ClearQAM - entering channels manually

[mmatheny]

Sub, I bit the bullet this past weekend, and installed Win7 Beta build 6936. The built-in support for hybrid tuner cards like the 2250 is amazing. I know GBPVR is capable of having this same hybrid tuner support.

After installing and assigning tv guides, it scanned for clear QAM and reported back it didn't find any channels. BUT, there is this neat piece of the tuner setup that lets me add channels (such as 86.3), name it, and tell it which other channel to pull it's listings from. It works SO SWEET! It pulls in every channel I added manually (over 20!) Why can't GBPVR have the ability to add a channel, name it, and map it to the listings for another channel (the Analog versioin)? I know you stated that there is lots more info that needs to be added instead of just the channel number, but it seems MS has found a way to either not require it, or they have a database of the extra info, or something!?

Maybe it can and I just haven't found it!

[sub]

It basically comes down to me being a team of one, and Microsoft having virtually limitless number of people that can have working on MCE. If I had the time, there is lots of cool stuff I could do.

ClearQAM also gets less dedicated time from me than DVB etc, because I have no access to QAM signals for development or testing.

[mmatheny]

So, how do you imagine they get the extra info needed to enter a channel manually?

[sub]

They'll scan for all the same information, in pretty much the same way as GB-PVR scan does.

I only said that the app needs much more info if you're trying to manually tweak its database to manually create channels. You'd have the same problem if you were try to tweak the behind the scenes datastore that MCE uses. Its only easy in MCE because they've provided a screen intended for user access where they can select a specific channel. There is no equivalent user function provided in GB-PVR. (Given "86.3" where "86" is the physical channel and "3" is the program number, I too could create a scan feature that scans channel 86 for all the PIDs and PMT etc for program 3, but I havnt because of the aforementioned lack of available time and lack of ability to test anything ClearQam related.

[mmatheny]

Thanx for the input, as usual!

[dennit]

After installing and assigning tv guides, it scanned for clear QAM and reported back it didn't find any channels. BUT, there is this neat piece of the tuner setup that lets me add channels (such as 86.3), name it, and tell it which other channel to pull it's listings from. It works SO SWEET! It pulls in every channel I added manually (over 20!) Why can't GBPVR have the ability to add a channel, name it, and map it to the listings for another channel (the Analog versioin)?

GBPVR is so cool already. I just wish sub could pass off the support work to some of the people in this community who love GBPVR. He'd have more free time plus some time to play with implementing the features that interest him.

Microsoft may have a team, but sub manages to provide software that I prefer over MCE and simultaneously provide faster support than any other software company I know of. I really don't know how he manages it.

As far as your problem is concerned, it looks to me like there are two parts. The first is to get the tuning_request data. That's normally found in the scan.cache file, but you can build it manually, insert it into your scan.cache and it becomes available. I'm not sure why GBPVR isn't finding it in a scan, but it looks like MCE fails at that step too. The data you need to manually build it is available from TSREader, and I suspect is obtainable from WinTV with some effort. Once you have the tuning_request data built correctly, you will be able to tune to that channel in config.

The second step is to map that data to the analog EPG listings. That's easy. I can think of a couple of ways if you can manually build the tuning_request data.

As an aside, if you know you have subchannels on 86 and 88, (e.g. 86.3 and 88.1 and 88.2) you can change your qam.ini (make a backup) so it scans only those two frequencies. I know the full scan can take a long time, and I often do this when I want to scan one or two frequencies to see if things have changed.

Good luck.

[mmatheny]

Thanx - might give it a whirl!