Colossus & Windows Media Center

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D3LTACO

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Colossus & Windows Media Center

#1

Post by D3LTACO » Fri Nov 23, 2012 2:21 pm

I'm having an issue with Media Center integration with the Haupauge Colossus internal PvR card.

My goal is to watch and tune my DirecTV H24 Receiver as well as local OTA Digital Terrestrial stations.
The Colossus card is working, I can watch the Directv STB in WinTVv7 with IR blaster control with no problems and picture is fantastic.
I updated to the latest Colossus drivers.
I installed and configured the hdpvr-colossus_mce_29271 integration program from Haupauges website.

When I run WMC Setup TV Signal, Media Center sees my Digital OTA tuner like normal but also shows the new additional Satellite Tuner.
Everything looks good up to this point.
I select "Yes, Configure TV with these inputs" and and choose USA DirecTV, click next,
Both my tuners are still listed:
Digital Antenna (ATSC)" Digital Terrestrial Lineup (1 Tuner) -Original Haupauge TV Tuner -
Satellite: USA, DirecTV (1 Tuner) -New Colossus video capture card-
Click Next

Program guide downloads in 3 seconds and WMC proceeds to scan for OTA channels,
This is where the problem starts
the TV channel scan scans and finds about 100 channels then just stops at 50%.
It doesn't freeze or hang the computer it just seems to stop scanning at 50% and I can click cancel at this point.
If I click cancel I get "TV Signal Setup Finished" and both of the tuners are listed but when Look through the program guide I can only see my local OTA channels PLUS a handful of what look like DirecTV channels in the guide but they are listed like OTA channels!
It's like WMC is trying to scan for OTA channels from the Satellite receiver.

I noticed that when I hook the Directv box up to my Media Center PC standard def input (previously configured way) its listed as a "Satellite Set Top Box"
The Colossus is listed only as "Satellite" no mention of Set Top Box

BLAH

Thanks for any advice

D3LTACO

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#2

Post by D3LTACO » Sun Nov 25, 2012 1:53 pm

Got a lot a views but no response so I'll post Haupauge's support response in case any one else runs into the same issue:

"The colossus is currently not supported in Windows Media Center on Windows 8 platforms. We are currently working on a resolution to this.

regards,

Hantzel Nova
Technical Support
Hauppauge Computer Works
New York"

sea3pea0

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#3

Post by sea3pea0 » Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:55 am

I tried the same thing you did, only with Dish Network. I wasn't able to get it to work either. I was able to get everything working perfectly with the older version of DVB Link and Colossus Bridge (3.2.1). Had to manually register the media center addin (channelsync.xml).

BusterB55

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#4

Post by BusterB55 » Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:57 am

I'm not impressed. The Colossus works fine under Windows 7 with both with WinTV and MCE, but Windows 8 w/MCE (at least as of Dec 15th) does not work at all, however WinTV under Windows 8 works fine. Hauppauge email support responded to me fairly quickly (good job), but the bad news is they still didn't give an ETA and NEITHER MS or Hauppauge are up-front with the fact that the Hauppauge HD PVR and Hauppage Colossus <do not> work under Windows 8 MCE with the current driver set yet. For now I reverted to my Windows 7 backup and Windows 8 is shelved until I can actually use it. (The reason why I went Windows 8 in the first place was that my Windows 7 install was corrupted by automatic updates, so I figured "why not"?)

DVBLink with Colossus or the HD PVR are <not> free, and have questionable support, so I prefer not going that route. (I'm super technical and had a hard time configuring it all, only to find out that in Canada the EPGs are not free and Titan's not available in Canada. :()

I guess HTPCs are a dying breed: Sage was bought out, BeyondTV w/H264 is limited w/the Colossus (and drivers?), MediaPortal configuration is killing me, and Windows 8 MCE success seems to be limited. It seems like the h/w and s/w combination to get things to work at all is limited, add to that the complexity of configuring the source makes this a far cry from mainstream. Too bad.

<Edited: Clarified Win8 MCE is the problem; WinTV and ArcSoft under Windows 8 seems to work very well.>
Last edited by BusterB55 on Tue Dec 25, 2012 2:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

sea3pea0

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#5

Post by sea3pea0 » Mon Dec 17, 2012 12:03 am

Yea configuring dvblink is a serious pain whether it's windows 7 or 8, doesn't matter. That aside, it only requires 1 more step to get it working with win 8 then it did with win 7.

I hate that it was the only solution to get the colossus working the way I wanted it too. Even with windows 7 I needed to use dvblink to get all the channels to work because Microsoft's guide data isn't lined up correctly according to the channel numbers I get with dish network. The only way I could figure out how to fix that was with dvblink. If I went with Hauppauge's solution I wouldn't be able to get a bunch of channels that I like. So, for me, dvblink is the best solution, because after all the headaches of configuring it, it does work perfectly now.

On a side note, I don't think there is a problem with the colossus drivers and windows 8, it is the media center add-in that needs to be fixed.

mobilelawyer

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#6

Post by mobilelawyer » Mon Apr 29, 2013 2:22 pm

I have not yet taken the plunge on Windows 8 for the HTC, mainly because of the windows media center issues.

I realize this is an old thread, but could you please elaborate further on the extra step that needs to be taken for the dvblink software to work in windows 8?

If I could get dvblink to work, I would probably go ahead and install windows 8.

sea3pea0

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#7

Post by sea3pea0 » Wed May 01, 2013 12:52 am

If you go with version 4.x of dvblink, you can find information about the extra step at this link:
http://thedigitallifestyle.com/w/index. ... windows-8/
I was unable to get dolby 5.1 working with dvblink 4.5 and dishnetwork, which was a deal breaker for me. If you need to get an older version of dvblink working like 3.2.1 than you will need to change the path in the instructions to the correct path of the older version. Also you will have to change the target from the instructions "dvblink_addin.xml" to "channelsync.xml".

heric77

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#8

Post by heric77 » Fri Jun 21, 2013 3:28 pm

Hi

I've posted the question about when a MCE plug-in for Windows 8 would be available from Hauppage on their facebook page in january and they answered that there was no work being done on this at that time.

Personnaly, I've had Windows 7 x64 Pro with a Colossus for a long time and installed on top on it a Windows 8 upgrade with the MCE package and my Colossus works fine as usual.

I guess that when you just upgrade Windows (VS install from scratch) it keeps the old media player executables and they works fine. so it seems safe to say that upgrading to Windows 8 from a pre-installed Windows 7 setup if fine! :D

Eric

heric77

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#9

Post by heric77 » Fri Jun 21, 2013 7:06 pm

Here is an answer I just got from Hauppage:

Hauppauge Computer Works : when we developed the Windows 7 Media Center support for HD PVR and Colossus, there were three things which needed to be done: the Hauppauge encoders needed to "look" like a digital TV board (either satellite or a cable box), we needed to convert channel change commands to IR blaster commands (so we could change the channels on the external box) and last, we needed to be able to map channel frequencies to IR blaster channel numbers.

The "look" like a digital TV receiver works under Window 8 Media Center as does the IR blaster interface, but Microsoft has changed the way the channel mapping is done in Windows 8 and this needs a complete overhaul. Since this is a pretty big project, and since Windows 8 does not include Media Center as a default, we were not sure how many people were interested in this.

mfeingol

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#10

Post by mfeingol » Wed Jul 10, 2013 6:38 am

Fwiw, I asked Hauppauge the same question and got the following:

"Porting support for Windows 8 Media Center for the Colossus has proven to be more difficult than originally thought and engineering has not provided an ETA on this. From what we’ve been told it is being worked on just not sure where it is on their priority list."

So... I have a Colossus, which I use in conjunction with a DTV set-top box on a Win7 PC. It works great for HD content, so-so for SD content. I also have a Win8 PC that runs as a server. I was planning to merge the two into one machine, running Win8. I want to use Win8 so I can use single-sign-on with Live Ids. But now it seems like the Colossus won't work with Win8 in the first place, which is disappointing.

Is anyone using an alternate product that works with Win8? RGB component input, IR blaster support, WMC support... Surely there's something else out there, but I'm not seeing it.

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