How to set up a 2250?

[Nichodeamus]

... sigh ... I guess it's time for me to try once again to locate another piece of software then... I won't use something which is this much trouble and effort to setup, when it's likely that my cable company will rearange my channels again at any time within a few months or a year...

I guess I'll go download the demo versions of the programs that you have to pay for. I think the webpage for one of those said something about ClearQAM.

Thankyou for your help setting up my card at any rate.

[sub]

Ok, good luck. I'm sorry to hear it doesnt suit your needs.

[highflyer875]

With regard to the quality of picture and sound of the 2250, can you comment how well this card functions in analog and HD? Have you been successful recording two programs at the same time? Do you get PIP?

I am considering the purchase of this card or the ATI 650 PCIe.

[Nichodeamus]

With reguards to the hardware on this card, it's excelent as far as I've been able to use it so far.

When viewing analog channels, I've had a bit of a fuzz and blur, but I am certain this is simply because my cable line coming into my house has a few issues. It's exactly the same sorts of things which I always see in the analog channels on both of the televisions in my house.

When viewing digital channels, the picture is perfection itself. The lower resolution channels look a bit less defined of course, but aside from the resolution, they are perfectly clear. And of course on the really high (1080)resolution channels it looks beautiful. Before a few days ago, I had no idea that the NBC rainbow symbol or the CBS eye symbol could actually look so much like pieces of finely detailed digital artwork. Not to mention the detail of our local newscaster's hair or lace shirts.

As for recording two shows at once or viewing picture-in-picture, I haven't been able to attempt that yet, in any of the software I've tried to use... But I HAVE used each of the two recievers on the card separately, and they both seem to work fine. Vista Media Center doesn't do either PiP or 2x recording so far as I can tell, and WinTV can't hardly manage to display a single channel on it's own without crashing, and I didn't get far enough with GB-PVR's setup to actually have both of the tuners on my card setup and working, and Media Portal tried to install so many individual pieces of software on my system (viewer, scheduler, recorder, database server, database client, database manager, configuration util, media server, media client, ect), that I just simply unistalled that before trying to use it. And I haven't yet tried out SageTV or BeyondTV.

As for the sound, it's been fine so far... Nice clear stereo sound on the stations broadcasting in stereo, both the analog stereo channels, and the digital ones with AC3 sound.

Overall, for the hardware itself, I would recommend this card simply because there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with any of it, and it lives up to all of it's feature lists.

On the other hand, if I don't manage to find a good working piece of TV software which is well designed and supports the functions I'm interested in, I might in the end just wind up taking the card out of my computer and go back to watching TV in my living room.... It seems to me, that no one has yet managed to refine a piece of PC software enough to really compete with things like a cable box and a tivo... They all claim to have it all covered, but I'm finding out so far, that between the bugs and poor designs and the missing features, it's just not there yet.

[mvallevand]

It seems to me, that no one has yet managed to refine a piece of PC software enough to really compete with things like a cable box and a tivo...

The last I heard Tivo didn't do clear QAM either, as I said the mapping is not standard

http://www.tivo.com/setupandsupport/prog...nels_.html

Martin

[sub]

Yep the lack of info in the stream is going to make mapping the channels painful for QAM users (regardless of app). That said, most people manage to get it setup pretty quickly, and you typically only need to go through this pain the once.

If you dont need to map the EPG then clear QAM is pretty straight forward setup - just create a new capture source for the card, with the EPG set to 'dvb epg', then hit the 'map digital channels to epg channels' button to initate the scan. When then the scan is complete, simply tick to enable all the unencrypted channels (those with "*" in the name).

[whurlston]

Sub, as a small request, would it be possible to add an option that only unencrypted channels get reported in the channel mapping screen?

[mvallevand]

+1 However I gotta say that having the * and the actual program number have really made this mapping much easier, and once you get the knack it isn't that bad.

Martin

[feilh]

Nichodeamus, I've been sharing your pain for the last month or two being a newbie to clearQAM and HTPC. What I can tell you is that SageTV mapping wan't much easier, in fact I thought it was a little more confusing then GBPVR. SageTV did eliminate the need configure the EPG, but the mapping was no easier. My big complaint with SageTV and it is common complaint throughout internet forums, is that I don't have enough free time, and their limited 21 day trial didn't give me enough time to really try the product out.

Beyond TV says it only does Clear QAM with the Silcon Run HD tuner so I didn't try it.

Another comment: Most of those channels you are seeing in your COMCAST line up that don't seem to map to any EPG are movie on demand channels COMCAST is using. They just come and go, you are going to have to learn to ignore them.

[feilh]

Another question for you if you are still around. Did the 2250 come with a remote control?