Getting a WinTV Nova-TD to work

[alphonsus]

I'm on sage 6.3, running on Server 2003 SP with a Hauppauge PVR-350 taking it's channel lineup from XML.

I've just bought a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-TD usb stick. It's set up in 'diversity mode' (both tuners acting as one to boost the signal) and works in the WinTV application apart from random crashes which I'm attributing to the WinTV app as it's never been exactly stable. Channel scan worked fine.

SageTV finds the tuner as 'dev1 path 0' and lets me select Digital Tuner as the source, but when I try to scan for channels I get nothing.

What choices do I need to make when installing it in SageTV? Cable or Antenna? Tuning or no tuning? Scan for channels or not? Use XML data or an alternative tv data source?

Any help would be appreciated!
I'm in the UK, BTW.

[oceanfront]

I'm having exactly the same problem. I've tried this in Diversity mode and dual tuner, but I just get No Signal on everything. Also, selecting a DVBT region doesn't seem to do anything, i end up with a list of channels covering the whole of Europe. Are there third party drivers I need to install to get this to work, or some config settings to try? I'm missing Sagetv

[oceanfront]

I fixed this problem on my machine. The default frequencies for the transmitter in my area in the PredefinedDVBT.frq file were incorrect. I got the correct frequencies out of the .mdb file that WinTV generated for my tuner card (mine was hcwChanDB_5.mdb) and copied those into the PredefinedDVBT.frq file

1) Open the C:/Program Files/WinTV/hcwChanDB_5.mdb file in Access or OpenOffice Base. Yours might have a different filename, but it'll be the only .mdb file in there. Look at the hcwservices table you'll see a column called freq_actual. There will only be 5 or 6 unique numbers in that column. Make a note of each unique number, these are the frequencies used by the transmitter in your area.

2) Open the C:/Program Files/SageTV/SageTV/PredefinedDVBT.frq file and search for the local transmitter that you're using, in my case MIDLANDS@FENTON, and you'll see something like this:

"United Kingdom-Midlands@Fenton"

frq:634000000;band:8;
frq:658000000;band:8;
frq:682000000;band:8;
frq:714000000;band:8;
frq:722000000;band:8;
frq:746000000;band:8;
{tune:1;pat:6;sdt:16;}

Just replace the first three digits on the xxx000000 frq numbers on each of the lines above with the unique numbers you pulled from the hcwservices table. If you need more or less lines, add or remove them as necessary. The only thing you need to change is that number, the band should be the same.

3) Restart SageTV and go through video source setup again. Choose No EPG service with this tuner and you should now be able to do a successful Scan for Channels with your Nova-TD. You'll need to remap them to the standard Freeview channel numbers though.

And now I can use SageTV instead of WinTV. A huge relief!

I hope this helps.

[fabiotv]

OK with the freqencies, but what about the "path 1" tuner?

[oceanfront]

When you're setting up the path1 tuner, on the EPG selection screen just choose "Use an existing channel lineup" and then choose the path0 setup.

[alphonsus]

Thanks for all this - will give it a go (took the stick back and got a refund, now I'll try again).