Clear QAM - Guide listings

[andypanda]

I love WMC ... but when I'm scanning for channels, it seems to take forever and it gets most of them wrong. I'll spend hours fixing all the channel lineups and selecting the HD versions and deselecting the low res versions of the channels. And I have to manually add about 20 channels that the scan doesn't find (and have to use the guide tool since many of these channels have 4 digits in the subchannel and cannot be added through the normal WMC add )

Comcast seems to shift these channels around every few weeks and the guide downloads and/or scanning for channels just makes a mess of everything and I have to sort it out all over again.

I use WinTV just to do a scan (it always finds every channel - why can't WMC scan find them all?) and then I get the QAM numbers from WinTV so I can manually add those channels to Media Center Guide. I don't use WinTV for anything else other than to find all the channels that my tuner can pickup. If only Media Center could find them all.

There has to be a better way ---- is it me doing something wrong or is this just a failing in Media Center?

The setup and scan takes so long in Media Center ... and in the end, every one of the channels I care about are channels I have to setup manually. So I wish I could simply tell Media Center to download a specific guide and not scan at all. just let me manually enter the 20 channels I want to use and then leave them alone when updating the guide.

[lithium630]

It won't be a problem soon. Comcast is in the process of encrypting all their channels. Say goodbye to clear qam. Thanks FCC.

[adam1991]

When I first built my HTPC, I still had a few weeks before my Ceton card came in (this was back in the day) so I put in a Hauppauge 2250 to play around with while I got things squared away. I saw the same thing with regard to clear QAM channels and having to play with a guide.

When I got the Ceton card installed, I spent quite a bit of time getting the guide entries for those 70+ clear QAM channels matched up with the cableCARD guide, combining the channels.

But then over the next many months I saw that the cableco was moving channels around, and each time they did that I had to rescan the clear QAM and re-do the guide and channel mappings.

At one point a few months ago I discovered that something had gone wrong and it looked like I had more clear QAM entries in WMC than I had tuners for. Aha, that's why I kept getting popups about "no signal detected, not recording".

I finally gave up. I haven't removed the Hauppauge card, but I have disabled all of its channels inside WMC. At some point I will remove it and do a complete rescan and simply let the cableCARD do its thing, which is painless and always right.

And I am thinking about simply getting a second Ceton card and another $3.50/month cableCARD so that I can get more than 4 tuners. Although, I would hate to do that and then have the 6 tuner card "suddenly" be released to the open market. I would be perfectly happy with 6 tuners and a single cableCARD for my recording needs and three total TVs. I virtually never watch live TV; only my youngest does, and occasionally my wife. So 6 tuners is fine, especially if that keeps the cableCARD rental bill down.

[lithium630]

I built my HTPC about 3 years ago using the 2250. It was fantastic for about 2 months, then Comcrap encrypted all the channels above 25. It was a long long wait for my Ceton tuner but it is well worth it. I kept the 2250 for all the network channels. Looks like I'll need another Ceton tuner also.

[toshfive]

yep, am still using some older hdhomerun box's, along with hauppauge analog tunners and just noticed I have some missing content.

That time again... remapping time!