No Digital Signal with Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600

[twistedsymphony]

I've got a Dedicated PC running Win XP and SageTV 6 and an older Hauppauge WinTV card... this setup has run for a couple of years now rock solid without issue.

last week I decided to upgrade our living room to an HDTV, Sage looked great on it but sadly all the recordings looked muddy. So I ordered a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 to take advantage of the higher quality DTV channels provided by my Cable company.

The drivers installed without issue and I see 2 new devices in the source list. the SD capture works fine but the DTV capture gets no signal at all..

I can confirm that the the DTV signal is un-encrypted as I can plug the cable directly into my TV and view all the DTV channels without issue.

and yes I've tried each of the different cable ports on the back of the card. According to the manual the lower one is for DTV but still... no dice.

I really have no idea whats wrong Any help would be appreciated.

[Pirin]

I can't tell from your post which drivers you installed. If you installed the ones that came with the card, try going to Hauppauge's website and downloading the latest 1600 drivers for Windows XP; that is what helped me. I have 2 1600's running on SageTV 6 now.

Hope that helps.

[twistedsymphony]

downloaded the latest drivers and rebooted...

no change, I still don't get a digital signal.

but since upgrading the drivers now my IR remote doesn't work anymore, the service just crashes as soon as windows tries to load it

[49studebaker]

Have you tried scanning/viewing channels in the Hauppauge WinTV software?

This might be helpful:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35781

[twistedsymphony]

the channel search dies instantly with a "no signal" message.

I'll try that link you sent....

[twistedsymphony]

Ran those files, rebooted, still no signal, I tried all 3 ports again to be sure.

[robk]

Are you trying to receive HD over cable? Or clear QAM on the cable? The HVR-1600 has 2 inputs, an ATSC for an antenna for over-the-air digital TV including HDTV (and clear QAM over cable - Very limited selection of channels). The other input is a standard definition tuner, no HD.
The HVR-1600 will not tune HD from cable or a cable box.
You need an HD PVR to do that.

Rob

[twistedsymphony]

I'm trying to receive Clear QAM and ATSC

As I stated in my first post I've tried every cable connection on the back of the card and my TV has no problem receiving these channels.

I'm returning the card as I called Hauppauge and they informed me that Clear QAM/ATSC is not supported for any version of windows except for Windows 7.

Looking at the box there is an asterisk and it is mentioned in the fine print, however New Egg (where I bought the card) claimed that it was fully compatible with XP.

[robk]

If you do a search on this forum, there is a post about 2 or 3 different versions of the HVR 1600, some work for QAM, some don't. I was lucky to get one that does work - but I only get 4 or 5 channels through QAM. Using an outdoor TV antenns, I get about 20 stations from Orlando (I'm near Daytona Beach - 45 miles from the "antenna farm")

Rob

I found this: (search: HVR-1600 version QAM)
Originally Posted by jasmithvr6 View Post
I see this post is a little dated, but I just picked up two HVR-1600 cards from CC today for $29 a piece. They are version 74021, which hopefully means they'll support clear QAM. The caveat is that they only say "ATSC/NTSC 74021 LF" on the card label...no mention of QAM. I'm hoping that even so, the new drivers will do the trick. Has anyone else come across this and will it support QAM?

I am upgrading from Sage 5.1 to 6.3.10 and plan to run the new version on the HTPC for a few days to work out any bugs before introducing the new hardware. Thanks for the insight.

I have some bad news for you. Just looked on CC's website, the card they have for $29 is not the one that supports clear QAM. In fact, the reason they are clearenced is because they've been replaced by the version that does support clear qam.

The hybrid 1600 card is the one that this post was originally about and is the one that supports qam. It is currently priced at $99.99.

And on a side note, I would have picked one of these up since I am using an antenna for hdtv but its not avaliable for shipping and not at any stores within 100 miles.

[robk]

I found this on Hauppauge's site: (see the * )

What type of channels will I receive with the WinTV-HVR-1600?

NTSC Analog CableTV or over-the-air analog TV: You can use your cable TV from the wall to connect to the WinTV-HVR-1600 and receive all of your basic Cable TV channels. You can also use a roof top antenna to receive "over-the-air" TV.

Note: After June 2009, most areas in the United States no longer broadcast over-the-air analog signals.

ATSC over-the-air digital TV: Supports all ATSC formats, up to the high definition 1080i format!
Note: For ATSC digital TV, a rooftop/out door antenna is recommended for optimal results/signal strength.

ClearQAM cable TV Channels: Clear QAM digital cable TV channels are unencrypted digital cable TV channels. Clear QAM allows users to watch unencrypted digital TV channels from their cable TV provider without a set-top box.
Note: WinTV v7, WinTV v6, Microsoft Windows 7 or Windows TV Pack 2008 for Vista are required for clear QAM reception
Note: Check your local cable TV provider for clear QAM reception over your cable TV network.



* Certain older models (namely the 74551 and 74031) of this product do not support Clear QAM.

[twistedsymphony]

I searched and tried about a half dozen suggestions before making this thread. The one I bought was the newer $99 card that supports Clear QAM, it also has an FM antenna connection as well as RCA jacks for L/R audio and no connections for a remote (includes a USB based remote receiver)

As I stated... Clear QAM/ATSC on this card isn't supported in windows XP, only Windows 7... maybe it worked with older revisions but not this one.

it's moot now, as I've already got the card boxed back up and ready to be returned to New Egg since it's NOT COMPATIBLE with my machine.

[robk]

OK, sorry to hear that. They may have changed the card - mine is over 4 years old. Good luck! Hope you find a solution - I also use a USB WinTV-HVR-950Q with an outdoor antenna, works very well except MPEG encoding is in software, not hardware. It's attached to an old HP Pavilion dv6000 and the picture quality with WinTV 7 (because it's OTA) is better than the picture on my Sage machine with a HD PVR. That's my "Hurricane Preparedness" TV!

Rob