Comcast just went more digital at my location with the channels 26 through 78 now being tranmitted digitally.  I have 2 Digital Cable Card tuners and 2 Analog Tuners so I'm more or less down to 2 tuners until the new Ceton device is released.  The problem is Media Center still thinks these channels are analog and when I try to watch live tv on any of them it comes up static.  If I record two shows using the analog tuners on channels between 1 and 25 then it will allow me to watch live tv using my digital tuners.  For some reason when no tuners are in use Media Center still wants to try to watch the channels between 26 and 78 with my analog tuners.  I've reset my TV signals under settings/TV/TV Signal/Set Up TV Signal with no change.  Any suggestions?

 You need to edit those channels and disable the analog tuners on those channels.  From the guide listing, right click on the channel number, select Edit Channel, then Edit Sources and uncheck the checkboxes next to the analog tuners.  It'll be a bit of a pain to do that for all those channels, but that's what needs to happen.

Unfortunately, no, the analog tuners will always want to tune in those channels, so there's no easy answer here. There are, however, cheap and good answers.

Cheap: Go into the guide settings and edit every channel between 26 and 78 and uncheck the analog tuner, so they will only be picked up by the CableCARD tuners.

Good: Dump both analog tuners and pick up a cheap digital card ($65 AverMedia Duet, dual clearQAM, for example). It will pick up all the broadcast SD/HD channels that you're seeing now in analog, and WMC will give it preference over the CableCARD tuners by default. You'll effectively have 4 tuners for broadcast content, and 2 tuners for CableCARD-only content.

Cabal

Good: Dump both analog tuners and pick up a cheap digital card ($65 AverMedia Duet, dual clearQAM, for example). It will pick up all the broadcast SD/HD channels that you're seeing now in analog, and WMC will give it preference over the CableCARD tuners by default. You'll effectively have 4 tuners for broadcast content, and 2 tuners for CableCARD-only content.

Assuming the new digital channels are unencrypted, that would work, but that's a pretty big assumption. Comcast in my area has ONLY the local broadcast channels in clear-QAM.

Thanks for the quick replies.  Pain in the butt but it works so that's fine for me.  Just need it to hold me over until the new Ceton card comes out.  Thanks again.

WScottCross

Cabal

Good: Dump both analog tuners and pick up a cheap digital card ($65 AverMedia Duet, dual clearQAM, for example). It will pick up all the broadcast SD/HD channels that you're seeing now in analog, and WMC will give it preference over the CableCARD tuners by default. You'll effectively have 4 tuners for broadcast content, and 2 tuners for CableCARD-only content.

 

 

Assuming the new digital channels are unencrypted, that would work, but that's a pretty big assumption. Comcast in my area has ONLY the local broadcast channels in clear-QAM.

Those are the channels I'm talking about. "4 tuners for broadcast content, and 2 tuners for CableCARD-only content."