Same channel - SD & HD versions

[Enormous]

I'm in the process of setting up my HVR-1600, and have come upon a problem I can't solve. Here is a little background information:

I have one channel line up that is used between all of my SD encoders. This channel line up includes the Discovery Channel (channel 16) and it is enabled in the channel setup. When I added my digital tuner into the mix, I chose a different channel line up for my area (basically the same line up, but for the digital cable package). This line up also includes a Discovery Channel (also at channel 16), which I have disabled. In my channel scans, I have discovered a digital version of the Discovery Channel being broadcast at 85-4. I have tried all of the ways I can think of to get the analog Discovery Channel broadcast to show up at channel 16, and the digital one to show up at 85-4 in the program guide. But once I map channel 85-4 to Discovery and enable it in channel setup, it won't show up in the program guide at all (channel 16 is still there).

Can someone fill in the blanks for me? From all of my forum reading, I'm starting to think that it won't be possible to get the program guide to display both the analog and digital version of the channel separately. But that brings up the question of how SageTV will record favorites from that channel?

[Opus4]

Stations with the same name are combined in the guide, so if both are named "DSC" or "The Discovery Channel" (I think it uses "DSC", not the long name), they will get combined. If it is really just the same SD station broadcast digitally (do they even have an HD version of the same channel?), there isn't much difference in the listings & Favorites would get recorded by whichever tuner is free. I think that if an airing is marked as HDTV, then it would have a higher recording priority, unless you reverse the property controlling that.

- Andy

[sleeeves]

Originally Posted by Enormous

I have tried all of the ways I can think of to get the analog Discovery Channel broadcast to show up at channel 16, and the digital one to show up at 85-4 in the program guide. But once I map channel 85-4 to Discovery and enable it in channel setup, it won't show up in the program guide at all (channel 16 is still there).

I'm sure this won't provide any further insight over the advise of Opus4, but I have the HVR-1600 and have struggled to get it set up too. How are you mapping your digital Discovery channel? It should have a logical channel mapping matching whatever's in your program listing (mine is channel 205), and a physical channel mapping such as 85-4 in your case. Also, I've noticed that with my HDHomeRun, the physical channels looks like 85-4, but on the HVR-1600, it looks like 85-0-4. You may simply try adding that zero and see what happens. I'm sure I just made things more confusing, but I'll try to help however I can!

[Enormous]

Originally Posted by Opus4

(do they even have an HD version of the same channel?)

You're right about it being DSC, and from what I've found so far, there is no plain "Discovery HD". There is a "Discovery HD Theater" channel, but that has a completely different show lineup. It's at least good to know that I'm not going crazy with the "missing" channel in the program guide.

Originally Posted by sleeeves

How are you mapping your digital Discovery channel? It should have a logical channel mapping matching whatever's in your program listing (mine is channel 205),

I believe I've done this, but you're saying to map my Discovery Channel logical channel to what it shows up in the guide as (channel 16)? I have mine set right now to some higher-channel number, but I believe I had previously set it to 16 with the same results.

and a physical channel mapping such as 85-4 in your case. Also, I've noticed that with my HDHomeRun, the physical channels looks like 85-4, but on the HVR-1600, it looks like 85-0-4. You may simply try adding that zero and see what happens.

I think I've got the physical mapping correct, because if I enable the channel with no associated guide data, I can successfully tune to it.

Another bit of weirdness that I noticed when setting things up was that after my channel scan all of my digital channels would show up twice in the channel setup. I would get what looks like a physical mapping for 81-1 [81-0-1], and another one looking like it did the same thing, but with the name of something like "DTV 81.1". Is this normal?

[Scriber]

After hours of trial and error, I successfully setup my HVR1600 this past Saturday so might be able to help.

It was not easy (actually to be more specific, setting up the Svideo to my cable box was easy and so was getting the QAM channels recognized etc) but NOT the EPG portion. The reverse of what I expected and I'm sure this will be tweaked some by Sage.

What would happen when I did this wrong was either the channels would show in the EPG but for some reason Sage tried to tune in all channels via the ATSC/QAM tuner or the channels would not show in the EPG.

The keys for the EPG setup was to disable the QAM channels for the Svideo lineup (they're HD anyway) and then use another totally separate lineup (as I discovered in this forum somewhere) - for me I chose Dish. When I choose DISH and was prompted to search for the QAMs I let that happen - it takes awhile. Obviously, I had tons of channels show up but the QAMs showed up to. I then disabled all the channels except the QAM channels and then for each QAM channel choose to remap (using the bottom option from the list that appears when remap is selected) to the proper channel. I can't recall for sure but I think the channels I disabled in the Svideo lineup were there too so I choose them but I'm not sure if that matters or not. I then waited 5 min or so and bingo the EPG was updated now works fine so far. I test recorded some HD today so the final test is pending.

One question that I will have (presuming things continue to work OK) is how to favor recording HD version of shows vs SD of the same shows but that's for a different weekend. HTH.

[sleeeves]

Originally Posted by Enormous

Another bit of weirdness that I noticed when setting things up was that after my channel scan all of my digital channels would show up twice in the channel setup. I would get what looks like a physical mapping for 81-1 [81-0-1], and another one looking like it did the same thing, but with the name of something like "DTV 81.1". Is this normal?

I think I have good news! I just did an expirement and had success.

I also had a bunch of "DTV 81.1" type channels. When previewing them, I saw they comprised the same channels as found via the HDHR. I found I could remap these using "Map Different Station to this Physical Channel", choosing the actual station the "DTV 81.1" represented. I then remapped the logical channel to match what it should be in the EPG listing. My expirement was with the Discovery channel. I found my 1600 showed DTV83.9 - [83-0-9], choosing view showed me for sure this was Discovery. I remapped as I stated above, and it works! I now have the two HDHR tuners, and the 1600, showing EPG channel 25 as the Discovery channel. I tested by recording two other channels and then watched channel 25 live - checking the Source Details for the 1600 shows Currently Being Used for Live TV: true. Proving its working. I hope THIS helps...

[Enormous]

Thanks for all of the replies. I finally had an epiphany last night, and realized why I was so confused. For some reason I had been thinking that in my program guide, an analog Discovery Channel should show up on channel 16 and the digital Discovery Channel should show up as channel 85-4. What I finally realized is that it's the exact same channel line-up, for the exact same channel, thus it doesn't need to show up twice! I guess I had a hard time putting those things together since it's a digital tuner. I have no problem realizing that for my 3 analog tuners that all share channels!

Once I realized that, I went ahead and mapped all of my digital SD broadcast channels to their appropriate channel data, and now have one more tuner able to record those. I also raised the encoder merit of the digital tuner so that it will record off of the digital channels as much as possible, since they come through much cleaner than my analog ones.

Once again, thanks for helping me through my brain-block.

[Scriber]

Originally Posted by Enormous

Once I realized that, I went ahead and mapped all of my digital SD broadcast channels to their appropriate channel data, and now have one more tuner able to record those. I also raised the encoder merit of the digital tuner so that it will record off of the digital channels as much as possible, since they come through much cleaner than my analog ones.

YMMV, but IIRC and if I understand you correctly, that did not work for me since Sage tried to use the QAM tuner for non-QAM stations (vice versa too?) until I used a different lineup for the QAM tuner and disabled the QAM channels on the Svideo lineup. Once I used a different lineup and disabled the QAM channels, it worked (but-for my last still pending issue of telling Sage which to record since they are the same show but only one that may be in HD).

One thing that may be unusual for me is that I have very limited HD choices and all my QAM are HD and duplicate the corresponding SD channel. There are no clear QAM SD channels from my cable provider.

[Enormous]

Originally Posted by Scriber

YMMV, but IIRC and if I understand you correctly, that did not work for me since Sage tried to use the QAM tuner for non-QAM stations (vice versa too?) until I used a different lineup for the QAM tuner and disabled the QAM channels on the Svideo lineup. Once I used a different lineup and disabled the QAM channels, it worked (but-for my last still pending issue of telling Sage which to record since they are the same show but only one that may be in HD).

I have the analog tuners set to use the "regular" Comcast channel line up, and the digital ones to use the "digital" variant offered by Comcast here. So hopefully they'll play nicely. It would be nice if there were some way to specify which tuner you'd like to use, but so far it seems like upping the encoder merit is doing the trick for me.

[bialio]

I agree - that's a feature I'd like to see. "Force" a recording to use a particular tuner - even if it is not idle.

If there's something I want to record in HD and both of my HDHomeRun tuners are busy but not recording (maybe my wife left the MVP in the bedroom on and it's tuned to one of the digital channels) - one of them would be pre-empted and used since I have specified that I want this recording from the digital tuner.......

[WeidnerJ]

I found that I can use the program guide for each tuner in my setup. The digital channels are configured to use the local digital EPG, while my analog tuners use the local analog EPG. When I schedule a show to record, or to watch I select the appropiate channel. For example, SD on channel 6 and HD on channel 1441.

[bialio]

That wouldn't work for me - I map the virtual channels for the SD and HD to the same channel in the EPG. That's the best part of SageTV for me actually - NBC (channel 5 here in Dallas) is on Channel 5, and it automatically uses the digital one if a digital tuner is available. If both digital tuners are busy, it can fall back to the SD version of Channel 5. And all of that is taken care of automagically.

[CyRex]

Sorry for re-awakening a somewhat old thread, but I am having a similar issue and could use a bit of clarification. I currently have 2 PVR 150's recording regular cable, and just added a HDHR to the mix. I have all the channels mapped correctly, but I would like them to be condensed to a single 'channel' in the EPG. I am guessing that they show up as two channels now because the station names are different (ie 'WVIT' and 'WVITDT').

So my main question is this: Do I have to change the names of the station (presumably through the HDHR setup program) in order to have them combined in the EPG?

Thanks,
Dan

[Thomas Wischgol]

You may actually want them to be different. That way, Sage can differentiate between HD and SD broadcast. Since it tries to prefer HD, it can record those from the digital stations (otherwise it would just pick any channel the show is aired on). In my case however, the preference of HD seems to not work that great anymore; Sage often times records in SD and leaves the digital tuner untouched.

Thomas

[CyRex]

I came up with a solution, but it is still less than ideal. For the channel lineup I am using for both HDHR inputs, I mapped each of the non-digital channels in the lineup to their respective digital (HD) version. This resulted in the channels being consolidated in the EPG, and, by way of encoder merit, prefers the digital tuner over the analog one. This works fine, but because the EPG data is from the non-digital version, the programs are not flagged as HD. So, I ended up re-enabling the HD versions of the channels as well, but left them assigned to their normal channel numbers (in the 200's).

I noticed that a lot of shows on the HD channel were not flagged as HD, for example The Simpsons reruns were not. This seemed to cause SageTV to choose to record the analog version, or at least not to prefer the digital version.

I guess I could get rid of the digital channels mapped in the 200's that I also have mapped to the non-digital channel numbers without losing much functionality. I'm really just trying to figure out what the 'right' setup is that will work for me.

-Dan

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by CyRex

I noticed that a lot of shows on the HD channel were not flagged as HD, for example The Simpsons reruns were not. This seemed to cause SageTV to choose to record the analog version, or at least not to prefer the digital version.

This is because The Simpsons gets transmitted pillarboxed. It's not actually in HD but only scaled up. A lot of programming is still that way. Programs that are pillarboxed are not flagged as HD because they aren't really.

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

This is because The Simpsons gets transmitted pillarboxed. It's not actually in HD but only scaled up. A lot of programming is still that way. Programs that are pillarboxed are not flagged as HD because they aren't really.

Right, but my point was that I would still rather have Sage record it using the digital tuner. Without the HD flag on the show, Sage shows no preference to recording the program on the digital channel, which is why I ended up mapping the digital channels to their non-digital channel numbers.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by CyRex

Right, but my point was that I would still rather have Sage record it using the digital tuner. Without the HD flag on the show, Sage shows no preference to recording the program on the digital channel, which is why I ended up mapping the digital channels to their non-digital channel numbers.

Meh, maybe if I actually had an HDTV I'd care. As it is it doesn't really matter for viewing on my SDTV. Although, the last Simpsons episode I watched that actually got recorded in HD looked pretty nice on my TV through my HD Extender using one of the zoom modes to fill the screen. I actually use my HDHR to record both HD and SD channels. The SD QAM channels from Cox look decent enough. Technically, as long as your hardware/software is good enough, you should be able to nearly match the quality of pillarboxed SD programs. I guess I'm just not that picky.

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Meh, maybe if I actually had an HDTV I'd care. As it is it doesn't really matter for viewing on my SDTV. Although, the last Simpsons episode I watched that actually got recorded in HD looked pretty nice on my TV through my HD Extender using one of the zoom modes to fill the screen. I actually use my HDHR to record both HD and SD channels. The SD QAM channels from Cox look decent enough. Technically, as long as your hardware/software is good enough, you should be able to nearly match the quality of pillarboxed SD programs. I guess I'm just not that picky.

True and true. For the most part the SD stuff that I record via the PVR-150 looks fine. Occasionally I will get a show that looks crappy, but I usually chalk that up to a tuning / signal strength issue. Now that I have the HDHR with a higher merit for those channels, hopefully that won't happen anymore.

Anyway, thanks for the insight.

-Dan