HVR-1600 setup for QAM?

[Anthony]

OK, here's where I'm at...

Static on digital stations was due to the digital channels being enabled on my analog tuner. Thanks sub, another problem solved.

Signal strength doesn't appear to be an issue. I get at least 86% signal strength, according to WinTV, and I have no problems tuning the stations on my normal TV.

The stations I'm trying to tune are NOT encrypted. They're the basic local broadcast channels (2.1, 6.1, 8.1, etc.) the cable company passes through. Again, I can view them fine on my TV with no cable box, it's only my computer that is having trouble.

Regarding the erratic preview, again, it's not related to encrypted channels. For example, if I click the local 8.1 NBC channel, it may, or may not, view correctly in the preview window. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. The station is NOT encrypted, and it's viewable on my regular TV. I'd estimate the preview works less than 1/4 of the time. Once it stops working, it basically stops previewing ANY channel, until I exit the config and restart it again. Same thing happens with WinTV.

As for "Live TV", that's still working less than 1 out of 10 times on the digital channels. I usually just get a black screen.

I tried a few manual recordings and get varying results.

The first was a standard definition channel (digital). It seemed to record fine and resulted in a DVR-MS file format with good audio and video.

The second attempt was a high definition channel (local public broadcasting). The result is a file with very jumpy video. Like it shows a frame, waits a second or two, shows a frame, etc. I tried loading it into VideoReDo to see if it was a playback issue, but it appears to have recorded that way, as it looks the same even stepping through frame by frame.

The third recording attempt from my local NBC channel, resulted in a file that wouldn't play back at all. I loaded it into VideoReDo and it seems like the image is very pixelated and missing the lower half of most frames.

Am I missing an encoder, or multiplexer, or something???

It's starting to get depressing...

Anthony

[PixelatedFooL]

The stations I'm trying to tune are NOT encrypted. They're the basic local broadcast channels (2.1, 6.1, 8.1, etc.) the cable company passes through. Again, I can view them fine on my TV with no cable box, it's only my computer that is having trouble.

You need to figure out what channel they're actually on. The 2.1 6.1 and stuff is after the PSIP data your TV gets to remap the channels. In reality your channels are probably on something like 111.1 111.2 and the like. Check AVSforum in your local comcast thread, i'm sure people mention atleast some channels if not the entire listing being posted. I know i found the listing for north jersey easily

[sub]

Regarding the erratic preview, again, it's not related to encrypted channels. For example, if I click the local 8.1 NBC channel, it may, or may not, view correctly in the preview window. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. The station is NOT encrypted, and it's viewable on my regular TV. I'd estimate the preview works less than 1/4 of the time. Once it stops working, it basically stops previewing ANY channel, until I exit the config and restart it again. Same thing happens with WinTV.

I wouldnt be overly suprised (or worried) if there was problems viewing channels in the preview window in the config app. It not really designed to cope with encrypted channels or channels that might not be running at the time. This specific scenario only pops up with for north american QAM users. Its different for DVB and OTA ATSC users.

There is no practical way for me to reproduce this here, so not really something I can tidy up easily. This isnt a huge concern to me though.

As for "Live TV", that's still working less than 1 out of 10 times on the digital channels. I usually just get a black screen.

Reproduce this then zip and attach the logs and I'll take a look.

The second attempt was a high definition channel (local public broadcasting). The result is a file with very jumpy video. Like it shows a frame, waits a second or two, shows a frame, etc. I tried loading it into VideoReDo to see if it was a playback issue, but it appears to have recorded that way, as it looks the same even stepping through frame by frame.

The third recording attempt from my local NBC channel, resulted in a file that wouldn't play back at all. I loaded it into VideoReDo and it seems like the image is very pixelated and missing the lower half of most frames.

Both of these really do sound like signal strength/quality issue.

[Anthony]

> I wouldnt be overly suprised (or worried) if there was problems viewing
> channels in the preview window in the config app. It not really designed
> to cope with encrypted channels or channels that might not be running
> at the time.

Maybe I wasn't clear. The erratic preview is with NON-encrypted channels I KNOW are on full time. These are just the basic local broadcast stations provided by the cable company.

You were clear, but having encrypted (or non-running) channels in this list is probably enough to cause these unexpected problems I mention, particularly if if its tried to show one of these channels (resulting in a screwed set of directshow filters in the graph, breaking it from then on). If one of these channels is first on the list of found channels (ie, autoshown on screen startup), or in the first mux scanned (ie, autoshown during scan), or clicked on by yourself etc...then this could easily happen.

> Reproduce this then zip and attach the logs

I probably won't be able to get to it till tomorrow, but will do.

Ok

> Both of these really do sound like signal strength/quality issue.

I'll try a single card without any cable splitters tomorrow to see if it makes a difference, but I'm getting 86% signal strength in WinTV...

Unfortunately "86%" doesnt really tell me anything. All manufactures seem to use a entirely different ways of reporting this stuff, and what is required for good performance. For all I know, it might required 95% for reliably operation.

...and I have no problems viewing the same stations on my TV.

Its not uncommon for TVs to have better tuner modules that cheap TV tuner cards.

[mvallevand]

Anthony I think your message and sub's reply got merged, but sub's reply is the same as I said. For digital signals if the Reed Solomon algorithm isn't working (and frankly when I watch the error messages in the streams through VLC I don't think it is) one percent error can be huge. You've said that WinTV has troubles too, how do you expect GBPVR to fix a broken data stream?

The only thing I can think of is to see if your QAM TV gives you any diagnostic info. If you see a lot of errors or no errors, then you can assume are in the Hauppauge software/hardware. Remember again this is still beta software.

Martin

[sub]

Anthony I think your message and sub's reply got merged, but sub's reply is the same as I said. For

Doh, I've done it again! Sorry. I musnt be getting enough sleep I keep clicking the damn 'edit' button instead of 'quote'. (second time today)

[Anthony]

OK, Here are the logs from trying to tune Live TV. I opened GBPVR, selected Live TV, and got a black screen. Then I quit the program.

A quick peek of the logs seems to indicate it couldn't lock on the signal.

After saving the logs, I disconnected my splitter, and replaced it with a single 2-way splitter (one for the cable modem, one for the HVR-1600 cable input). There was no change in signal strength/quality and WinTV acts the same as before.

As for the 86%, that's just my calculation based on WinTV showing 12 bars out of 14, though I realize that doesn't really mean squat.

Unfortunately, my HDTV doesn't show any kind of diagnostic info that I know of either.

So, it appears I'm just out-of-luck. I wish I had known this would be so problematic before I wasted money on the new tuner cards. Geez, my DSM-520 died, the Zap2It listings are screwy, and now my tuner cards don't work. All I want is to watch some TV!

Thanks sub, and everyone, for your support.

Anthony

P.S. Are there any better QAM tuner cards on the market that are compatible with GBPVR? I already tried the HDHomeRun and couldn't get it to work with anything either.

[sub]

I dont know if it'll help, but you could try setting the following in config.xml.

<BDASubmitTuningRequestTwiceOnRecord>true</BDASubmitTuningRequestTwiceOnRecord>
<BDASubmitTuningRequestTwiceOnLivePreview>true</BDASubmitTuningRequestTwiceOnLivePreview>

A quick peek of the logs seems to indicate it couldn't lock on the signal.

Yeah, thats the thing that stands out to me.

So, it appears I'm just out-of-luck. I wish I had known this would be so problematic before I wasted money on the new tuner cards.

Digital TV stuff is definitely much more complex than analog cards, and there is a lot more that can go wrong. Considering QAM support has only been in GB-PVR for two days officially, I think its a bit early to have a defeatist attitude.

It might be worth contacting Hauppauge support to tell them what you're seeing WinTV, and hopefully fixes might come out of that which will help with GB-PVR aswell. Also worth trying to find out with signal/quality values other users are getting.

P.S. Are there any better QAM tuner cards on the market that are compatible with GBPVR? I already tried the HDHomeRun and couldn't get it to work with anything either.

Its interesting you had a HDHomeRun and it didnt work for you either. Makes me come back to signal again.

[mvallevand]

After saving the logs, I disconnected my splitter, and replaced it with a single 2-way splitter (one for the cable modem, one for the HVR-1600 cable input). There was no change in signal strength/quality and WinTV acts the same as before.

My cableco wouldn't even put my cable modem on the CATV line, the installed a commercial grade splitter (I'm talking like an electrical panel) with two runs to this room. Then when I went digital they added a commercial amp for the CATV side.

Martin

[sub]

Yeah its probably worth temporarily trying it without the cable modem splitter to see if it helps.