New Hauppauge DCR-2650 CableCard Success

[raulinigo]

After having many issues, I finally got this working. Unfortunately I have Time Warner and the only channels that work are the standard network channels. Booo TWC. I guess I have to officially switch to Windows Media Center.

[Dargason]

What firmware do you guys use?

Mine's been running fine for a couple weeks, much better than the HD-PVR, but I did have a few "Tuner has stopped producing data" errors yesterday. They happened over the course of about an hour after which I lost power to the house and the whole computer rebooted.

It might have been flaky power, but I thought I might try the beta version anyway. Anyone using it successfully?

(BTW, the tuning adapter issues I had before were a result of a bad USB cable. *sigh*)

[Kroc]

JP: Thank you for the excellent installation/setup guide. I went through the entire setup/configuration in a little over an hour.

The service provider is Comcast in Florida. I am experiencing an issue with the HD channels. HD programming is on the account(they have sent programming to the card multiple times) and the HD programming is available on the STB boxes(previously used with the HD-PVR); however, the only HD programming available on the DCR-2650 is channels 401-408. The rest of the HD channels show NO SIGNAL. Channels 401-408 have intermittent delays/pausing. The pause occurs in WMC, Sage live TV, and Sage recordings.

I have tried replacing the USB cable with the HD-PVR USB cable with the same results. Comcast is bring out another card, and I purchased an HDHR3 yesterday to test as well.

I want to make sure you were able to receive the full range of HD channels without any issues.

Thanks for the help.

[jptheripper]

I am comcast in SW FL. It took multiple calls to comcast. Apparently they have difficulties knowing what "codes" to send to the card.

If you are getting 401-408 (i am assuming your locals), they have HD service on your card, but not the digital tier and the HD digital premium or whatever marketing crap term they use at the moment.

[Kroc]

Thank you for the fast response. I wanted to make sure that the other HD channels were copy freely on Comcast and that you were receiving them.

You are correct that 401-408 are local HD. My initial thought is that the card is the issue, due to the delay/pause in the local HD channels being received along with the inability to receive the codes for the additional HD programming.

I should have a new card on Wednesday along with the HDHR3 to test.

Thanks for the help.

[jptheripper]

the delay was not a good sign, i agree. even with sagedct, channel changes for me are fast, maybe 1-2 seconds.

[Dargason]

Is anyone using the beta driver (Release Nov 28, 2011)?

I'm using the non-beta driver (1.5.29310) with a "halt" warning only about once per week, so I'm reluctant to mess with it. But if others are running the beta driver without any issues, I might go ahead and switch.

[jptheripper]

my dct-2650 (under network adapters) is running 1.0.29194.0 7/13/2011

since it works perfectly no need to upgrade.

[raulinigo]

Most recent firmware caused my xbox extender to freeze partway into a show. Beta firmware seemed to fix that. Then after a week up and running, it all went down the crapper. Nothing worked. So instead of wasting more time and money, I returned the tuner, cablecard, tuning adapter, and while I was at it.... canceled cable and returned my TWC hddvr. Back to Sage with two antenna tuners. Gonna save tons of time and money. Maybe enjoy my other hobbies more! In the end, the TWC copy once flagging and an unreliable tuner was just that extra push that help me decide to ditch both. I'm pretty sure that if I had a copy freely cable provider, this whole thing would have gone down very differently.

[Reefkeeper]

I followed jptheripper's instructions thru step 17 to install my DCR-2650. The cablecard tuners 1 & 2 are both functioning fine in WMP however both report "Functioning:false" in Sagetv. Cable service in on Verizon FIOS. Not sure if that is the cause of my problems or where to go from here.
I have tried:
1) starting with a clean copy of sage.properties
2) stopping sagedct
3) restart PC & DCR-2650
4) rerun sagedct configure and copy fresh data into sagetv.properties

Any thoughts on wher to go from here or has anyone had success with a FIOS system?

Tunerstatus.jpg

Tunerstatus2.jpg

[Dargason]

I thought I'd just throw an update out there for anyone who might be considering the DCT-2650.

I'm reasonably happy with mine. I recently moved my SageTV server to it's own box (was running on my main PC before) and that has solved nearly all issues that I had before. The only problem I have now is that my tuning adapter quits every week or two and I have to power cycle it, but that only affects a very small number of channels for me. Otherwise everything is rock solid and I get 5.1 audio and closed captions, which was something I wanted. I haven't even bothered to get my HD-PVR working again.

Firmware Version 20120405
Driver Version 1.0.30053.0
Cable Provider: Charter Communications
Windows 8 Consumer Preview
SageDCT Version 2.2 (Not using PBDA)

[jrockow]

Just wanted to add my experience installing the 2650.

The biggest problem was getting Comcast to get the channels to show up.
After a lot of screwing around, they finally got the SD channels working OK, but I still couldn't get the HD channels.

The local HD channels worked, but not USA, FX, etc.

They finally sent a tech out to the house who discovered there was a trap installed on the pole where I connect to the cable.
It was put there many years ago, when all I was signed up for was "limited basic".

Simply removing the filter allowed the HDs to come thru!

[jrockow]

I am having a problem with my HD channels breaking up when watching a live channel. The recorded version plays back fine.

I use a NAS box for my recording directories.

Is there an instruction file around anywhere that explains the various fields in the SageDCT config routine?

I thought I read in one of the posts that the "replace path" field might help, but I'm not sure what it does or what the syntax of the entry should look like.

[waynedunham]

I rarely watch liveTv with SageTv (that's what the "actual" tv is for) but have noticed skipping when I do attempt it. On just about every occasion of this if I just keep a little off of live (i.e. 15-20 seconds behind) the skipping goes away.
Other factors might be the speed of your processor, whatever bus the recording device is using (PCI, USB, FireWire, etc) and how much the video (i.e. 480p, 720p, 1080i/p) is pushing up against the buffers for the bus to the device and throughput to the HD's because even though it is "live" it is still recording.

[jrockow]

I should have added to my original post that I have been using Sage for years, with my NAS box and 2 HDHR's and 2 HD PVRs, and never experienced the problem I described here.
This is a new problem that definetly has to do with either SageDCT or the DCR2650.
I was able to find some more info on "replace path" and I don't think that will help.
At this point it seems my only cure is go back to a local drive on the server.
That's a shame.

[dlevey]

I just picked up one of these tuners. I'm hoping to install it on my WHS2011 box, which is also where SaGe is installed. Of course, you need WMC to do this. I can't seem to find where WMC can be installed to WHS 2011 (Server 2008R2). I'm willing to upgrade to Server Essentials 2012, but I don't think WMC is there either. I really just want this to work through Sage, wondering if there is any way to get this to show up without WMC.

[gplasky]

You're not going to get WMC on a Windows Home server. Just find a Windows 7 desktop with WMC and go through the setup with your cable company. After that it will work with any PC and program with proper config of whatever program you choose to use.

Gerry

[dlevey]

I went through the config on my laptop and had it tuning channels. But when it's back on the WHS box, it isn't found. I thought that to have the cablecard adapters work, a running instance of WMC was required on that box.

[Dargason]

I noticed that Hauppauge has a new firmware update. Anyone tried it yet?

[WillCS]

I tried it, seemed it was more stable before the update. Should have left it alone cause it was working flawlessly for me before and then tonight a recording failed. I'm using SageDCT 2.6.0, maybe it needs to be updated for it to work better but I didn't see anything in the changelog that would make me think it'd help. I'm giving it one more day, anymore failed recordings and I'm rolling back.