SETUP WinTV HVR-1600 with QAM

[elinks]

I am still having trouble getting SageTV (6.2.10) to find my QAM channels using the HVR-1600. I have followed this setup without luck. The scan dies and the channel scan graphics are corrupted before the scan completes (yes the WinTV software finds the QAM stations). I have allowed the scan to proceed overnight !

I though I had read somewhere (and can't find it) that you can make a change to the preference file so the scan will begin at channel number 80. If I could do this I might be able to get through a scan

If anyone knows how to start the scan at something other than channel 1 PLMK

Thanks
elinks

[bullgates]

Can someone post their Sage.properties file? WinTV will find 124 QAM channels but they are choppy etc....

When I do the Sage scan it speeds thru 200 channels and finds nothing. I might be missing something obvious so if someone has a suggestion it would much appreciated.


I previously had an A180 installed but that has been removed to test the 1600.

Thanks,

[lbrandolo]

You can try these new HVR-1600 drivers I found:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30895

[John.Kelly]

Need Help!

I have been using SageTV for about 18 months. Until now, I have been using two Hauppauge analog tuners. In January I upgraded to SageTV version 6.3.5.160 in preparation for switching over to digital. I also just upgraded my Video Storage from 500 gigabytes to 1 terabyte by spanning my 1st Seagate 500 gigabyte drive with a 2nd Seagate 500 Gigabyte (ST3500630AS) drive. Total storage in the system is 1.25 Terabytes, so the one terabyte is totally devoted to video. My operating system is XP Pro. The disk drives use 3.0 Gb/sec ATA Serial controllers. The computer I am using is a 3.4 Ghz Intel Dual Pentium. This video server is networked, using a 100 BaseT hard wired network and a 16 port 100 BaseT switch, with 3 Hauppauge MediaMVP video extenders, which are attached to 2 NTSC Analog TVs and one ATSC Digital TV. Haven’t yet purchased a SageTV STX-HD100 Video extender for the Digital TV, but probably will after I get a couple of digital tuners working.

I have had little if any problems with the system since I assigned fixed IP addresses to my video server and the Hauppauge MediaMVP video extenders. Yes, occasionally I will have to power off, and back up the extenders, but using fixed addresses seemed to fix the extenders ability to find the video server. I have tested the two tuners recording, and the 3 TV’s playing recorded videos, all at the same time, with absolutely no problems. Of course this is only analog 720x480 recorded at 2 gigabytes/hour. I use OTA (over the air) analog signals from the Minneapolis market, and plan to use OTA Digital in the future. My amplified antennae system works just fine for both analog and digital. I know this is true since I do have one HD TV.

I missed the $60.00 sale at Circuit City for the Hauppauge 1600 model 1178 tuners, but saw that Newegg had a $20.00 coupon off the $85.00 price of the same unit (coupon offer over yesterday). Only 1 coupon per customer, so I only bought 1 unit to see how it would work.

Well, yesterday I tried to install the new Hauppauge 1600 model 1178 tuner. I left my two existing PCI bus, analog tuners in place (didn’t want to miss recording any programs). After installing the Hauppauge 1600, I used the Hauppauge WinTV CD (version 3.4D) to install the driver. After rebooting the machine, I checked the XP Device Manager and it showed 2 “Hauppauge WinTV-PVR PCI II (Encoder 16)” devices and 1 “Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1600 NTSC/ATSC/QAM Combo” device. According to the XP Device Manager, all working correctly.

I hadn’t seen your instructions, and when trying to set up a new video source in SageTV, I was confused by the choice of 1. Hauppauge WinTV 418 Video Capture, and 2. Hauppauge WinTV 418 TS Capture. I have since realized that choice “1" is the NTSC Tuner.

My problem starts after picking choice 2, the “Hauppauge WinTV 418 TS Capture”. The next screen says, to the right of the “Digital TV Tuner”, “Loading Preview. Please Wait...”. This never changes to anything else. Clicking on the button at the bottom of this screen, which says “Device Input to Use: Digital Tuner”, does take me to the next screen. In my case, I then choose the “Use Tuner on Capture Card to tune Antennae/Broadcast”. The line up for the Minneapolis Area look completely wrong, but that is another issue. When I “Scan For Available Channels”, it finds none. At this point, the antennae is a direct feed to the ATSC on the Hauppauge 1600 with no splitters.

Everyone’s 1st reaction is that the antennae is no good. Well, I dragged our only Digital TV down to my office and, using a 3 way splitter, the digital TV channels came in perfectly. I used the splitter because I am considering having 3 ATSC sources when I finished with the system.

Now to complicate things. I hook up the antennae to the NTSC input on the Hauppauge 1600 and successfully added a 3rd NTSC tuner to the system (selected the “Hauppauge WinTV 418 Video Capture” choice). In other words, I can use the board as a NTSC source, but not as a ATSC source.

At one point, in desperation, I loaded the rest of the Hauppauge software from its CD. The result is interesting. Nothing about the Hauppauge WinTV application seems to work.

The only thing I can think of doing is to buy another Hauppauge 1600 and see what the results are with this new card. If you have any suggestions, I would be interested in hearing them.

[gblinckmann]

I would bet that if you got another card, you would get the exact results you are getting now. I've got an HVR-1800 (almost the same card) and I can usually get ATSC out of it. I've yet to get QAM working. The problem seems to be in the drivers. I get different results with every driver version.

My suggestion would be a different card. As much as I like Hauppauge products, their digital stuff just doesn't seem to be there yet.

[bullgates]

MN here also. St Cloud.


I got mine working but it kept freezing on the channel scan. I assume that my signal is probably too strong as a few installers have noted in the past. I am going to try to add a splitter and see what happens.

I had the same issue on the preview screen, so I just clicked back on digital tuner and it would take me to the next screen.

I'll post my results with a splitter added in a few days.

[John.Kelly]

Originally Posted by gblinckmann

I would bet that if you got another card, you would get the exact results you are getting now. I've got an HVR-1800 (almost the same card) and I can usually get ATSC out of it. I've yet to get QAM working. The problem seems to be in the drivers. I get different results with every driver version.

My suggestion would be a different card. As much as I like Hauppauge products, their digital stuff just doesn't seem to be there yet.

Well I did get the Hauppauge 1600, model 1178, to work. I decided to look at the Hauppauge site and see if their drivers were newer than the version I got with the Hauppauge board (see http://www.hauppauge.com/site/suppor..._hvr1600.html). I had been shipped Version 3.4D, and the version on the site was 3.4D1. I did not download the beta.

I also decided that I should have totally uninstalled the Hauppauge applications (including usings HWClear.exe), before reinstalling the new software. So I did that this time.

What was even more interesting, on Hauppauge's site, was that the installation notes are slightly different between the written ones I got with the board and the ones on the site. This time I followed the instructions on the site. Now the Hauppauge finds all the ATSC channels when you scan for them.

Installing this one Hauppauge 1600 board (with 2 Hauppauge WinTV 250 NTSC boards) was my attempt to make sure I was using the right digital board, before completely replacing the NTSC boards. Before installing this first ATSC board, I had thought that I would probably use 3 ATSC boards (have been using two NTSC boards). The reason for this was that I still have two NTSC TVs and thought that using an extra board might be a substitute for purchasing and using converter boxes when the switch over comes next February.

Now that I have a working ATSC (over the air) board, I have realized what a problem it is to stream a HD (either 720 or 1080) program to a NTSC TV through a Hauppauge SD (standard definition) Hauppauge Media MVP. The Sage Transcoder that steams a transcoded 480 SD stream to the Media Extender, works really hard to do this. In my case, the Sage transcoder, for just 1 HD to SD stream, takes 50% of a dual 3.4 Ghrz pentium CPU. By the way, to get this to work better than it initially did, I changed the Setup > Detailed Setup > Server > Media Extender Conversion Quality, from "High Quality" to "Standard Quality".

I am confused why, with the version of SageTV that I am using (V 6.3.6.0), these HD to SD streams have no fast forward or fast rewind.

Now, it is obvious to me why we all should be interested in the Sage HD Media Extender, Model STX-HD100, even if the TVs being streamed to are SD (standard definition NTSC) TVs. The STX-HD100 does the work of transcoding instead of the SageTV Server computer.

The only remaining problem I have is convincing SageTV that I should be able to purchase 3 STX-HD100 Extenders for $199.95 - $29.95 = $170.00 each since I already have 3 extender licenses and don't need another one with each new extender!

[subhadipsas]

I have followed all the instructions and setup the HVR 1600 with the FIOS cable from the wall hooked up (through a monster 2GHz 2 way splitter) connected to the ATSC port. I am getting 50+ QAM channels, but they are all SD (about 40 are music channels). I am not getting any HD locals. When I disconnect this cable from the HVR 1600 and connect it to the Panasonic HDTV directly - I get all the SD channels AND the HD locals. What am I doing wrong?

[subhadipsas]

Last night I purchased a RCA 4 way cable amplifier and my problem is resolved !! All local HD channels showed up after a rescan. I think the HVR 1600 needs a higher signal than what a TV or STB needs.

[DRM2PVR]

I would have to agree that the Tuner in the HVR 1600 is rather poor. Many of my regular cable channels would record grainy but when the same cable is rerouted through my Scientific Atlantic and back into the HVR 1600 over svideo they are much clearer. I've eliminatedd any tuning with my HVR1600 at all due to this.

[thymceelie]

Got QAM going, but for some reason, whenever I'm watching something in SD and hit stop, I get an error message that says Sage must close. I can drag the little warning window off to the side and Sage keeps running fine, but when I close the error window, it turns off Sage. Recordings seem to be fine. Thoughts?

[jrog]

Originally Posted by DRM2PVR

I would have to agree that the Tuner in the HVR 1600 is rather poor. Many of my regular cable channels would record grainy but when the same cable is rerouted through my Scientific Atlantic and back into the HVR 1600 over svideo they are much clearer. I've eliminatedd any tuning with my HVR1600 at all due to this.

I don't have a signal issue with my 1600 on the digital side, it seems to get a nice picture, but occasionally during commercial skip with live shows (watching delayed of course) it craps out. Basically I'm left with a black screen and no audio... very annoying. I removed the digital tuner, and went back to my HDHomerun as the primary tuner, and all is well. I'm gonna take the HVR-1600 back to circuit city.

[mdnttoker]

Originally Posted by morfinx

After talking with some folks on AVS Forum who are in the same area as me, I manually entered a channel for FOX HD and it worked. I don't know why the channel scan didn't pick it up though

How do you manually enter a QAM channel through Sage?
Do you have to know the frequency?

I am getting CBS, ABC, FOX, and PBS, but no NBC through Sage's automatic scan. I'd like to try manually entering it, but can't figure out how to do it.

I can bring up the actually frequency of the NBC HD channel on my cable box, but what do I do with that info? If I bring up the info screen on my digital cable box, it says the Tuner is at 111 Mhz, FDC: 74 Mhz, RDC: 20.5 Mhz.

Can I add the NBC HD channel through "Edit Lineup" section of the Setup Video Sources option in Sage? What do I enter for the various prompts to get NBC in my case? (channel 2XX, some on AVS quote the channel as "120.103" or "98.103").

Any help would be greatly appreciated...I'm so close to getting this working!

Thanks,
-M

[pagelmcb]

My issue was the inability to get the HD channels that my HDTV picks up via QAM. SO after reading the whole thread I read that many people had to use an amplifier. It may have helped if FMAX would have also mentioned that in the first couple posts as well.

I went and got an adjustable cable amplifier from Home Depot along with some extra RG6 cables. At first I still only got the music and some regular digital SD channels. After a couple attempts I started getting the channels. I am still not 100% sure on its reliability... I may have to just get a outdoor HD antenna and go for the over-the-air ATSC signal instead. My guess is that it may give me more channels and may be more reliable...

But I wont make a final judgement yet. I think I am going to do both then report back.

[pagelmcb]

Well I used a cheap HDTV antenna to try to tune ATSC over the air and it sucked...

Now I am getting nearly all the locals through qam and am happy with it. My only issue is that my local channel 3 (digitally supposed to be 3-1) is not showing up through my 1600. I get everything else that my HDTV picks up through direct channel scan. The thing is that my HDTV picks up my channel 3 HD as 106-7. And my 1600 does not detect that 106-7 at all. If it did I would just remap it. And I have tried to 'add new channel' in a few different ways but it just isnt working. It's both weird and frustrating for me... Im thinking of peaking through my sage.properties and seeing if I can force add this dtv channel (but I dont really know what Im doing ).

My signal strength on all the other qam local channels is 80+ so i dong think its a signal strength issue...

[MalibuDave42]

I have both a 1600 and an 1800. Put them both in at once.. lots of confusion, frustration.... after deleting the sources, removing the cards, and using HWClear to remove the drivers, I started from scratch.

I installed only the 1800, latest drivers, then followed each step outlined by FMAX at the top of thread, then SIXDOUBLEO. to remove the SD channels replacing them with thier HD counterparts. All went smoothly, as described, up to the point of trying to watch the channel.

From the correct-looking guide, I selected a remapped channel, once it tuned in there was 'no signal'. Back in the Setup for that tuner and channel, it tunes in fine with the View button. The guide showed the 50.1 I was expecting.

Thoughts on this wierdness?

[MalibuDave42]

I just talked Hauppage. Their tech support said neither a 1600 nor 1800 will tune in clear QAM channels from Comcast. "If you need clear qam support, the cards will not work, you should return them," said happuage tech support.

Does not sound promising....

[pagelmcb]

With my 1600, I get practically all the same clear qam channels through Charter cable that my HDTV does, with the one exception.

My only CBS HD channel, which should be 3.1 (3-1), comes through my HDTV as 106-7. All the rest of the qam channels coming through my HDTV match my 1600 scanned channels (some local HD with many digital SD channels and music channels).

The thing is that the 1600 is not picking up the CBS at all (while the HDTV still gets it as 106-7).

I'd love to be able to 'force' sage to tune the qam channel of 106-7 but I can't figure out how...

[awhiteguy]

So the first time I did a channel scan, the tuner found 48 channels (just like my TV does). This proves that I have good signal.

All 48 channels were listed in the channel setup. I then started trying to remap channels to match my digital cable lineup. I got confused and messed up some remaps and the channels dissappeared from the setup.

I then decided to start over and do another scan. The progress bar said it found 48 channels again, but when it finished only 32 channels or so were listed. Scan again and the number of channels listed dropped even more.

So I deleted the .frq files, removed the source, shut down sage, restarted the service and tried it again.

This time doing a scan showed 48 channels found, but when it finished only 36 channels are listed to view/remap.

What is going on here? How do I get the channel setup to list all 48 channels again? Currently, they are all listed in the .frq file, but not showing up in the channel setup to view/remap. Thanks,
Austin

[stewart710]

Originally Posted by MalibuDave42

I just talked Hauppage. Their tech support said neither a 1600 nor 1800 will tune in clear QAM channels from Comcast. "If you need clear qam support, the cards will not work, you should return them," said happuage tech support.

Does not sound promising....

That's BS, because I can get Comcast (MA) Clear QAM on my HVR-1600 (74041) in SageTV and WinTV6 if I use their old 3.4D1 drivers. When I update to any of there newer drivers I lose Clear QAM tuning. They've obviously disabled or broken the capability in their newer drivers and don't seem to care about it. I did have to buy an Electroline cable Amplifier to boost the signal for their pathetic cards (the unboosted signal is perfectly fine on both of HDTVs and my cablebox). Has anyone else been able to get their newer drivers to work with Clear QAM in Sage?