NextPVR - Device Scan not picking up any channels / Setup Assistance

[Corm]

Hi all,

I'm new to TV Tuner cards. I've spent a week or two looking into what to do. It still seems like rocket science.

Here is what I am trying to accomplish: I have Comcast. I naturally hate them more than almost anything. I refuse to pay them an extra penny, so I want to bypass renting a DVR and use my PC to stream video (so I don't miss football games at work). I only need to record 1 show at a time, and get 1 channel at a time. I planned to use software to setup recordings while I'm at work.

My current setup: I have Win 7, 64 bit, a Cisco RNG150 STB connected directly to my Hauppage Win-TV HVR 1260 tuner card (ATSC/QAM) with a s-video cable (I don't care about image quality). From other forums, people have said this device should work for this purpose. - I may be able to use Windows Media Center... not sure yet, will try it later too.

So, NextPVR detects my card. It shows up 2x: as ATSC, and as QAM. When I scan for channels with either device, I don't find any.

I feel this should theoretically work...at least to detect the 1 channel my box is tuned to. I know I've probably missed something, or my setup may be wrong. Do I need to do anything to the existing co-axial cable line? It just goes from outlet>cablebox.
As far as I understand it, all the STB does is take Comcast's encrypted, digital signals and decrypt them. It then pushed them out unencrypted (I think in an analog format, but probably also digital). After the signals hit the box, it is unencrypted.

The other NextPVR settings are basically default, including decoders. I don't have any EPG I know of.

I could use some assistance troubleshooting this in a logical order, before I tinker with settings and make anything worse.

Thanks.

[mvallevand]

My current setup: I have Win 7, 64 bit, a Cisco RNG150 STB connected directly to my Hauppage Win-TV HVR 1260 tuner card (ATSC/QAM) with a s-video cable (I don't care about image quality). From other forums, people have said this device should work for this purpose.

You need to install WinTV first to install the analog (svideo) support and that will get the device, but a scan won't be necessary you will need to install some software to tune the channel tuning like the Hauppague IR Blaster.

Martin

[Corm]

Can NextPVR take the place of Win-TV, and work without an IR blaster? I would think if my device is showing in Dev manager, it should already be supported by my PC. Does Next PVR come with support for s-video already? I was under the impression it did.

[sub]

If you want to do old-school analog, NextPVR needs the 'SoftPVR' components installed. The easiest way to install this is by installing WinTV. Some people instead extract the SoftPVR components from the Hauppauge installer and just install that.

Realistically you're probably going to want to use the Hauppauge IR Blaster to automatically change channels on your set top box, so just installing WinTV is probably the easiest option.

[Corm]

Ok, I tested it with Win Media Center. I can definitely pull from the S-video feed in the test... but i can't set it up more without IR... it's a windows default setting in the app.

So I know my feed is working, and it is getting through. It's definitely a Next PVR software setting or issue. I'll try that SoftPVR idea now.

[sub]

So I know my feed is working, and it is getting through. It's definitely a Next PVR software setting or issue. I'll try that SoftPVR idea now.

It's exactly what we told you above.

When you've got WinTV (or SoftPVR) installed, you'll see an extra 'Analog' device listed on the Settings->Devices screen, which allows you to add analog channels (from tuner/composite/svideo). Without WinTV or SoftPVR, it'll only list digital ATSC/QAM tuners, which obviously won't help you with svideo.

It's up to you whether you enable the IR blaster in the analog device. I can't imagine the scenario you wouldn't want it for a PVR though.

[Corm]

Cool, thanks guys. I got a good idea now how to proceed.