HDHR is giving me fits!

[bennyhill]

I find my self pulling my hair out every other week with this darn HDHR. I had been using it as a qam tuner but my channels kept tuning in incorrectly and the like so I have decided to switch to Over the Air tuning and am having even more trouble.

First of all I think this issue is mostly with the way Sage uses the HDHR because all along tuning has worked fine with vlc.

When I scan over the air channels with the hdhr setup it works wonderfully finds and tunes all the channels I can receive without any trouble.

However when I attempt to do this with Sage it only displays two stations and sub channels with the xx-yy-zz format after the name as per the instructions of SD's website.

Also only one of my HDHR tuners is showing up in Sage. I have attempted to reinstall the bda drivers, I have completely removed the HDHR and all settings and restarted windows multiple times.

I cannot stand things that act this flaky.

[Brent]

What version of SageTV are you using?

[bennyhill]

6.4.4
I guess I will upgrade to the latest beta...

[evilpenguin]

There are many SageTV users with zero issues with the HDHR so the problem is most likely a setup issue or a cable issue.

The setup on the HDHR can be a bit overly complicated (I know I had to read the instructions a few times before they made sense) but fortunately Sage is doing a lot of work right now to simplify things in 6.4+.

Also, its possible that your cable company is actually switching the channel locations around on you. I used to have Brighthouse in Indianapolis and they did this at least 3 times in 6 months.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by bennyhill

6.4.4
I guess I will upgrade to the latest beta...

I would try that for sure. Have you had the HDHR working before and now are having issues or has the HDHR never worked well for you?

Problems I've had and resolved:
1. Cable signal to the HDHR wasn't good enough. Solution: Added a quality cable amplifier & moved the HDHR right next to that amplifier. That solves most HDHR problems for folks.
2. As mentioned by EP above, the cable company likes to change channels around. My KC Time Warner has been in the process of doing this and has switched at least a few channels every month (their getting ready for switched digital...) which has made things a pita.
3. The setup is a little difficult. Check the latest info on the latest beta. Again as EP said SageTV is making some strides in improving this process.

My HDHR works great so don't discount it until you troubleshoot a little more. Hopefully you can get it working so its more reliable for you.

[Conejo]

If you are thinking about downloading the betas, SiliconDust and SageTV are still working on the drivers and STV for Channel Setup in the latest beta release. Though you can still hand remap the numbers in SageTV tuner setup if they all don't show up.

[bennyhill]

Sorry for the combative tone in my previous post.

I realize that the setup is quite a bit more complicated than most tuners but it is just getting to me that's all.

OK I have given up on qam tuning because I am not able to get as much through the comcast qam as I can Over the Air.

Hear are my main problems (all in Sage)

1. Sage only sees the second tuner.
2. Sage's scanning process for the channels finds channels but does not tune them correctly nor does it find all the channels available to me.

Now that I am running the 6.4.5 version of Sage, do I need the Beta drivers for the HDHR? If so where can I find them, I couldn't see a direct link on SD's site.

Thanks guys sorry again for the bitterness earlier.

Ben

[Conejo]

The directions, and download links, are in the NEW setup post:
http://www.silicondust.com/forum/vie...9a7208de8f663b

MISSING TUNER:
Shut down your SageTV system, open your sage.properties file and look for this property:
mmc/ignore_encoders=NVIDIA DualTV YUV Capture|Realtek AC97 Audio|NVIDIA DualTV YUV Capture 2|

Remove your HDHR tuner if it shows up in this list.
I've had to do this a couple of times during testing, I don't know what causes it to be put in the dog house.
Note: They use '|'s (pipes) for delimiters instead of commas.

[Conejo]

IF you choose to download the latest HDHR beta software, you will need to run the HDHR Setup app and select the appropriate options for your setup (ie: Digital Antenna, SageTV, LINEUP and perform a new scan) per the setup directions.

You will then see new files, QAM.scn (for Cable) or ATSC.scn (for Antenna), that you can open and see how the channel tokens are set up. When you peform the 'Scan for Additional Channels' per directions you can then see if any changes are necessary (ie: change Logical Channel #s, or add Physical remap info to channels that are in the .scn that may have been skipped in the SageTV setup).

Andy (Opus4) is working on an STV update to SageTV 6.4.5beta that will fix some of the channel detection issues. But as I said previously, you can use the remap feature to add any skipped channels into your lineup.

[bennyhill]

Well that seemed to fix it, and I must say in a much improved way over the previous setups. Even with all the steps outlined it just makes more sense. Well done.

I do still have the problem of only one of my HDHR's tuners showing up in Sage. Where should i start there? I will do some searching tonight on my own but if anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate them.

[Opus4]

Is that missing tuner working correctly in the HDHR software? Check the SiliconDust website for support -- there is also a page to check your power supply.

Did you check the mmc/ignore_encoders line in sage.properties, as mentioned above?

- Andy

[bennyhill]

Yes both tuners work perfectly for long periods when viewing through VLC. Since the tuners are one the same device I doubt it is a power supply issue. Most likely this has something to do with Sage. I just have no idea how to troubleshoot this and to this point I have been able to find anyone else with a similar problem.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by bennyhill

I just have no idea how to troubleshoot this

This first troubleshooting step was mentioned above, but you haven't commented on your results:

Originally Posted by Opus4

Did you check the mmc/ignore_encoders line in sage.properties, as mentioned above?

This was referring to:

Originally Posted by Conejo

MISSING TUNER:
Shut down your SageTV system, open your sage.properties file and look for this property:
mmc/ignore_encoders=NVIDIA DualTV YUV Capture|Realtek AC97 Audio|NVIDIA DualTV YUV Capture 2|

Remove your HDHR tuner if it shows up in this list.
I've had to do this a couple of times during testing, I don't know what causes it to be put in the dog house.
Note: They use '|'s (pipes) for delimiters instead of commas.

- Andy

[cslatt]

I actually just worked through a couple of HD Homerun issues, so I think I can help here. If only one of the two tuners is showing up in Sage, then it is because one of them has been put into the ignore encoders line of the sage.properties file as mentioned above.

If one of the tuners works like a champ, but the other one doesn't, or if they worked great but suddenly are showing no signal, it is likely a bad power supply. There was a bad batch off them, Silicon Dust will replace it for free (and has a remarkably fast turnaround time on them). I just got my replacement power supply and it fixed my issue where one tuner worked like a champ and the other one was showing only 10 - 20% signal quality.

[bennyhill]

Sorry I didn't mention this sooner.

I did check for that a line in the properties file and was unable to find anything including the HDHR.

[bennyhill]

Ok so I checked again and it WAS there.

I removed it and now all is well again. I really did check the file before and couldn't find reference to the HDHR in the ignore part but I must have just missed it.

Thanks all for the help.

Sorry again for the earlier Crankiness.

[technazz]

Originally Posted by bennyhill

Ok so I checked again and it WAS there.

I removed it and now all is well again. I really did check the file before and couldn't find reference to the HDHR in the ignore part but I must have just missed it.

Thanks all for the help.

Sorry again for the earlier Crankiness.

Since your not so cranky anymore, maybe you can change the title of the thread to something nicer!