HDHR questions

[gilded07]

I'm in the channel mapping stage. The HDHR updated to the last firmware when I plugged it in. I have the latest STV files and v6.6.2. I've borrowed a HD extender from a friend.

I have analog SD cable basic - expanded but I can view HD channels via the QAM tuner in my Samsung 52" so I know I get the locals in HD.

When I go to the zap2it website and enter my zip code, should I pick analog SD service or HD digital service? As I said, I don't pay for digital but when I look at the analog listing on zap2it I don't see HD channels listed. Does this mean I should pick the digital cable guide?

When I pick the digital cable guide I see, for example, CBS KPHODT for guide name and 705 for guide number. When I look at the HDHR install wizard after a scan, I see guide number = 5.1; guide name = KPHO Ch; and Tune = 73-2. This is confusing. I don't know what to put where. Help please!

Edit: I'm using this thread as my guide: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...digital+tuning

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by gilded07

When I go to the zap2it website and enter my zip code, should I pick analog SD service or HD digital service? As I said, I don't pay for digital but when I look at the analog listing on zap2it I don't see HD channels listed. Does this mean I should pick the digital cable guide?

You'll want to pick the digital for the HDHR.

When I pick the digital cable guide I see, for example, CBS KPHODT for guide name and 705 for guide number. When I look at the HDHR install wizard after a scan, I see guide number = 5.1; guide name = KPHO Ch; and Tune = 73-2. This is confusing. I don't know what to put where. Help please!

When I last did a scan, I told sage to use the channel from the digital guide eg 705 in your case. I think mainly it just depends on how you want it to show up.

[Fuzzy]

The channel number isn't all that important (just affects where it's placed in the guide), only that it can't have the sub-channel (needs to be just 5, or 705, whatever, just not 5.1). The name is the important part for sage to get the guide info. Use the Digital listing on zap2it, and make the name in HDHR match.

[stanger89]

You shouldn't have to do anything in the HDHR anymore. Sage handles everything directly now.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You shouldn't have to do anything in the HDHR anymore. Sage handles everything directly now.

Including QAM? Because Silicon Dusts channel mapping for my cable co is whack. Someone keeps putting in 3.1 say instead of the guide # from Z2It. Here, I've been manually editing them to be in the right place in the EPG (i.e. the "real" channel # so my HDHR and STB agree and I don't end up with 2 entries for the same channel), and the right station ID.

[stanger89]

Hm... Yeah, I don't think so. I setup QAM with an Avermedia A180 and did it all in Sage.

And I haven't done an OTA scan in the HDHR software since I think before Sage 6.6.

[Opus4]

The HDHR instructions I posted on this forum (the link is in the Tuner Config sticky) say to scan for OTA in SageTV. QAM is scanned first in the HDHR software, then in SageTV. QAM scanning for other tuners is different than QAM scanning for the HDHR.

- Andy

[gilded07]

I can see the HD channels using VLC on the server and I have 3 green lights lit up on the HDHR so I think its working. However, I can't get SageTV preview to work.

For starters, I think I would benefit from some basic definitional help. What's the difference between a logical channel and a physical channel?

I've been using the local HD CBS affiliate as my test channel. In Z2it, the

• Guide Name = KPHODT
• Guide Number = 705

When I run the scan with the HDHR setup utility,

• Tune = CH73-2
• Guide Name = KPHO Ch
• Guide Number = 5-1

Do I need to type "705" and "KPHODT" into the HDHR setup utility - overwrite the Guide Name (KPHO Ch) and Guide Number (5-1 or CH73-2) that are there?

In Setup Video Sources, after adding the HDHR, I get the error message Logical (Guide) Chan # 705
Physical (Tuning) Chan #703

Signal Strength varies between 60 & 75% when trying to preview and no video shows up on preview.

Ultimately, I only want the HDHR to tune 10-12 local channels and my analog tuners to tune all the others. In fact, I'll probably remove the local channels from the analog tuners' guides so all locals watching will go through the HDHR.

Thanks for the help.

Edit: I made a brief attempt with the HDHR and SageTV in April of this year and I still have .scn and .frq files on the server from then. I also wasn't very disciplined in stopping / starting the service either when adding the HDHR as a video source. I add these facts as they may help answer my questions.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by gilded07

I can see the HD channels using VLC on the server and I have 3 green lights lit up on the HDHR so I think its working. However, I can't get SageTV preview to work.

For starters, I think I would benefit from some basic definitional help. What's the difference between a logical channel and a physical channel?

A physical channel is the "real" channel. For example if a channel is using the 548.31 MHz carrier, then it's physical channel is 27. I believe, the "physical" subchannel is the actual stream identifier in the transport stream. For example Fox here uses 548.31MHz carrier (27) and broadcasts subchannels 1 and 2. So technically the physical channels are 27.1 and 27.2.

Now, because the digital transition didn't happen overnight and there was analog/digital broadcast overlap, digital channels were assigned different (sometimes temporary) carriers. But people know the stations by their numbers, so they use "logical" channels to identify them selves.

Fox here was always on 28 (which in analog days was the RF carrier), so the digital logical channel number is 28.1 and 28.2. Tuning software/devices look up the logical number in the transport stream and use that to present the channel to the user, so the user want's to see Fox HD, and Fox has always been 28, they tune to 28(.1).

Cable uses the same idea, but to simplify things, they just map everything to a whole number.

Now for Sage the "physical" channel appears to be <physical channel>-<logical>-<subchannel>. Not really sure why they have the logical channel in there.

The "Logical (Guide) Chan" in Sage is nothing more than what channel you want to see it as in the guide. Simple as that. I use OTA guide for my OTA channels so mine are all mapped to <logical>-<sub>. But when i setup QAM recently, I mapped stuff to a cable-company assigned logical number that matched the guide.

I've been using the local HD CBS affiliate as my test channel. In Z2it, the

• Guide Name = KPHODT
• Guide Number = 705

When I run the scan with the HDHR setup utility,

• Tune = CH73-2
• Guide Name = KPHO Ch
• Guide Number = 5-1

Do I need to type "705" and "KPHODT" into the HDHR setup utility - overwrite the Guide Name (KPHO Ch) and Guide Number (5-1 or CH73-2) that are there?

It really doesn't matter. There are three things you can change in Sage for a detected channel:

• Physical Channel - you probably don't want to mess with this since this is the "real" channel Sage tunes when you select it in the guide. If Sage found it in a scan, that's what you should use.
• Station - This you just point to whatever station is in your guide data that you selected for the tuner. So if you pick "your local cableco digital" and they have KPHODT listed, pick that.
  
  With these two, you have guide data associated with a real channel, there's only one more option.
• Logical Channel - this is just the number that shows up in the guide, pick whatever works best for you. If it's easier to remember the channel as 5.1 put 5-1 in, if you'd rather see 705, use that

In Setup Video Sources, after adding the HDHR, I get the error message Logical (Guide) Chan # 705
Physical (Tuning) Chan #703

That seems odd. I would have expected Sage to display 5-1 if that's what the HDHR software is reporting. Unfortunately I'm not up on the subtlties of setting up QAM with an HDHR. It's somewhat more complicated with the HDHR since it's software "remaps" channels for you. When I did scans with the HDHR, IIRC my Fox example above showed up in Sage as 28-28-1 instead of 27-28-1, because the HDHR software remapped it for me.

[gplasky]

I find it easier when doing the HDHR and for consistentcy to rename all the channel numbers and channel names to what appears in the Zap2It guide. So once the scan is done in the HDHR software open up the Zap2It site and get your listings. Go thru and correct all the channel names and numbers for each tuner. Once done and in Sage after adding the sources and doing a scan Sage should have an easy time setting up the channels. If after you're done it's having a hard time tuning the channel finish adding all your HDHR tuners and reboot the server. It should be working after that.

Gerry

[gilded07]

Ok, busy weekend. Had to stop my HDHR work for a few days.

Since, as I mentioned previously, I wasn't discipline in shutting down the sage service before I started setting up the HDHR, and since I have older .frq and .scn files saved in places other than my SageTV directory, I think the best thing for me to do is start completely over. Here's my plan (please comment):

1. Either, delete ALL .frq and .scn files from the server OR delete all .frq and .scn files located only in the SageTV directory (which? does it matter?)
2. Remove the HDHR as a video source in SageTV
3. Shut down SageTV and SageTV service
4. Reboot server
5. Run silicondust setup, picking my location ,application and digital cable
6. Scan for channels
7. Get Guide names and Guide numbers for all my HD locals from Z2it (e.g. KPHODT and 705 as mentioned above)
8. Edit the guide names and guide numbers in the silicondust scan utility tab and unselect the channels I plan to tune with my analog tuners (right?)
9. Restart SageTV, add HDHR (one tuner only for now) as a video source
10. Scan channels for this new source and hope it picks up the correct guide name and guide numbers

Before I take the server down tonite, does this sound like a complete plan? Am I missing anything?

Thanks again.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by gilded07

When I run the scan with the HDHR setup utility,

• Tune = CH73-2
• Guide Name = KPHO Ch
• Guide Number = 5-1

Do I need to type "705" and "KPHODT" into the HDHR setup utility - overwrite the Guide Name (KPHO Ch) and Guide Number (5-1 or CH73-2) that are there?

Yes, inside the HDHR setup utility you should overwrite the name (KPHO Ch) with the name from Zap2It (KPHODT). You should also overwrite the guide number (5-1) with whatever station you want it to appear in your Sage setup. I recommend that you make this the same channel number that is listed in Zap2It and on your Cable Box (I think you said it should be 705). Then , re-start Sage and do another scan there - it should pickup everything you set in the HDHR program.

One word of caution - if you are using the latest versions of software for both the HDHR an Sage, you should make sure the station number is a whole number - 5 or 705 are OK, don't use 5-1 or 5.1. Decimals and hyphenated station numbers worked OK in some of the older versions, but don't seem to work in the latest.

[gilded07]

I was able to get SageTV to tune 6 HD locals via one of the HDHR tuners.

I was able to get CBS (705), CW6 (706), PBS (708), Fox (710), NBC (712), and ABC (715). The HDHR utility did not find 3TV (KTVK) or My45 (KUTP) in HD, at least last night when I scanned. We never watch My45 but I would like to get 3TV in HD 'cause that's the local news we like the best. However, I'll admit we rarely - I mean, rarely - ever watch local news.

The only problem I had was I couldn't get the extender to connect via HDMI so I ended up unplugging the S-video and RCA audio connections from my MediaMVP and plugging them into the HD extender and the picture was awesome even with that connection! I just unhooked the HDMI cable from the DVD player and plugged it into the back of the HD extender and changed the input source on the TV and it never got any kind of a signal from the HD extender.

For the benefit of anyone else trying to add an HDHR with SageTV v6.6.2, STV file 2009091601, and HDHR firmware v20090830, here's what I did:

1. Delete all the previous .scn and .frq files from w/in the SageTV folder (one of each kind) - I had two previous unsuccessful attempts at adding an HDHR and had never deleted these files.
2. Shut down SageTV and service
3. Run silicondust setup picking location, application (SageTV), and selecting digital cable
4. Get correct guide names and guide numbers from the Z2it website. However, to my surprise, and different than the last time I ran the silicondust scan utility, the silicondust utility had the exact same guide names and numbers as the Z2it website so I didn't have to edit anything.
5. I did have to unselect 3 or 4 channels that the utility found that I didn't want (cox7, cspan, italia, and one or two others)
6. Restart SageTV and have the video source - HDHR - rescan for available channels. When it said it found 6, I knew I was on the right track.
7. I was able to preview them in SageTV, Even though the signal strength was only ~70% - this surprised me.
8. Hooked up the HD extender and used the guide to arrow down to the 7xx channels and there they were! Need to add channel logos now.
9. side note: I used a PC w/ VNC to check the server CPU performance while watching David Letterman on CBS in HD and it hovered around 60%. Considerably higher than when watching SD but acceptable, for now. I wonder what'll happen when the server is serving up HD locals, the kids are watching recorded shows or .avi movies, and comskip is running.

Follow up questions:

1. Troubleshoot HDMI connection - is this as simple as toggling input options on the HD100 extender?
2. Why, when watching SD channels, does the HD extender show a black border around the wide screen SD picture?
3. Can I eliminate the 6 SD locals completely from my guide & analog tuners so that when I select channel 5 (the local CBS affiliate), SageTV uses the HDHR tuners exclusively to tune HD CBS ch 705. I think I'd have to map physical channel 705 to logical channel 5 in SageTV and then make sure that any time ch 5 is selected, only the HDHR is used to tune it. Is this possible? The PQ on my analog locals, especially ch 5, is so bad that I'd like to only use the HDHR to watch the 6 local channels.

Thanks!

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by gilded07

1. Troubleshoot HDMI connection - is this as simple as toggling input options on the HD100 extender?

I don't have the HD100, but on the HD200 the first time you power-up the system it will auto-detect the HDMI connection - if there is nothing connected, it disables the HDMI port. The way to enable it again is to first hook it up to your TV with one of the other connections (like S-Video), re-start the extender in stand-alone mode (when it starts, tell it not to connect to the SageTV server), then go through the settings to re-enable the HDMI port.

Originally Posted by gilded07

2. Why, when watching SD channels, does the HD extender show a black border around the wide screen SD picture?

This has to do with the way the TV stations broadcast the video. When the TV networks broadcast a wide-screen program on an SD TV channel, they add the black bars on top and bottom (called letter-boxing). Those black bars are actually broadcast as part of the video, so when your capture card records the show, it can't distinguish between those bars and any other part of the video image.

When you watch an SD show on a wide-screen TV, your TV may insert black bars on the right and left sides (sometimes called pillar-boxing). This depends on how your TV is setup. Also, sometimes an HD TV station will broadcast an SD show and they will add the pillar-boxing into the broadcast.

Finally, if you are using a wide-screen HDTV to watch an HD TV-station and they are showing an SD program that was originally shown as wide-screen, you can end up with both letter-boxing and pillar-boxing. The result is a thick black border on all sides of the picture.

If you don't like to see the frame effect, try changing the aspect ratio. Sage allows you to set-up multiple aspect ratios to handle these situations. The HD200 even has an Aspect Ratio button on the remote. The aspect ratio setups let you define how to stretch the picture horizontally and/or vertically to make it look the best on your TV screen. Because of the current mix of SD and HD, wide screen and narrow screen, you may find that an aspect ratio that looks good for some programming doesn't look good for everything, so having several pre-sets to flip through may be useful to you.

Originally Posted by gilded07

3. Can I eliminate the 6 SD locals completely from my guide & analog tuners so that when I select channel 5 (the local CBS affiliate), SageTV uses the HDHR tuners exclusively to tune HD CBS ch 705. I think I'd have to map physical channel 705 to logical channel 5 in SageTV and then make sure that any time ch 5 is selected, only the HDHR is used to tune it. Is this possible? The PQ on my analog locals, especially ch 5, is so bad that I'd like to only use the HDHR to watch the 6 local channels.

Yes. To do this, first go to the channel setup for each tuner and disable the SD channels that you no longer wish to see. Then go to the channel setup for the HDHR tuners and remap the logical channel numbers for the HD channels to the old (disabled) SD channels. The logical channel number just determines where the channel shows up in your EPG (guide).