Did I miss the boat? Whats a tuning adapter?

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rliepins

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Did I miss the boat? Whats a tuning adapter?

#1

Post by rliepins » Tue Apr 17, 2018 10:27 pm

Hi all

I'm wondering whats all the fuss about Tuning Adapters and if they are needed. I currently have Comcast (Xfinity) and have a Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe tuner. Also, I have a HDHOMERUN Prime.

Is that why the homerun is starting to loose channels? I do use epg123 and schedulesdirect to get my guide data.

Or is this possibly the reason my recent InfiniTV 6 PCIe conversion failed?

Is it a piece of hardware?

Please, do tell. Summarize...

Did comcast send something out to users and how do we find out if we need one/two/more?

Thanks.

rliepins

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#2

Post by rliepins » Tue Apr 17, 2018 10:30 pm

And whats with all the channels over 1000? They seem to work for the 4.

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Scallica

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#3

Post by Scallica » Tue Apr 17, 2018 10:38 pm

Yes, you missed the boat. Tuning adapters have been around for a while. The adapter allows you to tune channels that use SDV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_video
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SciFiGeek

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#4

Post by SciFiGeek » Fri May 25, 2018 3:31 am

To add clarity directly in the forum...

Some (maybe eventually all) cable providers use SDV (switched digital video). This service requires a Tuning Adapter (TA).
The TA is a USB connected cable modem that communicates which channel(s) you are tuning and supplies back a Channel Map of where those channels can be found on the spectrum.

Functionally SDV is stopping broadcast of all channels and only sending the ones that are called for. If your cable company uses SDV, they build the channel map functionality into the cable box but other devices such as TIVO's and WMC tuners require the external device. There are multiple flavors. I have noticed Cisco and Mortorolla/Arris. When you have problems you will need to research your device's issues. I saw more about Cisco's. Presumably there are more trouble with those. That being said, I have an open forum post about fixing a TA issue as I write this and it is an Arris (Motorolla). SDV was recently implemented in my market. If buying a cablecard device, get one that the TA connects directly to and not one that causes the TA to be connected to the computer.

Space

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#5

Post by Space » Fri May 25, 2018 6:40 am

Yeah, my limited experience with TAs and SDV was not a good one.

Other then general bugs with the system, the main problem with SDV is that it's purpose is to fit a large number of networks in to a small number of channels.

For instance, lets say your cable company has 20 SDV networks, but they only allocate 10 channels in your area for those 20 networks.

It's a first come-first served system, where the first person in your "area" that tunes in a SDV network gets assigned one of those 10 channels, so now only 9 are left. Then another person tunes to another of the networks, so only 8 are left, etc.

What this means is that once 10 people in your area tune in to 10 different SDV networks, there will be no more available channels for you to tune in your channel (assuming it is not one of the 10 networks that are already being viewed, because if multiple people in the area tune in to the same SDV network, then that only uses 1 channel for them all). If you are unlucky number 11, you will get an error on the screen indicating that you can't tune to that network. DVRs don't like this, of course, and you end up with missed recordings.

Another annoying thing about SDV is that if you have an SDV channel tuned for a certain amount of time (not sure how long but I assumed it is set by the cable company), the system will pop up a message asking if you are still there and watching, if you don't respond, it cuts off the channel. Needless to say, DVRs don't like this either.

This is all dependent on the number of people in your area and the ratio of SDV networks to available channels assigned to be used for SDV. If you never hit that limit in your area, then SDV may work fine for you (assuming you don't run in to any TA bugs like I did way back when).

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