Setup With Comcast Set Top Box

[krustythekroom]

So I know Comcast stuff has been covered, but what I'm wanting to do is a little different, and I haven't been able to get things to work.

First, there are two different boxes that Comcast supplies. One is the set top box that gets On Demand. The other is a digital adapter, which only translate the digital signal to an analog signal. Can both be used with GBPVR?

I would like to set up GBPVR to work with the set top box. My thought was to take the cable line from the wall to the box, out from the box to a splitter, which will go to both the GBPVR machine and my TV. Does this sound like it can be done? What settings are required in GBPVR in order to read this signal.

Now, I'm not looking for HDTV, and I'm just looking to record shows, which will then be burned on another computer, or watched and deleted. I am planning on just using the mouse and keyboard to control the GBPVR computer.

Thanks for all the assistance. This is probably the most helpful, fastest responding community I've ever been involved with.

[nightwalker]

You can do what you want, I'm not sure I would but you can. You'll need a tuner card of course to feed the signal from the STB to the computer for recording. You'll also need a way to change channels on the STB, either one of the cards with an included IR Blaster or a USB UIRT, etc.

The rub will come in when you have a conflict between something recording in GBpvrand something you want to see live, since both will be using the same STB.

[krustythekroom]

Thanks for the quick reply. I didn't think of the conflict.

I do currently have to PVR-150 cards in the computer. I guess what I could do is set the computer up as the main TV watching source, and then if the desire ever came up to use On Demand, then I could switch to the regular TV.

Now, I tried connecting just a single line out of my STB to the PVR-150, but I was not able to get any picture. I had this machine running great a while back before the transition to digital cable, but I have not dabbled with it since. Are there certain settings that are needed for using the STB?

[nightwalker]

Don't forget that unlike your last setup, this time the STB is your tuner, not the 150. Make sure you have it set to whatever channel your using for composite or SVideo input to the 150. There is also a setting in config to set the source on your recording service as external tuner.

[pBS]

lots of those digital adapters have only RF outputs, so would hav to use channel 3-4 output and have pvr150 tuner tune in ch3-4 to pick it up...
in capture source setup choose 'external tuner,fixed channel' and select same channel you set digital adapter to...and don't forget you have to setup blaster to blast to it to change channels on DA...[which can be tricky with those digital adapters]

the 'real' set top box should be used with svideo outs, better quality...
[still have to blast to it to change channels tho]

[krustythekroom]

So I set both of my PVR-150's to external recorder, fixed channel, and set it to channel 3, as that is the channel I have my TV set to when I watch through the STB. When I run the Tuning Assistant, it sees channel 3, but nothing else. When I start GBPVR, I only get a black screen, no matter what channel I look at. What am I missing here?

[nightwalker]

How do you have your STB connected to the the 150, straight RF coax or Composite or Svideo. If you have Composite or Svideo for outputs either of those will give you better signal than the RF output. It sounds like you've got something amiss with the connections. I found it easier to bring up WinTV and get the picture working there first, then redo your recording source setup. I also found that part easier to just delete and do a new setup as opposed to trying to edit things. You'll also have to redo your TV guide setup as the channels will be different using the STB.

[krustythekroom]

The 150 is connected directly to the STB with coax cable. The weird thing was that I can see a picture on channel 3 only during the tuning assistant, but in GBPVR, I couldn't see any picture.

I'll try deleting the old tuners, and starting fresh.

[krustythekroom]

OK, now I deleted the two capture devices that I had previously used. I added them new, and have them set as external tuner, fixed channel. Save everything, and open GBPVR. When I click on Live TV, it says there are no tuners. I go back into the config, and there aren't any capture devices in the list. I set up the capture devices three times, and had the same result each time.

I did get it working properly with WinTV, so I know the connection works, but the settings aren't being saved. Any help would be appreciated.

[sub]

OK, now I deleted the two capture devices that I had previously used. I added them new, and have them set as external tuner, fixed channel. Save everything, and open GBPVR. When I click on Live TV, it says there are no tuners. I go back into the config, and there aren't any capture devices in the list. I set up the capture devices three times, and had the same result each time.

Post your config.exe.log and I'll take a look if there is some error stopping your previous capture sources from loading.