Win TV HVR 225o

[qamplease]

I am in Ontario, subscriber to Cogeco, recently upgraded to digital...

My television is able to recieve the clear qam channels from Cogeco - from the specs for the tv it has the following tuners NTSC-M, ATSC, 64 & 256 QAM

AFter trying to setup the DTA that cogeco provided, the ir blasters with Media Centre, I gave up and bought a HVR 2250 with it ATSC/NTSC/Qam thinking I would be okay. During the setup in Media Centre, it automagically selects analogue..Rerun setup and try to manually setup the tuners, ...select cable and they turn out to be analogue again...Is there a way to force them to be qam?

I am running windows 7, 64 bit...

[qamplease]

I replaced my AVERMEDIA H751 that came in the computer .... I was having no luck with the IR Blaster changing the channel on the DTA... My thought process was that if the TV had a QAM tuner, and if I replaced my Analogue with a QAM capable tuner I would be fine...

[qamplease]

Well, I loaded Wintv 7, selected qam and got the channels, so why can't it find them in WMC arg!

[Danno100]

Well, I loaded Wintv 7, selected qam and got the channels, so why can't it find them in WMC arg!

Microsoft (MS), in their wisdom, have not enabled ATSC and ClearQam in Media Centre (MC) in Canada (dumb). That is why WinTV will see these channels but MC will not. MS is just not listening to their customers (perhaps a conspiracy with our regulatory body, the CRTC!).

Peter Near has created a "hack" [ http://www.thenears.com ] which enables both ATSC and ClearQam in MC as well as US OTA TV guides depending on your location. Run the hack, and then rerun the TV tuner configuration in MC.

I know it works in Win 7 64 bit as it works for me on my Cogeco system, and I can tune all the Cogeco ClearQAM channels that are available and use Canadian/USA OTA HD (ASTC) as well in MC. Thus I have one MC TV guide for all cable analog/digital, Cable ClearQam, and OTA HD from the US and Canada (ATSC).

Once ClearQam channels are viewable in MC, you must use the MC configuration option to copy the existing Cogeco channel guide to the ClearQAM channel so it has a TV guide (e.g. copy Channel 6 TV guide to ClearQam Channel 125.945). Voila, you can now record ClearQAM using the TV guide. Don't use the MC channel merge option as it will default to the Standad Definition channel (not good if using OTA HD).

In addition to going to Peter's site, you may want to use Guide Tool [ http://1geek1tool.com/guidetool ] which lets you edit the ATSC and ClearQAM channels in case MC doesn't get it right. This stand-alone tool is invaluable in my opinion (it connects directly to Media Centre channel settings). I use'd it when Canada went OTA HD, since MC didn't pick up all local channels on channel scanning.

Other useful tools are Tuner Salad (enables up to 12 TV tuners from the maximum of 4) and TV Channel Logo's available here [ http://mychannellogos.com/tunersalad.aspx ]. I have 8 TV tuners running on my Win 7 box.

Good luck, don't give up because all of this works (but takes some time and understanding).

[qamplease]

Thanks for the post and encouragment, I found the post for Peter Near around midnight last night, ( I remembered reading that post several months ago, when I first thought about replacing the analoge tuner), I had a hard time retriving the batch file from skydrive ( I had to right click and choose open in a new window, discovered only by a slip on the touch pad)

I ran the batch, did tuner set up, found all the channels I was looking for, just have to copy the channel guides and all should be fine..

Do you know if there is a current list of cogeco qam channels for Hamilton, I can't seem to find A&E (wife misses criminal mind repeats)
.
Just another thought, they (MS) will disable ATSC and Qam in Canada, but they haven't figured out how to remove all the internet tv content channels in WMC, jeezz... Speaking of that any thoughts on Boxee, I am thinking of downloading it for the media pc.

[Danno100]

One other thing to note, if you run Tuner Salad/TV Logo's I believe it will undo Peter's hack, so just rerun it again.

I believe there is a list of QAM channels here [ http://www.silicondust.com/support/channels/ ] but I found it can't always be trusted because Cogeco and other cableco's usually have a core set of Qam channels but can turn off/flip others around (and do). The Silicon network TV tuner is an interesting device for ATSC/Qam especially if you want to watch live TV from any computer in your house. I have 2 of their tuners.

Yes, I also have the Internet TV channels on my laptop, but not on my HTPC server. Not sure why.