Options for a victim of the digital revolution

[johnsonx42]

perhaps try whurlston's qam.ini manager and use the hrc frequencies?

[icrra]

perhaps try whurlston's qam.ini manager and use the hrc frequencies?

OK, when I get home tongiht, I'll try a rescan with my TV, and with the Hauppauge 1250. I'll also search for whurlston's qam.ini manager, as I haven't heard of that.

Is there some difference between the 1250 and 1950 QAM tuners? Just curious if the higher end card could get these channels when the 1250 cannot.

Thanks.

[dennit]

OK, when I get home tongiht, I'll try a rescan with my TV, and with the Hauppauge 1250. I'll also search for whurlston's qam.ini manager, as I haven't heard of that.

Is there some difference between the 1250 and 1950 QAM tuners? Just curious if the higher end card could get these channels when the 1250 cannot.

Thanks.

I haven't heard of any difference that would allow the higher end to get extra channels. During a scan for QAM, GBPVR tells the card exactly what frequency to tune for each channel before GBPVR decides if there is a signal there. There are several different standard freq sets for QAM, so when you scan and get none, it's possible that your card is just looking at the wrong frequencies. Whurlston's QAM ini manager just sets GBPVR to use a different set of freqs. My digital TV has a similar set of options for the scan. Generally, the tuner cards can tune to any of the standard QAM freq. sets.

[johnsonx42]

Somewhat deceptively, the QAM.ini manager is hosted in the Netflix Watchnow forum: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=38408

Any QAM digital tuner can tuner the same range of frequencies.

I've read a little more on those DTA boxes. Apparently they DO have very limited decryption capability, but it's much more limited than what a real set top box can do. According to what I read they can't actually use the decryption capability of those boxes due to FCC regulations. However, it may be that Comcast has received a waiver from the FCC, or they've decided to go ahead and use it anyway and make the FCC prove it's actually a violation.

There is a diagnostic screen on the Pace boxes available if you hold down the Info button for 6 seconds. You may wish to look at that while tuned to one of the channels you can't tune with your TV directly to see what can be seen.

[icrra]

I've attached the money shots from the Pace info screens, just in case that proves helpful to anyone. I'll try the modified QAM.ini file now....

[whurlston]

I've attached the money shots from the Pace info screens, just in case that proves helpful to anyone. I'll try the modified QAM.ini file now....

To find that channel, you will need to scan frequency 487250 (489000 - 1750) since Hauppauge devices add a 1.75Mhz offset to the requested frequency. When using the QAM.ini manager, you want to use the "Center frequency" options. (That frequency is part of both STD and HRC so I'm not sure which one you have).

What doesn't make sense to me is that 489MHz is the frequency for channel 68, not channel 67 which is 483Mhz (tuning frequency: 481250). They must mean the 67th channel since channel numbers start at 2.

[icrra]

Well I'll be a hootin owl, it works!

I rescanned after using the whurlston qam manager to use the "center frequency" qam.ini file. It took a long while to scan. Also, the scan screen didn't show the tv preview properly. So in the case of HGTV, I chose frequency 487250.304. When I brought up GBPVR, it tuned just fine! Note that NONE of the channels I've found so far have been "starred" on the scan screen.

So the secret is to look at that Pace info screen, and grab the frequency and program number, then subtract 1750 from the frequency, and map that (freq - 1750-<program number>) to the correct channel.

Thank you thank you thank you. I appreciate all the help from this forum.

[whurlston]

Just in case you ever get another tuner card though, not all devices require the 1750 offset. All Hauppauges do and so does the Silicondust HDHomeRun but Vistaview tuners don't. That's why I wrote the qam.ini manager so I didn't have to manually change the file all the time since I have all three of those manufacturers.

[SpartanSun]

From what I've read johnsonx42 is correct. These cheap Pace comcast DTA boxes can only receive unencrypted QAM channels, and the same channels should all be accessible directly with the HVR-1950's QAM tuner.

Sub, I absolutely, 100% agree with you.

Unfortunately, icrra is also 100% correct.

Just within the past couple days, my TV (with a digital tuner) and my atsc/qam HPV 1950 capture card can no longer see 95% of Comcast's digital cable channels (basically, 30-99)..... AT THE SAME TIME, Comcast's DTA (Pace DC50x) can still see all the digital cable channels just fine.

I think that Comcast simply changed the frequencies on the clear QAM a bit so that we couldn't see them unless we pay $1.99 a month for another DTA box. Instead of messing with IR Blasters (and spending 50 bucks for a UIRT), can't we just find the new frequencies that Comcast is using?

I went into the diagnostics screen of my DTA (hold down the INFO button for 5 seconds) and I found that digital channel 65 was at 297.000 MHz. So I went into GBPVR config and did a "manual" scan at 295.250, 297000, and 298.750 just to cover all the bases (with and without the 1.75MHz Hauppauge offset). Every time, the scan finished in a split second and said No Channels Found. :confused:
But don't take my word for those channel scans. The "home shopping channels" that my HVR 1950 (and cheapo HDTV) can see were reported by the DTA to be at 561.000 MHz. But when I ran the "manual scan" at that frequencies (and at +/- 1.75 MHz, because I don't know what I'm doing), the GBPVR scan still said "no channels found." (But if I ran an auto-scan using the default frequencies, I would pick up about 20 digital channels, including the shopping one at 561 MHz....I'll run another scan to see exactly what freq that is found out with the HVR 1950).
***Update: The shopping channel was already in my GBPVR database at 595.250 (so, with the -1.75 MHz offset). I could view it "LIVE" using PVRX2 (gbpvr). It seemed that my capture card was just a little mucked up and I had to unplug it for a minute. After that, I was able to find it using the "Manual Scan" in the gbpvr config. Sorry for the confusion. Just a lesson for everyone: the scanning & mapping process can be EXTREMELY sensitive.
I then tried the "manual scan" on 259.250 MHz. This is the channel that neither my digital TV nor HVR 1950 card could find (channel 65). This time, with a "refreshed" capture card, it found 259250.3 right away (strength: -10000, quality 100). The only problem was that gbpvr found about 150 of them and it kept going until I had to close down the config. I tried again and then the channel mapping window got busy find dozens of 259.250.2 channels (same strength) and then I tried again (resetting the power to the HVR 1950 each time) and this time it found the same .2 channels, but the strength was -5000 and the quality was 91. I don't think Comcast has a "variable frequency" approach that only its DTA can understand, so I'll just re-start my whole computer and hope I get better results the next time around.

This reminds me, last week, when Comcast had a big shift, people in my area couldn't find the digital stations anymore. It turned out that you had to scan the ENTIRE channel spectrum (1 to 120) instead of just 70+ as so many of us became accustomed to.
HOWEVER, HOWEVER, HOWEVER, even after scanning the lower channels (many of the digital stations had been moved to the 30-34 range), the channels still did not have the "successfully found" asterisk (*) in the scan results. I only knew where to find the digital channels because I had to re-scan the QAM stations with my digital TV as well (and I used the channels that it found to locate the digital channels in the gbpvr channel mapping screen).
So for people who have lost digital channels and can't find them after re-scanning, this is something to keep in mind.

If this whole thing is as simple as reading the frequencies off the DTA diagnostic page and doing a manual scan in the config window, we can do this (I mean, I'll do it and post the channel freq's for everyone in the Seattle area...but right now I need to get the mapping screen to lock on =/

[SpartanSun]

...ok, I re-started my computer and got the same results.
Enter in 295.250 MHz (which is digital channel #65, which hasn't been picked up by my digital tv nor HVR 1950) in to the "Manual Scan" for the digital channel mapping window of Config, and I get the same "strength: -10000 quality: 100" result and then a continual slew of 295.250.3 results show up, and they just keep coming.

Eventually, I just kill the GBPVR CONFIG process. Even if I hit the "OK" button in the channel mapping window, it will close down normally, but when I open it back up, all of the 295.250.3 results have disappeared (all 150 of them, likely because not a single one of them showed up with that handy "asterisk" (*) to let GBPVR know that it was a good channel).

Since the mapping window isn't technically freezing up, I'm going to let it run to see if it ever finds an asterisk channel. The weird thing is, I got over 300 "295.250.3" results right now. That should just not be possible, right? You could have 295.250.1 to 295.250.300, but just 300 results just for 295.250.3? I guess this is the trick that Comcast is pulling