Powell OH (TWC) Spectrum digital conversion SD wrong

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bpc4

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#21

Post by bpc4 » Fri Jun 01, 2018 4:46 pm

I have prime and the scan misses a lot of channels so it is of no use. I am trying another scan but am not hopeful.

Space

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#22

Post by Space » Fri Jun 01, 2018 8:31 pm

bpc4 wrote:I have prime and the scan misses a lot of channels so it is of no use. I am trying another scan but am not hopeful.
Do you use a Cable Card with the Prime? If so, then a scan will not discover any new channels. With a Cable Card, the list of channels is downloaded directly from your cable provider (called a "channel map").

A "scan" on a Cable Card device (e.g. the HDHomerun Prime using a Cable Card) goes through the existing "channel map" and discovers if you are subscribed to a channel or not, and also determines if each channel is "DRM" protected or not. But this is just for informational purposes only. You can still tune to any of the channels that exist in the "channel map" and you will be unable to tune to any channel that is not in the "channel map", even without a scan. Note that the "scan" I am talking about here is the one initiated within the Prime itself.

You can view the channel map (including unsubscribed channels) by going to this URL on your prime (substitute the IP address of your prime):

http://192.168.1.100/lineup.html?show=all

Note that even though you can attempt to tune to any channel that is in the "channel map", if you don't subscribe to that channel, then you will get an error about not being subscribed. Also, if you try to tune a DRM channel, and don't have a device that is authorized to view DRM channels, you will get an error as well. If you try to tune a channel that does not exist in the "channel map", you will get an error about "unknown channel" or something similar.

Note that the "channel map" is completely controlled by your cable company. They update it and allow it to be periodically downloaded by your Cable Card device. This map is used by all of their cable boxes as well, so it is rarely wrong or incomplete, as if it were, no one would be able to tune to any channel that was missing or incorrectly defined (e.g. pointing to the wrong frequency).

Also understand, that this is all separate from WMC. WMC has it's own limitation in that you will be unable to tune to any channel that does not exist in your WMC channel guide. Even if the channel exists in the "channel map", WMC will not have the ability to tell the Prime to tune to that channel if it does not exist in it's own guide (which is separate from the "channel map" that resides within the Prime). This is why the lineup provided by your guide provider (either Rovi/TiVo, or Gracenote if using EPG123) needs to be accurate. If a channel is missing from the WMC lineup, but it does exist in the "channel map", you will be able to tune to it using another application other than WMC (such as the app that comes with the HDHomerun Prime), but not WMC itself (as long as you subscribe to that channel and it is not DRM protected).
Last edited by Space on Fri Jun 01, 2018 10:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

bpc4

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#23

Post by bpc4 » Fri Jun 01, 2018 9:16 pm

Thank you, and you are a saint for typing that up. I follow you, and yes, cable card in prime. Using the show all, I see the list, and I updated the scan. My card has the correct lineup as it should, but puzzle me this: 1225 which is BBCAHD has a strikethrough, but I get the channel just fine. There are probably others but that one jumps out.

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#24

Post by Space » Fri Jun 01, 2018 10:26 pm

bpc4 wrote:...
but puzzle me this: 1225 which is BBCAHD has a strikethrough, but I get the channel just fine. There are probably others but that one jumps out.
The scan done by the Prime checks the frequency listed for each channel and determines if your are subscribed or not, it only waits for a certain amount of time for the channel to send it's info. I'm not sure what is happening in this case, but it is possible that if the channel is slow to send the channel info when tuned and therefore results in a timeout, the channel remains marked as unsubscribed (all channels are marked as unsubscribed at the start of the scan).

One thing you can do is monitor your Prime's log (use the IP address for your Prime):

http://192.168.1.100/log.html

When you tune to a channel that you subscribe to, you should see something like this a very short time afterwards (note that I have older firmware on my Prime, so the log entry may not look exactly like this):

20180601-05:05:54 Tuner: tuner2 tuning 1580 Lifetime East (auto:441MHz-143)
20180601-05:05:55 CableCARD: tuner2 1580 Lifetime East (auto:441MHz-143) access = subscribed

If you try to tune to a channel that you are not subscribed to, you will get something like this:

20180601-05:05:57 Tuner: tuner2 tuning 1582 Fox Life (auto:345MHz-241)
20180601-05:05:57 CableCARD: tuner2 1582 Fox Life (auto:345MHz-241) access = not-subscribed

If you tune to the BBCAHD channel and it takes a while (seconds) for that "subscribed" message to pop up after tuning to the channel frequency, it may be that your cable company is not sending that info often enough, and the scan for the Prime is not waiting long enough to get the proper status. You can see from the sample log entries above that there is an entry for when a frequency is tuned, and then another entry when the status of that channel is returned. In the first example it happens in about 1 second (based on the timestamp) after it is tuned, and in the second example it happens within the same second.

Another possibility is that there is a bug in the Prime firmware and it is unable to get the correct status for some channels during the scan for some unknown reason. In any case, as I indicated in my initial post, the subscribed/unsubscribed status shown on that page is just informational. As you have discovered, you can still tune to any channel that is in the map as long as you subscribe to it and have the proper client to decode the channel if it has DRM.

bpc4

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#25

Post by bpc4 » Fri Jun 01, 2018 10:59 pm

All makes perfect sense, thanks. We do frequently get tuner error messages left on screen when dvr recordings first try to start. We clear them all the time in WMC. Looking at the log, I see plenty of these sequences:

20180601-17:04:38 CableCARD: tr/tr_status_rsp timeout error (cchost_tr_status:86)
20180601-17:04:38 CableCARD: Tuning Resolver reset
20180601-17:04:38 CableCARD: USB device 05A6:0008 connected
20180601-17:04:54 CableCARD: Tuning Resolver downstream status: success
20180601-17:04:54 CableCARD: Tuning Resolver upstream status: success
20180601-17:04:54 CableCARD: Tuning Resolver authentication status: success
20180601-17:04:54 CableCARD: Tuning Resolver operational status: ready
20180601-17:05:07 CableCARD: Tuning Resolver authentication status: none
20180601-17:05:08 CableCARD: Tuning Resolver authentication status: in progress
20180601-17:05:08 CableCARD: Tuning Resolver operational status: initializing
20180601-17:05:10 CableCARD: Tuning Resolver authentication status: success
20180601-17:05:10 CableCARD: Tuning Resolver operational status: ready

Any tweaking that can be done?

bpc4

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#26

Post by bpc4 » Fri Jun 01, 2018 11:03 pm

These are probably the channel tuning failures:

20180601-03:59:59 Tuner: tuner1 streaming rtp to 192.168.1.101:5002
20180601-03:59:59 Tuner: tuner1 tuning 1145 SMTHD (none:483MHz-1196)
20180601-04:00:09 CableCARD: message: Requested channel is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.
20180601-04:00:15 Tuner: tuner1 rtp stream ended (stop request)
20180601-04:00:17 Tuner: tuner0 streaming rtp to 192.168.1.101:5003
20180601-04:00:22 Tuner: tuner0 tuning 1145 SMTHD (none:507MHz-1196)
20180601-04:00:35 Tuner: tuner0 rtp stream ended (stop request)

Space

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#27

Post by Space » Sat Jun 02, 2018 12:52 am

Ahh, I see you have a tuning adapter. I don't have one of those, but that can indefinably cause problems, especially during a scan.

I made a post about how SDV channels and Tuning Adapters work, and that may provide insight as to why you may get timeouts/channel unavailable when scanning your channels (there are limited frequencies for all the SDV channels, and if you tune to each one quickly like a scan does, it can use up all the frequencies/channels and make later ones unavailable, at least in theory).

Another thing you should do (if you haven't already) is to put a cable splitter before the TA and the Prime instead of connecting them in serial (connecting the cable to the TA and then from the TA to the Prime). This will make the signal that reaches the Prime stronger.

So the correct way to set it up is to have the cable from the wall go to a 2-way splitter, then have one cable from the splitter connect to the TA and the other cable from the splitter connect to the Prime.

bpc4

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#28

Post by bpc4 » Sat Jun 02, 2018 1:14 pm

What a great tip, thanks! I just rewired, and a tuner went from 13.6 to 7 db. Trying to recall if lower is better in this scenario...

I have had intermittent low signal problems in the past. Hope this eliminates that problem.

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#29

Post by Space » Sun Jun 03, 2018 5:41 am

bpc4 wrote:What a great tip, thanks! I just rewired, and a tuner went from 13.6 to 7 db. Trying to recall if lower is better in this scenario...

I have had intermittent low signal problems in the past. Hope this eliminates that problem.
Signal strength should be as close to zero as possible, a value of 7 dBmV is much better than 13.6.

bpc4

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#30

Post by bpc4 » Thu Jun 07, 2018 5:30 pm

Time Warner Cable - Digital Rebuild OH34541-L has been updated and posted. Should help the majority in central ohio. I wasn't notified they finished it.

Thanks to all for the help.

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