If I have to disable the automatic downloads in VMC to configure the QAM so that it doesn't blow away my configuration, will a manual download of the guide cause similar problems?

Personally, I would not run HD Homerun and the Aver card in the same machine.  Just seems like you're asking for trouble to do that.  You would be running into the Vista limitation of two digital tuners (HD Homerun is two, and your Aver card is an additional tuner).  In addition, I think it would be a nightmare to try to get the channel guide setup correctly to run both at the same time.

What I've done is to have one Vista PC working with the HD Homerun via a gigabit switch, and another PC running MCE 2005 that has the Aver card in it. 

I use the HD Homerun exclusively in my Home Theatre setup.  The other PC with the Aver card installed is in my office PC.  I still have issues with the Aver card when it comes to tuning in channels correctly, even though I’m using the latest beta drivers (which are better than the earlier beta drivers).  But… quite often, I get the “no tuner” error message on channels I receive.  I have to channel up or channel down several times before the channel that I want finally tunes itself in. 

Don’t get me wrong, I think that the Aver card is great for doing what it does.  But until they get all the kinks out of the system, it will remain a “testing environment” for me.  It’s just not quite a “ready for primetime player”.  Whereas the HD Homerun (even with it’s ATSC channel limitation) is a lot more rock solid product.  And with one HD Homerun, you get two tuners and not just one.

And, no, I don’t have any affiliation with HD Homerun.  Just adding my 2 cents to the conversation.

 

alphatango:

brego:

I am running Vista MC SP1 x86 and just picked up this card. I have read through this entire thread a couple of times and am a little confused about how to get QAM working in Media Center with a working Guide. I have downloaded the following files from the AverMedia ftp site:

AVer_ClearQAM_V1.0.0.9_Install.exe

AVer_ClearQAM_V1008.exe

M780_Drv_x86_V2.5.0.22_ClearQAM_Install.exe

M780_Drv_x86_V2.5.0.25_Install.exe

Do I need all of these files? As I am starting from scratch on this with no tuner at all installed and no working guide, does anyone have the necessary steps for setting this up correctly? Frankly, the channel mapping for the Guide seems awfully confusing.

 

I have Vista 64 bit drivers currently, where did you find these files?  Been hunting around the avermedia site without luck.  Thanks

ftp.aver.com

user: beta

pswd: betatest

 

Just a couple of comments on your method to keep from losing the guide. I used it (for 65 channels...UGH) and it worked great so far. You did an excellent job figuring out how to make media center do what you wanted it to do. I want to mention for others that might try this, if you see an entry missing the minor channel information the minor channel for that entry is 1. Also, you can't go into "add dtv channel" and delete the temporary channel. I went into edit channels and marked it so it wouldn't be used and then I deleted it from the atscprefs file. If there is a better way to get rid of it I would like to know. Anyhow, good job mold.

Cowboy:

Just a couple of comments on your method to keep from losing the guide. I used it (for 65 channels...UGH) and it worked great so far. You did an excellent job figuring out how to make media center do what you wanted it to do. I want to mention for others that might try this, if you see an entry missing the minor channel information the minor channel for that entry is 1. Also, you can't go into "add dtv channel" and delete the temporary channel. I went into edit channels and marked it so it wouldn't be used and then I deleted it from the atscprefs file. If there is a better way to get rid of it I would like to know. Anyhow, good job mold.

good tip on the minor channel = 1 not always being displayed.
i updated my original instructions since i forgot to mention that bit of potential confusion.

i haven't seen a problem deleting the temporary channel. are you saying you don't see it in the list, so you can't delete it? in my case, i need to scroll down through all of the digital channels added by the Aver export, and delete the last one in the list.

Well in "add dtv channel" all you can do is add, you can't delete. And even in edit channels all you can do is clear the check mark along side the temporary channel you have added, but that doesn't delete it, it only keeps it from showing up in the list. If you go back into edit channels it is still there and it's still there, and it is also still in the atscprefs.xml file. So I used edit channels to clear the check mark along side the channel number and then went into atscprefs and deleted that line. I  figured that later when some activity caused VMC to read the atscprefs.xml file it would disappear from the lists.

if i go into "add dtv channel" and scroll down to the temporary channel, i can uncheck it. doing a save (or maybe it's a "done") at this point deletes the channel for me. it's just like deleting the "enable-dt" channel that the Aver export function creates when you run the QAM tool.

mold:

good tip on the minor channel = 1 not always being displayed.
i updated my original instructions since i forgot to mention that bit of potential confusion.

i haven't seen a problem deleting the temporary channel. are you saying you don't see it in the list, so you can't delete it? in my case, i need to scroll down through all of the digital channels added by the Aver export, and delete the last one in the list.

In my setup, there are entries in my prefs.xml file that are not listed in my atscprefs.xml file, and there are entries in my atscprefs.xml file that are not in my prefs.xml file.

I'm assuming I want parity between these two files?  Should I simply add the additional entries into the atscprefs file?

Any info appreciated.

Thanks,
Jon

i wouldn't bother with prefs.xml. the only file you have to change is atscprefs.xml. the other file(s) will be updated automatically by VMC as needed. atscprefs.xml should have everything that was exported from the QAM tool.

mold:

i wouldn't bother with prefs.xml. the only file you have to change is atscprefs.xml. the other file(s) will be updated automatically by VMC as needed. atscprefs.xml should have everything that was exported from the QAM tool.

OK, so do you recommend that I add additional entries that exist in prefs into atscprefs? 

So, if there are 20 stations that are listed in prefs, but not in atscprefs, do I add those entries to atscprefs?

Jon

Nauticus, any further progress on this - I am in the same boat - followed all instructions, but when scaning for QAM channels I get 0 channels found - no matter what I tried. At this point I am ready to give up and just watch regular programming ... I have comcast in Chicago and can get quite a few QAM HD channels on my regular TV - like 7-1, 7-2 and etc. Anyone have any ideas what my be causing this - thank you all for input - this forum is the best!.

I wasn't paying attention. I zipped right down the list and didn't look at the big X's over to the right. Now I see what you mean. I did find out however, that when you delete a channel that is not at the end of the list all the remaining channels move up so that the channel numbers stay contigious. Doesn't seem to break anything unless you have your remote programmed for the channel numbers.

hdcrazy:

Nauticus, any further progress on this - I am in the same boat - followed all instructions, but when scaning for QAM channels I get 0 channels found - no matter what I tried. At this point I am ready to give up and just watch regular programming ... I have comcast in Chicago and can get quite a few QAM HD channels on my regular TV - like 7-1, 7-2 and etc. Anyone have any ideas what my be causing this - thank you all for input - this forum is the best!.

Nope, no luck.  In fact, I returned the card and I'm waiting on the delivery of the HDHomeRun.  My 30 days were up, and it didn't make sense to keep it when the only reason I got it was to tune QAM.  I did get a nice email from Felix however, and he explained that the problem for me was in fact that Comcast uses QAM HRC in my area and that AVer's software doesn't support that yet.  The card is technically capable of tuning QAM HRC because I got GB-PVR to tune HD channels in Windows XP, but I wasn't able to get it to work with GB-PVR in Vista.  I spent an obscene amount of time troubleshooting this (just ask my wife) and my conclusion is that it just isn't quite ready yet.  Check the QAM listings on SiliconDust's website for your zipcode.  The clue for me was that under the "channel" column, all of my channels (zip code 21212) in the QAM section had "hrc" after them.  I just did a check on 60657 which was my zipcode when I lived in the Lakeview neighborhood, and those channels don't have "hrc" after them.  That would lead me to believe that you aren't having the same frequency problem that I had, but I can't say that for sure.

I would suggest trying GB-PVR as that allows you to reference different frequency tables when it runs its scan, but be prepared to spend a bit of time on it.  Good luck.

Nauticus,

Thank you for all your help and response - you are right on the money - it is all hrc in my area. Does email from Felix mention that they are working on supporting HRC? I will keep the card since I have good signal on a few OTA channels from Sears tower so can use it for that - BTW did you try it with OTA?

Thank you.

hdcrazy:

Nauticus,

Thank you for all your help and response - you are right on the money - it is all hrc in my area. Does email from Felix mention that they are working on supporting HRC? I will keep the card since I have good signal on a few OTA channels from Sears tower so can use it for that - BTW did you try it with OTA?

Thank you.

hdcrazy- 

Felix said that they are working to support that frequency range in the QAM plug-in as well as their software, but he does not have a date when that would be available, even in beta format.  I did not try OTA... I suppose I should have just for the sake of trying it, but with a pair of bunny ears my TV only picked up a couple of HD channels.  Since I had a pile of channels ready and waiting on QAM, I didn't really consider OTA an alternative.

If you have time to burn, I'd grab GB-PVR and do some reading in their forums here and here about swapping out the qam.ini file with one that has HRC frequencies.  I was unable to get it to work in Vista, but it did grab channels when in XP.  I dunno if the OS had anything to do with it, or if it was just a misconfiguration on my part.  I got to the point where I tried so many different things I kind of lost track.  If I had gotten GB-PVR to work reliably, my next step was to see if plugging those frequencies into the atscprefs.xml file (I think that was the right file, I'm not at my htpc so I can't confirm) would have done anything for Vista Media Center.  There's also a frequency override registry key in Windows: 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune\TS0-1

That regulates frequencies in the US for cable, but I think it's for analog only, not QAM.  You can read up on it on the MSDN site.  If you *really* have time to burn, you can read up on the Microsoft TV Technologies here.  But if you get to the point where you can figure that stuff out, you'd probably just write your own driver and be done with it.

Again, good luck.