Comcast Digital Transport Adaptor IR support

[fiatmonkey]

Hi folks,

I am wondering if anyone has integrated with the Comcast digitial transport adaptors yet? If you are not familiar they are these little recievers that convert the digital signal to analog and Comcast is providing them to all of their analog users. It only has cable in and cable out no rca or s-video and it comes with an IR remote.
http://comcast.com/digitialnow

Since the signal is getting converted to Analog (which BTW the picture is really good and I now get 20 additional channels and will be losing analog channels soon as the conversion completes) I guess I can use my hauppauge cable analog reciever card. However I am wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to IR blast this unit? I have not used an IR Blaster before nor do I have the cables from Hauppauge.

Thanks!

FM

[reggie14]

If your Hauppauge card didn't come with an IR blaster you'd need to purchase a different IR blaster solution. Lots of people use the USB-UIRT.

But, if Comcast is switching to digital with DTAs, you should be able to pick up the same channels using a HDHomeRun, or any QAM tuner. Only the standard-definition channels would be available, but you'd be able to pick up the digital signal directly, rather than going digital->analog->digital, which should improve quality. Of course, there's a cost involved in doing that, but the USB-UIRT isn't free either (~$50, I think).

[QueOnda]

fiatmonkey,

Another option (incase you didn't know), that the conversion to digital the transport adapters are Clear QAM tuners. So you can use any Clear QAM tuners. There are many capture cards which allows you to do this. One I love is the HDHomeRun.

[fiatmonkey]

Ah yes; QAM. It's been a while but I think my card may have one (I should know this shouldn't I??) I have been using the firewire to comcast digitial box setup up so I haven't monkey'd with this in a while.

In that case I have a second question

How should one go about assigning the QAM channels to a channel line up so they get the proper information? I use the local lineup for my City now for Comcast digital. I recall sometime ago when I tried to add a second line up with the same channels it would never alow both channels to show up.

I am sure there is another dedicated thread on this so sorry for being lazy...

-FM

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by fiatmonkey

Ah yes; QAM. It's been a while but I think my card may have one (I should know this shouldn't I??) I have been using the firewire to comcast digitial box setup up so I haven't monkey'd with this in a while.

You mean does your card have a QAM tuner? What kind of TV card do you have?

How should one go about assigning the QAM channels to a channel line up so they get the proper information? I use the local lineup for my City now for Comcast digital. I recall sometime ago when I tried to add a second line up with the same channels it would never alow both channels to show up.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, or what level of detail you're looking for, but I think I know what you're talking about. It sounds like you were having a problem where it looked like your HD channel and your SD channel were the same thing in the program guide.

Let's say have channel with call letters WTTG that you're trying to remap. If you remap the HD version to the station WTTG, then it will just get grouped together with the SD version of the channel that you have with your analog tuner. This is Sage trying to be helpful. After all, why would you want the same channel appearing twice in your program guide?

Of course, I like keeping SD and HD channels separate, because I still have an SDTV hooked up to an MVP. If you want to keep the SD and HD channels separate, you have to make sure you choose the digital version of the channel when you click to remap the station. In most cases, it's just the call letters with DT added to the end, e.g., WTTG-DT. Then it should appear separately. You'd probably want to remap the logical channel number too.

[fiatmonkey]

Originally Posted by reggie14

You mean does your card have a QAM tuner? What kind of TV card do you have?

I have Hauppauge Wintv HVR 1600 combo card.

Originally Posted by reggie14

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, or what level of detail you're looking for, but I think I know what you're talking about. It sounds like you were having a problem where it looked like your HD channel and your SD channel were the same thing in the program guide.

Let's say have channel with call letters WTTG that you're trying to remap. If you remap the HD version to the station WTTG, then it will just get grouped together with the SD version of the channel that you have with your analog tuner. This is Sage trying to be helpful. After all, why would you want the same channel appearing twice in your program guide?

Of course, I like keeping SD and HD channels separate, because I still have an SDTV hooked up to an MVP. If you want to keep the SD and HD channels separate, you have to make sure you choose the digital version of the channel when you click to remap the station. In most cases, it's just the call letters with DT added to the end, e.g., WTTG-DT. Then it should appear separately. You'd probably want to remap the logical channel number too.

What you described is exactly what was happening. I guess what I am looknig for is good advice on how to use the second tuner best I can. Maybe if I explain my setup that would help.

SageTV Server: Connected to Digital STB both SD and HD via 1394/firewire. Handles both channel changing and signal. The hauppauge 1600 (soon to be connected using the clear QAM option). It looks like it will get all SD channels and local HD channels about 6 or 7 I think.

An HDTV in the basement hooked up to a HD100 extender
An SDTV in the bedroom using MVP extender

Comcast has about 50-55 HD channels available and I think I subscribe to maybe 48 of them so there are still SD channels I will be watching on the HD TV from time to time. What do you suggest I do to distribute the channels amongst the two tuners? If I dedicate the STB to just the HD channels and the Hauppauge to the SD channels this seems logical. However there will be a conflict between the MVP and the HD100 if I wish to watch a SD channel (SPIKE-DT on one and ETV-DT on the other) since they are coming off the same tuner. Am I making sense?

Appreciate your feedback!

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by fiatmonkey

I have Hauppauge Wintv HVR 1600 combo card.

Most HVR-1600 cards work with QAM, although not all of them do. It sounds like you already know yours does though. Also, the HVR-1600 did include an IR blaster. It's on the same cable as the remote IR receiver.

What do you suggest I do to distribute the channels amongst the two tuners? If I dedicate the STB to just the HD channels and the Hauppauge to the SD channels this seems logical. However there will be a conflict between the MVP and the HD100 if I wish to watch a SD channel (SPIKE-DT on one and ETV-DT on the other) since they are coming off the same tuner. Am I making sense?

Are you able to get your SD channels over firewire? I can get almost all my non-premium HD channels over firewire, but none of my SD channels work.

Assuming your SD channels work over firewire, I see no reason to not have the firewire STB tune both HD and SD channels. You just want to keep the HD channels separate from the SD channels so the MVP can still watch stuff without transcoding.

The cable company will broadcast both HD and SD versions of the broadcast stations. If I were you I'd keep the SD and HD separate. To do this Comcast will have to keep identifying the HD and SD versions separately in the guide data they report. I'm not sure how they'll report it when both versions are digital. Will WTTG be WTTG & WTTG-DT, or WTTG-SD &WTTG-HD or will it be WTTG-DT and WTTG-HD? I'm not sure, but they'll probably be some distinction between the two versions.

Similarly, you'll want to make sure the firewire STB has the HD versions of channels separate from the SD versions. I assume you're doing this already, though. So you have TNT-SD and TNT-HD mapping to two different logical channel numbers.

It's up to you, but I think you probably want to the HVR-1600 QAM tuner to have priority over the firewire tuner (by changing the encoder merits in the properties file). But, if the firewire tuner only does HD channels that could create some problems when trying to watch SD channels live while recording things off the HD network channels.

Does that make sense? I didn't provide instructions on how to remap stations and logical channel numbers because I assume you've already done that and you know how it works. But tel me if you have any questions.

But, you're going to get a free DTA anyway, so you might want to try to hook it up, assuming you find your HVR1600 IR blaster. But, I just tried to do this and I'm not sure it's possible. You'd have to set the input type to TV tuner (since you can't use composite/s-video), have the RF channel set [presumably] to channel 3 all the time, while using IR blasting to change channels. But, I just tried, and when I select the TV tuner as the source, I can't change the RF channel or the tuning method. I don't know why it won't let you change those things.

[fiatmonkey]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Are you able to get your SD channels over firewire? I can get almost all my non-premium HD channels over firewire, but none of my SD channels work.

Yes. I get all of the SD channels via firewire no different than watching directly from the STB.

Originally Posted by reggie14

It's up to you, but I think you probably want to the HVR-1600 QAM tuner to have priority over the firewire tuner (by changing the encoder merits in the properties file).

I am not familiar with this properties file edit you mention but I will check it out.

Thanks for info again. Very good stuff.

Regards,
FM