WinTV not detecting some broadcast channels after frequency moved in ATSC Repack

[NightHawk]

My area (San Diego, CA) recently in the past few weeks had some of the local TV digital broadcast channels change physical frequencies/channels so a rescan on all receiving digital TV tuner devices was required.

Both of my HDTVs tuners after rescan correctly detected all of the channels that changed and they all work fine on my HDTVs.
With my Hauppage WinTV card in my PC (model HVR-1250) however the rescan for channels using NextPVR was unable to find a couple of the channels that changed frequencies, specifically KNSD(NBC) now using physical channel 17 and KSWB(Fox) now using physical channel 26. Each of those channels have four sub-channels.
I could see those physical channels tried in the scan process, but the channels were not detected there. All other local TV channels were properly detected and work in NextPVR however.

I have already installed the latest WinTV drivers and no change.
Same problem with the latest versions of WinTV7 or WinTV8 apps.

I noticed a new version of Hauppauge's WinTV8.5 app (which requires a code to install I don't have) came out a few days ago and in the release notes this is listed:
Fixed an issue when channels move frequency on ATSC Repack, but rescanning still shows "No Signal"

Which sounds like the issue I'm experiencing!
However the latest device drivers included with that latest version of WinTV8.5 did not help (it allows installation of the drivers without a code, only the WinTV app itself requires a code to install after).
But if the WinTV app's channel scanning process changed to fix this issue, wouldn't NextPVR need to make a similar change in its channel scanning process to fix the issue too?

Anyone else experiencing a similar problem with WinTV cards after local TV channel frequency changes recently?

[mvallevand]

Why not install NextPVR to see if it works better. Sub has posted that it is better WinTV (not sure about 8.5)

Martin

[sub]

I'm not aware of anything special that has changed about the US, other than moving channels around. This shouldn't require any changes to the application.

Might be worth installing WinTV 8.5, to see if it picks up these channels. If it can find the channels, then NextPVR should be able to as well. It's likely something like the signal is a bit weak. The tuners in real TVs are often much better with low signal strength than the tuners in PC tuners.

[NightHawk]

I'm not aware of anything special that has changed about the US, other than moving channels around. This shouldn't require any changes to the application.

Might be worth installing WinTV 8.5, to see if it picks up these channels. If it can find the channels, then NextPVR should be able to as well. It's likely something like the signal is a bit weak. The tuners in real TVs are often much better with low signal strength than the tuners in PC tuners.

I installed NextPVR yesterday and have done several channel scans since then but it doesn't pick up those two channels. One other channel that moved also it does pick up. Same exactly the issue I had with the WinTV7 and WinTV8 apps in its channel scans the past week.

These two channels are very strong signal the strongest I receive along with another from that broadcast location so its not a signal strength issue. Its odd that WinTV's latest release in its release notes mentions this exact issue, but its not clear if its a hardware issue, driver issue, or app issue, I would have thought PVR apps rely on the driver to detect a channel however. But I have the latest drivers now and didn't help. Before the frequency change in the past few weeks, those 2 channels worked fine with full strength too.

In order to test the latest version of WinTV 8.5 to see if it helps, I would have to buy an access code from Hauppage since they only allow free access for existing WinTV hardware owners with the older WinTV7 and 8 apps which I have tried and they have the problem. So I switched to NextPVR which I prefer with its features over WinTV anyway, but would like it to get all my channels.

Its a very strange issue, I don't know if its an issue with my particular model WinTV (HVR-1250) vs other models like the newer quad-tuner model. Would like to see if any other NextPVR users with WinTV tuner cards in the USA that have had local TV channel frequency changes due to the repack process recently have had similar failures of detecting some of these channels. If the channels moved in my area (San Diego, CA) others probably moved as well in other areas recently too.

[mvallevand]

The repack won't be the issue that just moves channels to existing frequencies that others can get in the ATSC spectrum. It might be using another of sub's programs https://tscapture.com/ to capture a full transport stream and providing a link on the cloud. I think in demo mode you can create a one minute sample for free.

Martin

[NightHawk]

The repack won't be the issue that just moves channels to existing frequencies that others can get in the ATSC spectrum. It might be using another of sub's programs https://tscapture.com/ to capture a full transport stream and providing a link on the cloud. I think in demo mode you can create a one minute sample for free.

Martin

Thats what I would have thought, but the WinTV 8.5 revision log mentions the issue specifically with repack channels not being detected or with "no signal" so Haupaggue obviously encounter this or a similar problem very recently. Not clear what changed with the channel's data after the frequency change that would cause this however - a mystery!

I just tried that ts capture program, it has its own channel scan very similar to that of NextPVR. It also didn't find any channels on physical channel 26 just like NextPVR and WinTV. It did find the one on physical channel 17, but NextPVR has done so sometimes as well. However when I try to actually access that channel it doesn't work - and with tscapture it created a zero length .ts file when I tried on that channel. So essentially same results I get with NextPVR and WinTV apps with this WinTV card!

[mvallevand]

Channels and frequencies are different The full scan should capture all four channels at once.

Martin

[NightHawk]

Channels and frequencies are different The full scan should capture all four channels at once.

Martin

Yep it should, but the scan finds nothing at the physical channel 26 for example. But the signal is there just not detected with this WinTV card and driver+software for some reason, though it was detected when it was at his previous physical channel up until the past week. Very strange since TVs had no problem detecting it at the new physical channel frequency right away on their scans I ran last week.

[NightHawk]

So I'm looking for some confirmation of this particular problem with someone with a similar WinTV card on Windows 7, 8 or 10.

[mvallevand]

You mention that the signals are strong. Do you have a signal amplifier on? If so try with it off.

Martin.