Clear QAM on ATI HD 650?

[imloggedin]

I cant seem to get this to work on SageTV. Do you have to have Vista installed to use Clear QAM on this card? or can u use XP? The manual for SageTV doesnt seem to have directions on setting up Clear QAM. Can someone layout some directions for me?

Thanks

[Opus4]

If you check the SageTV System Requirements page, you'll notice that the 650 isn't listed as a supported card for clear QAM.

- Andy

[imloggedin]

yah i saw that after i posted the one here. sorry

[IConver]

I just shut down Sage long enough to check and see whether my ATI 650 tuner would tune QAM channels if I plugged in my RCN cable to the DTV jack and scanned from GBPVR. Short answer-- I was able to scan, tune, watch, and record gobs of QAM channels.

Longer answer: It was my first time messing with GBPVR. The config tool is crap, and I had to wade through gobs of channels and sub-channels to manually remap each and every channel, but I got more than 20 channels, which suggests to me that the ATI 650 (non-PCIe, non-Vista) is totally able to scan and find QAM channels with minimal extra work.

Interestingly enough, I then shut the GBPVR down and brought Sage back up, and had it scan for channels on the DTV Tuner with "Cable" selected instead of "Antenna." It found the first two channels that popped up in GBPVR-- TLC HD and Animal Planet HD.

It doesn't see EPG data, it didn't find the rest of the channels, and it doesn't automatically map the two channels to their appropriate places, but this is an intriguing and promising development.

Now from what I can tell, the "development" of ATI 650 QAM support in GBPVR entailed someone tweaking a and adding a few lines in the GBPVR bda.ini file.

The inserted lines are:

[ATI 650 Pro (QAM)]
TUNING_TYPE=ATSC
TUNING_SPECIAL=2
FILTER_TUNER=ATI BDA Digital Tuner
FILTER_CAPTURE=ATI BDA Digital Capture
PIN_TUNER_IN=Input0
PIN_TUNER_OUT=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_IN=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_OUT=MPEG2 Transport

I found this snippet right next to the similar bit for ATI 650 Pro (ATSC) and analog. No problems, nothing special, just letting Windows stupidly scan for "ATSC" channels at frequencies that are not strictly within the normal US VHF/UHF range.

I am going into all this detail regarding the GBPVR setup because I think that lack of any formal integration or setup for the ATI card indicates to me that it is possible to get Clear QAM tuning out of the generic XP ATI drivers. If this is the case, then there's no reason to assume that SageTV is fundamentally incapable of getting QAM out of the ATI 650 tuner.

I've begun fiddling with the various tweaks that Avermedia users have taken advantage of to see if I can mimic their success with the ATI PCI 650.

[IConver]

Per the instructions at: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30431,

I added modified the line ending in ""dshow_tv_type=" that came a few lines after "broadcast_standard=ATSC"--now reads "dshow_tv_type=QAM".

I also created an empty file and named it “QAM_FRQ_CACHE.ENABLE”

Then I moved the .FRQ files in the SageTV dir that were in any way ATI device related.

Upon restarting the Sage service and client, I redid the channel scan and found more than 40 channels. Now I just have to figure out channel remapping...

[benjatelcom]

Fantastic... I am going to try this out, I have a 650, and have blown a month now trying to get my HDHR to work properly, desperate for an HD tuner...

[benjatelcom]

NO luck. Followed these instructions but yields no channels in scan mode.

The 650 pro works on MCE, can anyone elaborate as to why it doesn't function in Sage?

Now I have two HD tuners that can't catch HD in SageTV, but can in other apps. This is getting depressing.

[IConver]

So until/unless I come up with a better way to detail my progress, I'll include a massive summary of my progress right here. I've now performed more than 50 full scans, just to verify that I'm accurately configuring things. Among other things, I added fans, eliminated taps/splitters, and generally filtered out other possible wrinkles.

Step 1:

1. I upgraded to the newest beta version of SageTV to get the latest QAM tuning improvements.
2. Then I ran GBPVR for two "baseline" scans...
3. Then make sure you quit GBPVR completely and disable it's service from the Control Panel shortcut "Administrative Tools"
4. You can use the frequencies from the BDA\ATSC\HVR1600\qam.ini file (if you take into account the missing zeros), plus the SCAN-1.cache file to remind yourself which channels should be hot. Basically, if GBPVR doesn't show you any channels, you're probably not going to get anything in SageTV.
5. Then open newest SageTV beta, remove the ATI 650 digital TV and/or ATSC tuners and associated channel lineups if already listed in SageTV, and close SageTV client and service.
6. Edit sage.properties to remove any trace of any bad EPG or channel mappings you may have already messed with for the digital tuner. Save.
7. Reopen SageTV, add the tuner, selecting the digital TV tuner and cable as options, then pick a different lineup from any you're using for other tuners. Do not scan. Finish setup, close out sage client and service.

Step 2:

1. Edit Sage.properties to change the dshow_type to QAM for the ATI 650 digital tv tuner. (If you see a line mentioning ATSC, don't worry about that, it will change later.)
2. (I also doubled or tripled the dwell time for channel tuning/scanning, but I can't say for sure whether it makes a difference.)
3. Then you need to figure out how you're going to deal with the incorrect frequency table that Sage will try to use unless you intervene. I tried a wide variety of options, but the "best" option seems to be manually modifying a copy of the default QAM frq file to change out all the frequencies for those better matching the channels listed in the GBPVR scans and the QAM.ini file. (Note:I also tried skipping channels that were empty, but this just made Sage overwrite the file.)
4. If you manually edit the file, then you will need to also add a blank file titled QAM_FRQ_CACHE.ENABLE to your SageTV\SageTV directory before restarting the app and service.
5. Run a scan, then rerun the scan a few times if you are missing a channel here or there. (Improving signal strength seems to reduce/eliminate the need for repeated scans.)
6. Once you've got (most of) what you want or at least those channels you think are available over clear QAM, save the lineup and make sure the changes stick.
7. Then go back into the lineup. One by one for each DTV#x.x channel found, figure out what channel you're watching and map it to a different physical channel (The corresponding channel in your cable provider's QAM EPG lineup). This will associate the actual DTV channels to the virtual channel numbers that your cable company and tvguide use. It doesn't list them in the order to which you are accustomed, so that would require the additional step of assigning a logical channel number (again, to the # listed in your TV Guide, EPG, etc...).
8. (Note:Warning: Trying to manually add channels, fiddling with logical maps, and other things tend to leave you with permanent bugginess in the lineup. There's no way to delete one channel, one map, or otherwise clean things up without wiping out the lineup, the tuner, and the tuner/epg/lineup stuff in the sage.properties. I am going to just stick to the physical mappings of channels that SageTV scans and recognizes for now...)

A few other notes:

• After all this, I got ~43 channels, and there are at least 20 more that pop in and out depending on which scan I do. I am hoping that a preamp will bring them all in consistently, but I need to go buy one tomorrow.
• Along with checking GBPVR for initial frequency and channel data, such as a look at any clear QAM channels, I also scanned through the result at: http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/lineupui and the channel listing provided by my cable provider for cross reference.

[IConver]

Still some definite kinds to be worked out, but I can say that cleaning up the signal by adding an amp, shortening the cable run, and reducing splitters made a world of difference.