Mixed Analog/Digital Program Guide

[Diego Garcia]

Comcast just graciously converted all of my premium analog channels to digital, so I'm in the process of seeing what I can "recover" by hooking up an HDHomeRun to my system. The hardware end of that process went pretty well, thanks to Opus' instructions.

However, I'm confused about the EPG choices for this kind of mixed setup. The lower analog channels are still valid, but the upper/premium ones are gone. Should I set up the HDHomeRun tuners to use the digital lineup, or what?

- Diego

[Diego Garcia]

Two additional questions...

I just happened to do a rescan of the HDHomeRun unit, and could swear that it picked up a few more channels the second time through. With the Comcast analog->digital conversion just having taken place yesterday in my area, is it possible that they're still moving stuff around, and possibly placing a few more channels in an unencrypted state?

Also, after doing that rescan I removed and re-added the two HDHomeRun video sources from within Sage. After doing so, the digital signals couldn't be seen anymore (they show up in Channel Setup as "No Signal"). Do I need to reboot the system after making that kind of change?

- Diego

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Diego Garcia

However, I'm confused about the EPG choices for this kind of mixed setup. The lower analog channels are still valid, but the upper/premium ones are gone. Should I set up the HDHomeRun tuners to use the digital lineup, or what?

If the tuner is getting the digital-tier channels that are not on any other lineup, then, yes, you would have to use the digital lineup choice to have access to those channels' EPG data. Otherwise, it is simply a matter of mapping the channels to the correctly named digital stations on the Zap2it lineup that you use.

Originally Posted by Diego Garcia

I just happened to do a rescan of the HDHomeRun unit, and could swear that it picked up a few more channels the second time through. With the Comcast analog->digital conversion just having taken place yesterday in my area, is it possible that they're still moving stuff around, and possibly placing a few more channels in an unencrypted state?

I don't use Comcast, but from what others have said, cable companies can & do move digital channels around.

Also, after doing that rescan I removed and re-added the two HDHomeRun video sources from within Sage. After doing so, the digital signals couldn't be seen anymore (they show up in Channel Setup as "No Signal"). Do I need to reboot the system after making that kind of change?

No reboot should be needed. Did you do another channel scan in SageTV? You have to scan in SageTV any time you rescan in the HDHR software -- when it creates a new scn file, the SageTV-created frq file gets removed.

- Andy

[Diego Garcia]

Andy,

Some more information:

When I add the HDHomeRun tuner, I have Sage do a channel scan. It completes that successfully, and finds the same number of digital channels that it did previously when it was working.

However, it isn't possible to view any of the digital signals. When I click on the View button for any of the enabled channels (i.e., the ones with green dots on them), I get a signal strength report (75 - 95%), but after a period of time I get a No Signal message where the video preview box is supposed to be.

This isn't what happened previously. Then I was able to see the channels both in the Channel Setup phase, and in the initial I-just-added-the-tuner screen.

The other thing that's odd is that the HDHomeRun GUI utility now can't display channels, either. It finds them, and reports a valid signal strength (as well as the subchannel encryption status), but when I click View, while VLC launches, it doesn't display anything. It used to display stuff, too.

One other piece of data: after configuring the HDHomeRun tuners within Sage, I used to get a warning message from the HDHomeRun GUI saying that the tuner was "owned" by another computer at the IP address of my SageTV machine (which is, of course, the same machine that HDHomeRun is on), and asking if I wanted to override that "ownership". At one point, after removing the HDHomeRun tuners from within the Sage configuration, I clicked "sure, go ahead and override". I think, although I'm not sure, that it was after that point that I started running into this no signal problem. Unfortunately, if there was some kind of configuration change resulting from the override I can't figure out how to undo it. There's nothing in the HDHomeRun ini file, or in the registry.

Any other thoughts? Or do I just give up and spend my time staring at a static-filled screen?

- Diego

[Opus4]

If you can't even view anything using the software provided by SiliconDust, then I suggest contacting them for help to get the basics working first.

- Andy

[Diego Garcia]

Okay. I was just thinking that since it did work previously, and there is clearly some interaction/dependency/mutual configuration between Sage and HDHomeRun, that someone here might have run into the problem.

- Diego