Confused

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by johnwmreed

My problem at this point is I do not have digital cable TV, only analog. So I have no way of determining whether my tuner card will receive HDTV on the cable connection.

Well, technically if your provider has clear QAM channels, you don't even have to subscribe to the digital package to get them. It is rather unlikely that they have put a filter to block them out...

[dgeezer]

Originally Posted by johnwmreed

My problem at this point is I do not have digital cable TV, only analog. So I have no way of determining whether my tuner card will receive HDTV on the cable connection.

Ok, I see what you mean. I have also struggled with this for months, but have it working now. Most cable companies do allow free access to the local HD stations they just don't tell anyone, preferring to sell HD bundles and rent cable boxes......

Try this: Remove the cable from the cable connection and hook it up to the ATSC- DTV connection. Go into the SageTV setup screen and under video sources select the 418TS source. Set this up as a digital tuner on cable. When it asks you for a lineup choose your local digital cable so that you don't wipe out your current lineup. Let this do a channel scan. You may get your local digital stations in HD showing up. Both the HVR_1600 and 1800 seem to be very picky about signal strength on QAM, so your mileage may vary. If this works then you can install a splitter in the cable and have both tuners active.

You may also have to upgrade to the latest drivers for your card in order to get QAM to work. The card that came preinstalled in my HP 8200 (HVR-1800) would not recieve either QAM or Over the Air in Sage until I updated the drivers where the HVR-1600 which I installed myself would recieve either one.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by dgeezer

Ok, I see what you mean. I have also struggled with this for months, but have it working now. Most cable companies do allow free access to the local HD stations they just don't tell anyone, preferring to sell HD bundles and rent cable boxes......

Try this: Remove the cable from the cable connection and hook it up to the ATSC- DTV connection. Go into the SageTV setup screen and under video sources select the 418TS source. Set this up as a digital tuner on cable. When it asks you for a lineup choose your local digital cable so that you don't wipe out your current lineup. Let this do a channel scan. You may get your local digital stations in HD showing up. Both the HVR_1600 and 1800 seem to be very picky about signal strength on QAM, so your mileage may vary. If this works then you can install a splitter in the cable and have both tuners active.

You may also have to upgrade to the latest drivers for your card in order to get QAM to work. The card that came preinstalled in my HP 8200 (HVR-1800) would not recieve either QAM or Over the Air in Sage until I updated the drivers where the HVR-1600 which I installed myself would recieve either one.

By the way, without investigating the specs of your machines (john and dgeezer), can it handle HD? My server PC can't. Just wanted to make sure, before you set john to finding QAM HD channels, that his PC can decode and show them (enough clock speed, RAM, video card, etc.). I can run the SageTV GUI on my server PC but can not watch anything on it (crashes hard). But with the HD Extender, it's flawless, so don't let that stop you.

Sounds like your PC can handle HD, though.

Just to clarify dgeezer's point, john... "QAM" is unencrypted digital (usually HD, YMMV) broadcasts sent through cable - any cable, even the lowest-end analog package. It's typically your local channels, some cable access stations, and maybe one or two "usually cable" channels that slip by, unencrypted. Almost all cable has it available, they just don't talk about it (why would they want you to know?) If you want to know what channels you should get on QAM, check here:
http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/hdhomerun/channels
and scroll down until you see "qam256" in the leftmost column.

[dgeezer]

Good point about the specs on the server. Mine will play HD just fine, I have a Geforce 8500 card installed in this pc. However, it is the only pc on our network that will handle HD playback flawlessly. My old client with an Nvidea 7350 will almost work but not quite. Like you said the HD-100 solves the playback problem. My next upgrade will be to buy a second HD-100 and build a low power, low spec server so that the loud power hungry HP 8200 doesn't need to run all the time.

[Djc208]

There was a thread with some peoples system diagrams but to try and help here's a stab at one for you (which would be very similar to my setup right now).


----(Cable)--- Server/HTPC w/ Tuner card(s) -.-.-.-.-. (Cat5/6) -.-.-. HD extender -- -- -- (HDMI/Component) -- -- HDTV set


Naturally this is simplified. The connection from the computer to the extender would probably be through a router/switch of some sort. The connection at the TV could involve audio connections to a reciever etc.

For this setup all you would need is the HD extender bundle that comes with SageTV media center.

If you have other TVs or computers you would like to access Sage on then an HD or SD extender on the TVs will include the license needed for the server. Other computers can use either the placeshifter software if want to access content from the internet, or the Client software for in-house access.


If you really want to get hooked on Sage then go install the comskip program and Sage plugin. Watch one show that way and you'll be ordering stuff before the end of the show.

[pjpjpjpj]

john,

Skim through this thread, it may help.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32169

[johnwmreed]

Thanks, those diagrams are great - lots of ideas. I noticed one had a Sage HD Extender attached to a Standard TV. Will this work ( I got a S-Video input on the TV)? That way I can try out the server while I am investigating HDTVs.

[briands]

Yes. The HD extender has s-video and even composite out. I started out with mine on my bedroom TV while I made sure it would meet the WAF of the livingroom TV.