HVR2250 doesn't get same channels as HDHR

[Tiki]

I just installed a new HVR-2250 card and connected up to digital cable via the RF / Coax connection. If I do a full channel scan in Sage, it picks up about the same number of channels as my HDHR, but many of the channels don't get populated with a channel name.

When I preview the channels, I find that Sage is unable to display a preview for most of the un-named channels. It will show the signal strength as 100%, but the preview window never appears. This is the same behavior I get with the HDHR when trying to view an encrypted QAM channel.

What is odd, is that there are about 10 channels that my HDHR can display, that the HVR2250 cannot. When I compare the frequency generated for the HDHR to the 2250, I see that at least some of the channels in question appear in the 2250's file as un-named channels. Luckily, most of these are channels I don't watch much (the channels are: CSPAN, QVC, CBC, TBS, WGN, ShopNBC, and 4 or 5 religious channels)

Can anyone think of a reason that certain channels would be playable with the HDHR but not the 2250?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Can anyone think of a reason that certain channels would be playable with the HDHR but not the 2250?

Signal strength - too high or too low.

- Andy

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Signal strength - too high or too low.

- Andy

On my HDHR, signal strength varies between 92%-100% depending on the channel and when I check.
On the 2250, signal strength is always 100%.

I installed the Hauppauge Signal strength meter and it displays SNR = 40 (solid green bar), with no errors for all stations (When I initially tune a channel, the bar will drop to zero and turn red briefly, then return to soild green). I get the same behavior for the channels that work and for those that do not.

As an experiment, I added a splitter in front of the HDHR. The splitter is labeled as -3.5dB. After doing so, the SNR dropped from 40 to 38 and the bar graph was no longer saturated (it appears that 40 = 100%), but it remained green. I saw no change in which channels I could tune.

With the problem channels, Sage always says "generating preview, please wait" and never shows a picture at all. This is the same thing I see when trying to tune an encrypted channel, but I know the channels in question are not encrypted...

[Opus4]

After reading the posts more... Are you doing the HDHR channel scan in the HDHR channel editor software first? If you've disabled "useless" channels there, the HDHR tuner won't see them in SageTV, but the 2250 could.

Regarding channel names: many cable channels don't include their names. The HDHR channel editor gets them from the SiliconDust database.

Why some channels might work correctly on one tuner & not the other: not sure, other than seeing posts from other people suggesting the HDHR tuner may work a bit better.

If the HDHR has all the channels you want correctly configured, then try copying & renaming its .scn file for use with the 2250's QAM tuner -- just base it on the 2250's .frq filename.

- Andy