HD Theater Media Extender, WINTV-HVR 1600, and Digital Cable

[radams]

Hello.

There may be an FAQ on this somewhere, possibly another thread, but my searches have come up empty, so here goes.

I bought the HD Theater Media Extender and HVR-1600 from Sage directly. I've upgraded to Digital Cable (Shaw Cable Systems) via a Motorola DCT700. Has coax in/out plus analog (left/right audio/video out).

I've had Sage running on an old WinTV PVR-500 for a few years (via good old Shaw cable analog) and been happy with it, but things change and I wanted digital TV and keep my noisy media PC far away from where I watch TV; so here I am.

Replaced the old PVR-500 with the HVR-1600, no problem. Uninstalled the old drivers, reinstalled the new ones. No problem. Ordered and activated a new DCT700 set top box from Shaw so I had something to feed my new 1600.

Updated Sage TV to the latest and greatest (Windows based) and it saw the new 1600 card - I thought great. Then tried to get any video to work on the input setup and I get squat.

So I'm thinking that even though the card does OTA HD / digital, it really isn't setup to talk directly to a set top box, at least not over coax.

I'm thinking I need to contact Hauppauge and ask (read spend more hard earned bucks) on the analog extender whcih clearly plugs into the card I have. Then take the R/L audio, video outputs from my set top box and pump it into the Hauppauge.

Or am I on glue?

My next question is, since I have this very cool media extender working for me in my bedroom, how do I deal with actually changing channels on my cable set top box, which is physically located in another room along with the computer, and presumably hooked up with the IR Blaster. IE. If I change a channel on my media extender unit, does it actually invoke my Sage TV server and its IR Blaster to change channels? Or am I hooped?

Thank you all who can help provide some clarity to this.