 93-200 for ABC-HD, 93-201 for CBS-HD, etc...

P

Edit: To clarify, whatever guide data your using for the HDHR will probably have the local HD channels at a Virtual Channel assignment like 400, etc. The true PHYSICAL channel number (frequency) coming down the wire is 92, sub channel 200..or 92-200.

P

[pvr599]

That's perfect guys, thank you so much. It worked. I thought it might be 93-200 etc, but I wasn't sure.
I kept losing the other EPG data for my other tuners and I realized why. If I setup the HDHR with the same Digital Broadcast as the HDHR, any changes I made to the HDHR lineup would effect the PVR500 lineup which was also Digital Broadcast. I just used the closest lineup to mine and made changes.

That's for mine and other's future reference.

Thanks again!!!!

[pvr599]

One last question. Is it possible to rename the channels?
Like my PBSHD is named WTVSDT and it would be cool if I could name it PBSHD.