Disappearing Channels using Cablecard tuner

Help with tuners from ATI, Hauppauge, AverMedia and more.
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defl8ed

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Disappearing Channels using Cablecard tuner

#1

Post by defl8ed » Sun Aug 25, 2013 10:15 pm

I have been using Windows Media Center as my primary method of watching tv for about 4 years now. My current setup is using a Hauppauge DCR-2650 with Cox Digital Cable, but I don't think this problem is specific to my hardware. After roughly 2 years of mostly trouble-free viewing I noticed that several of my high definition channels disappeared. I know that the channels themselves are still available because I have a standard digital cable box in another room that picks them up just fine. Additionally, I'm not receiving an activation required error or a "this channel requires a subscription" error, what I'm seeing is a "no signal" error. The channels still appear in my guide, but do not appear when I do a channel scan using the Hauppauge utility for the tuner. The channels missing are fairly random - 1023 works, 1024 works, 1025 does not, 1026 works, 1027 does not, etc. All together, I'm probably missing about a half dozen hd channels that worked fine up until last week. I spent a few hours on the phone with cox support, got nowhere. I tried swapping out the cable card, no change. I had pretty much just decided to ignore the issue when I went over to my parents' house (I built a pretty much identical htpc for them) and found that the same channels that were missing on my setup were missing on theirs as well. Has anyone run into something similar to this in the past? I'm thinking the problem is that Cox has moved the frequencies of these channels slightly but did not update the guide data to reflect it. I don't watch a lot on these channels and I still receive the sd versions of all of them, but I really would like to be able to get all the channels I'm paying for. Can anyone give any advice on something I could bring up with Cox technical support that might get me beyond the standard "ummmm, well I've sent a reactivation signal to your card and that's all I can do, would you like to schedule a service call?"

jziggity

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#2

Post by jziggity » Tue Aug 27, 2013 1:57 am

I had nearly the same thing a week or so ago. I had a handful of channels that were showing as "no signal." I finally traced it to my tuning adapter. Even though the light was on steady on the TA itself, which is supposed to indicate normal operation, when I checked the web page interface for my internal InfiniTV card, it was showing the TA status as "waiting validation" or something like that.

I power cycled JUST the TA, and it eventually came back up and everything was validated and working fine, and behold, the missing channels were back. I don't know if you have a TA, but if you do and there is a status page you can check, give that a whirl.

RyC

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#3

Post by RyC » Tue Aug 27, 2013 3:26 am

Yeah, if you have a TA, check it. Same story, with the TA disconnected, a whole bunch of channels wouldn't come in.

defl8ed

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#4

Post by defl8ed » Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:03 pm

Yeah I've never used a tuning adapter, just the DCR-2650 itself and the tuner light on the 2650 starts to flash whenever I go to one of the channels that disappeared. Also, as I noted - the same problem exists on two tuners in two separate locations that are 25 miles apart (at my parents' house where I set up an identical wmc machine for them.)

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STC

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#5

Post by STC » Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:04 pm

Have they changed your lineup recently?

[edit]

Check what your HTPC thinks your lineup is through Zap2it.com then cross tally that info for problematic channels with your cable cos listed lineup. It could be that Zap2it does not have the most up to date listing info, and that's what your HTPC uses for guide listings.
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Want decent guide data back? Check out EPG123

defl8ed

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#6

Post by defl8ed » Mon Sep 09, 2013 7:41 pm

I have waited a couple weeks to see if anything would change, but it has not. I went to Zap2it.com and looked at my line up and it still shows the missing channels in the guide but for some reason 2 different tuners in 2 different locations are receiving no signal on those channels.

jamawass

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#7

Post by jamawass » Tue Sep 24, 2013 8:31 pm

If power cycling the TA doesn't permanently fix it, call the cable company to check your signal strength. In my case it was too low and was rectified. Haven't dropped channels since.

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