Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1800 - losing channel map

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alan

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Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1800 - losing channel map

#1

Post by alan » Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:40 pm

I have an odd problem, one of my WMC's is losing the mapping to CBS channel 9.1. I have CSI setup to record with 9.1 selected specifically and I found that last week's recording was that of one of the local CBS sub-channels instead. I tuned to 9.1 and in fact it is now displaying a sub-channel instead of the network channel. This has happened a few times and requires a re-scan to correct. This is on FIOS using the local clear QAM channels provided without the need to use a cable card. Also, I have another WMC with a HVR-1800 that does not have this problem.

Has anyone experienced a problem like this? If so, did you find a way to permanently correct the problem?

Thanks,

Alan

barnabas1969

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#2

Post by barnabas1969 » Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:47 pm

Cable companies are notorious for moving their Clear QAM channels around without notice. If you call them, they'll just tell you to re-scan for the channels. And... that's going to be the only answer you'll get, besides manually adding the channels.

My cable company (Brighthouse) did the same thing. They moved all of my local channels from x.1 to x.11, and then they moved the x.2 sub-channel to x.1 (because... you know... it makes soooo much more sense for channel 6.2 to be broadcast on the same channel they used to use for 6.1, right?). It really messed up my first few recordings for the new TV season.

In my case, I have ATSC (OTA), clear QAM, and CableCARD tuners. My guide is highly customized, and when a channel is available on multiple sources, I have them merged together (with my ATSC tuners as the highest priority, then clear QAM, and finally CableCARD). I didn't notice the change on clearQAM until I had enough recordings going to use both ATSC tuners. I didn't want to re-scan, because it would have wiped out all my customizations. I chose to manually add the new x.11 channels, disable the old x.1 channels, and merge x.11 with the ATSC and CableCARD channels.

At my next opportunity, I plan to just connect my Clear QAM tuners to my antenna and change them to ATSC. This will require a re-scan and I'll have to setup all my guide customizations again... but then I'll never have this problem again.

alan

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#3

Post by alan » Mon Sep 30, 2013 4:40 pm

I did read in some other posts about cable companies changing the channel line up but that is not the case for me. I have three WMC's with 4 clear QAM tuners, 2 HVR-1800's, 1 Avermedia M780, and 1 Silicon Dust HomeRun. The other WMC's with clear QAM tuners do not have the problem so I can rule out the cable company. It is just specific to this one machine and it's HVR-1800.

Alan

blueiedgod

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#4

Post by blueiedgod » Mon Sep 30, 2013 4:55 pm

I had similar with FiOS, Ch 2.1 would show up on 17.1, and vice versa, when I considered using ClearQAM feed. That is when I went back to using Antenna for OTA. Better quality, more realiable, and more channels (FiOS does not carry Canadian channels, while Time Warner did). We still get cable channels through FiOS.

alan

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#5

Post by alan » Wed Oct 02, 2013 6:09 pm

Well I deleted and re-scanned the channels in Media Center and it is back working. The Washington DC CBS affiliate has 3 sub channels on FIOS, 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3. 9.1 and 9.3 were swapped with weather on 9.1 and main CBS on 9.3. I caught it fast so I only had one recording of an hour of weather :problem:. It is odd that it is just this tuner. I have 4 other clear QAM tuners, two single tuners and the Silicon Dust dual tuner and none of those have this issue.

If anyone has determined a permanent fix let me know.

Thanks,

Alan

blueiedgod

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#6

Post by blueiedgod » Thu Oct 03, 2013 4:44 pm

alan wrote:Well I deleted and re-scanned the channels in Media Center and it is back working. The Washington DC CBS affiliate has 3 sub channels on FIOS, 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3. 9.1 and 9.3 were swapped with weather on 9.1 and main CBS on 9.3. I caught it fast so I only had one recording of an hour of weather :problem:. It is odd that it is just this tuner. I have 4 other clear QAM tuners, two single tuners and the Silicon Dust dual tuner and none of those have this issue.

If anyone has determined a permanent fix let me know.

Thanks,

Alan

It will be interesting to know if it is limited to FiOS, or other cable providers do that too.

I don't think it is just 1 tuner. You are only seeing it on the tuner that is in use. I wouldn't be surprized if other tuners also showed the swapped channels.

Since you are in DC area, have you tried antenna? There are actually more OTA channels with antenna, at least for me, than there were with ClearQAM through FiOS.

alan

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#7

Post by alan » Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:14 am

I know for a fact that the other tuners work fine. I watched and recorded 9.1 on all of them at the same time and they all displayed or recorded the correct channel.

As far as using OTA, my house is below street level and I cannot receive the channels that moved back to VHF after change over so I only use cable. I do have an outside antenna and before the cut off I received all of the local channels when they were on UHF. Two of them switched back to VHF for HD and the signal strength is just too low. The antenna is VHF/UHF and is mounted on the chimney but even rotating it did not help.

I also have Ceton InfiniTV4's, a USB and a PCIe with cable cards to record cable channels and serve four Media Center extenders.

Alan

blueiedgod

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#8

Post by blueiedgod » Fri Oct 04, 2013 5:13 pm

alan wrote:I know for a fact that the other tuners work fine. I watched and recorded 9.1 on all of them at the same time and they all displayed or recorded the correct channel.

As far as using OTA, my house is below street level and I cannot receive the channels that moved back to VHF after change over so I only use cable. I do have an outside antenna and before the cut off I received all of the local channels when they were on UHF. Two of them switched back to VHF for HD and the signal strength is just too low. The antenna is VHF/UHF and is mounted on the chimney but even rotating it did not help.

I also have Ceton InfiniTV4's, a USB and a PCIe with cable cards to record cable channels and serve four Media Center extenders.

Alan
That sucks. All of my headaches went away when we switched back to OTA for locals. Still using CableCARD tuners for true cable channels.

Sherry

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#9

Post by Sherry » Wed Feb 05, 2014 9:59 pm

Hi Alan - I just read your posts about local FiOS channel 9 and 509 (I presume)...I don't understand the 'fix'. You guys are definitely speaking a foreign language to me :). In layman's terms, what do I need to do? I'm not familiar with scanning for channels, etc. I'm so frustrated when my 2.5 men or Elementary don't record. And, who cares about the weather 4 days ago?? :) Any info you can provide would be most helpful.

Thanks,
Sherry

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#10

Post by lagunacomputer » Wed Apr 09, 2014 1:40 am

read this:

http://joelsef.blogspot.com/2011/01/cle ... ndows.html

you have to scan for channels with the network disconnected.
This will pull a 'real, full scan'
You will want to stop the scan once a few channels show up, but not let it complete. IE stop around %45 scan complete.
now go into the channel editor in MCE and write down which frequency/channel the station is actually using such as '86.1' and the detected bitrate QAM64
now repeat re-scanning/overwriting channels until you get all the ones you want written down. see my list below as an example.

now, when you plug your network back in, the internet directory info will 'correct' a few stations, this is actually screwing them up and overwriting actual signals with what it thinks should be there from the info in the internet lookup.

since you have written down the actual frequecies for the stations prior, you can go into the 'add missing channels' setup and manually add the 'overwritten channels'

THEN YOU HAVE TO DISABLE CHANNEL UPDATING IN THE REGISTRY:
http://joelsef.blogspot.com/2011/01/cle ... ndows.html

here are my Cox Orange County, CA HD channels

internet guide channel# desc real chl/freq QAM bitrate
4.1 KNBCDT 23.45 64
4.2 KNBCDT2 23.315 64
5.1 KTLADT 86.2 64
5.3 KTLADT3 88.6809* 64
6.4/2.1 KCBSHD 2.1 40.3 256
7.1 KABCDT 31.1 256
7.2 KABCDT2 31.4 256
9.1 KCALDT 40.1 256
11.1 KTTVDT 31.3 256
12.1 KDOCHD 35.43284* 256
13.1 KCOPDT 80.19653* 64
13.3 KCOPDT3 6.7123* 64


*MCE windows 7 only allows up to 3 decimal places for manual channel entry. These channels had to be auto scanned by MCE for me to receive them. I was not able to manually add them due to the longer digits

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