TheGreenButton - Windows Media Center Forums

Greetings all--
Got Dad's ceton installed & paired (Broadstripe Cable in Michigan- Not on SDV). I'm running into a problem & I don't know if it's MediaCenter, PlayReady, Ceton, or CableCO problem.

The problem is that all four tuners work great-- no problems with any of the digital channels; but, it won't tune any of the basic cable channels! (2 thru 78)

Any ideas?

That is very strange... you'd think itd be the higher up channels that would be problematic. When you go into the ceton diagnostics, does everything come out as properly paired? Try tuning to those channels from diagnostics- what is the message it gives you?

Not that this is any sort of solution, but the first thing I did when I installed my cablecard tuner was hide all the basic cable channels that I already had in High Def. Maybe it will turn out that your dad doesn't really need those basic cable channels?

Those are NTSC channels....the InfiniTV does not have an NTSC tuner. If you want to tune those channels you'll need to add an NTSC tuner.

TheOsburnFamil wrote:Greetings all--
Got Dad's ceton installed & paired (Broadstripe Cable in Michigan- Not on SDV). I'm running into a problem & I don't know if it's MediaCenter, PlayReady, Ceton, or CableCO problem.

The problem is that all four tuners work great-- no problems with any of the digital channels; but, it won't tune any of the basic cable channels! (2 thru 78)

Any ideas?

You need to find out from your cable company how they are broadcasting those channels. The InfiniTV tuner supports clear QAM digital channels, but not analog channels.

Yeah-- so it appears that Broadstrip isn't broadcasting the basic channels as digital channels. I never knew cableco's did that! I assumed if you had the digital package, the basic channels were sent as digital (all-be-it encrypted QAMs). At least, that's how my Charter is and a Comcast person I know of. Man, I hope there's just something not set right on Dad's account with Broadstripe and when I call in the morning, they can "flip a switch" on his account. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to put in a few USB sticks. (Broadstripe doesn't have CRAP for Digital/HD channels).

Opened ticket with Ceton just to verify the scenario. They (Mike ) had me apply beta sw/drivers/fw/hw to get latest detail logs & channel map. But, just in manually entering a number via the website on the tuners I can tell that the basic channels are only being seen as ntsc, while all the digitals are qam. So it does in-fact appear Broadstripe does NOT broadcast their basic/exp-basic tier in qam. Looks like dad's getting a couple USB sticks to cover those.
Good news is he's going through the guide now and is only seeing a couple channels that he would even remotely watch down there that arent in his digital/HD tier. So, this may not end up being that big a deal after-all.

As a long time user of Media Center, we've gone through the transition from analog, clearQAM to CableCard with Comcast.

Comcast's plan is to stop broadcasting the analog channels, which is probably going to be true for all (or most) cable companies. In our area, Comcast is slowly turning off the analog channels - and the digital version of the "basic" channels are all encrypted (requiring CableCard), except for the local broadcast channels. When Comcast completes their "digital transition", we probably won't have any analog channels on cable - and the only clearQAM channels will be the same channels we can get using an external antenna. For non-broadcast channels, we'll need CableCard.

As your cable company moves further into their digital transition (which frees up a lot of bandwidth for digital channels - one analog channel takes the same bandwidth as multiple digital channels), the Ceton tuner (with a CableCard) will be able to pick everything up. But until then, you could consider buying a (cheap) analog tuner and adding it to your Media Center - to get access the analog "basic cable" channels.