QAM & HDTV Tuner Cards

[CharleyZ]

Are there any good QAM TV tuner cards available that work well with SageTV? My cable provider offers unencrypted QAM for the regular channel lineup! Only the premium channels are encrypted.

[ke6guj]

YOur best choice right now is the HDHomerun. Available at http://www.9thtee.com/hdhomerun.htm . It is an external dual-QAM tuner that does work in Sage.

Otherwise, there is a new program out there, http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...&highlight=qam , that will let you use a QAM tuner in a networked PC and let Sage record from it over the network. No, AFAIK, the HVR-1600 doesn't do QAM. Sage doens't do QAM natively, so these solutions are 3rd party addons that Sage can use.

[srothwell]

The On-Air GT (www.autumnwave.com) also works very well. I have two of them in my system

Stacy

[jayrbrown77]

How do you find out if your cable compnay doesn't encrypt QAM?

[Polypro]

Plug your cable into a display that has a QAM tuner, Check AVS Forum, call your cable company...

P

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by srothwell

The On-Air GT (www.autumnwave.com) also works very well. I have two of them in my system

Stacy

Are you using the autumnware to receive HD without using a cable box? If so, what information did you enter into SageTV to access the channels? I seached the autumnwave site and found no reference to QAM.

[srothwell]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Plug your cable into a display that has a QAM tuner, Check AVS Forum, call your cable company...

P

I'd shy away from calling the cable company. Not only are the Customer Service Reps not the --- er--- sharpest knives in the drawer -- but they'll likely out and out lie to you and tell you that you have to have the cable box to receive anything.

The FCC says that any re-transmissions of local OTA DTV must be unencrypted. My area, Comcast does that and much more, like Discovery HD, Nat Geo HD, Universal HD, etc. Doesn't mean it will always be that way.

Anyway, there are other cable ops that take the law to the letter and have actually DOWNCONVERTED the OTA HD signal (in Orlando FL - Brighthouse) so that all you get is SDTV and you must buy the cable box to get it in HD. When people complained both Brighthouse and the FCC said they were following the letter (but defintely not the spirit) of the law.

Stacy

[srothwell]

Originally Posted by carlgar

Are you using the autumnware to receive HD without using a cable box? If so, what information did you enter into SageTV to access the channels? I seached the autumnwave site and found no reference to QAM.

Well..... It's not pretty but the rewards are worth the effort.
First you're gonna need a TV that has a QAM tuner it and WILL NOT automatically reassign channels based upon PSIP data. I have an Olevia TV and it works great for this. You need to do a channel scan and have the tv find all the unencrypted channels. Write down all the channels. You'll find a lot of them like 76.1 76.2 76.3, etc. You'll likely need these numbers later. If you don't have another HDTV set, you can also kill sage completely and use the software that came with your on-air GT. Just make sure you completely kill that software (and don't auto-load it on a reboot) or it will be ugly.

On the Sage side, do in this order:

1. Look in your \program files\sagetv\sagetv directory for the *.frq files. Make sure to delete any that say USB-GT, etc..

2. Add your new USB-GT Tuner. If it's already there, remove the source from Sage and re-add it.

3. Define it as Digital TV and then Cable TV.

4. When it asks what EPG to use, make sure (the first time) to say "Do Not use EPG with this source."

5. Do a channel scan when it asks. It is now seeing what channels are unencrypted and will note those in the USB-GTxxx.frq file.

6. Make a copy of the .Frq file for safe keeping.

7. Remove the source you just added

8. Re-add it and this time, select your cable company's proper EPG guide (in my case it's Comcast - Digital Expanded). DO NOT do another channel scan as this will invalidate the .frq file you just made.

Now comes the hard part.....

You're going to need to take the channels you got off the non-sage device earlier and do a physical re-map with a translation you're going to find in the .frq file.

example :
xxx.frq file
#ch:index major minor program_id phyical_channel inversion qam-mod ctrl_bits(1:enable; 0:disable)
….
ch:43 18 3 3 161 0 0 1 #FUN
ch:44 11 1 3 165 0 0 1 #KTTV DT
ch:45 13 1 3 166 0 0 1 #KCOP DT
ch:45 0 1 1 168 0 0 1 #DTV68.0
ch:46 0 2 2 168 0 0 1 #DTV68.1

FUN mapping “161-18-3“, KTTV DT mapping “165-11-1” , DTV68.0 mapping “168-0-1”.
Or index mapping KCOP DT is “45”, DTV68.1 is 46, FUN is 43

Sometimes the cable company sends PSIP data which will put the name in as seen above, but sometimes it's not there and you'll just get like DTV68.1. That's where you need to have seen the channel available on another source like a QAM TV.

You need to take these and go into change the usb-gt source and remap each of the channels with the proper data described above.

Kind of a pain, BUT once it's done it's done and won't have to happen again unless your cable company changes its lineup. Also, if the cable company adds a new channel it will show up in your EPG but won't work. You'll need to repeat the entire process to add a channel, with the exception of your re-mappings you previously made will still be there.

Give it a try. If you need more help let me know.

Stacy