Just following the thread - I have a system with the same card, and am waiting to see how it turns out.

Alright, I am back to report.

Cory was somewhat correct, to tune in digital clear QAM channels, you'll need to plug a second digital cable into your ATSC port of your ATI 650.  I did NOT have to perform a clean install - I just plugged in the additional cable, went through the tv signal setup again, VMC detected the digital cable and digital clear QAM connections... scanned for channels, and found them all.... All channels play perfect!

I am VERY pleased to have this functionality, but find it a bit odd that you have to split your cable connection and run two cables to get this to work, but I also understand this is a problem with the tuner card and not the software.

Thanks for your help Cory.

Actually the 650 Pcie is a dual tuner so you really do have to connect one cable to each ( analog & digital) i am running one TVW 650 PCie and one TVW 600 PCI adn have 2 analog and one digital regitered tuners on VMC and i could do it 2 digital and one analog but i record more on analog than digital. the TV pack rules it fixed every problem wiht the TVW and QAM

Yes, I agree that it is annoying to have to split the cable. One thing to be careful of is that your signal strength is not too weak after the split.  You may need to add a signal amplifier before the split to solve this. We are trying to come up with better solutions to this for future hardware.

cory_MSFT:

The TV pack was never intended as an upgrade so a clean install of Vista SP1 is the only supported method...

Never? Really? So all these months of talking about Fiji, reading about potential features and waiting for a release date, you're now saying it was never intended to be anything but what it ended up being, an OEM-only release. Would have been nice to know back then instead of having us waiting and hoping all this time. Once again, thank you M$FT.

CycleWriter:

cory_MSFT:

The TV pack was never intended as an upgrade so a clean install of Vista SP1 is the only supported method...

Never? Really? So all these months of talking about Fiji, reading about potential features and waiting for a release date, you're now saying it was never intended to be anything but what it ended up being, an OEM-only release. Would have been nice to know back then instead of having us waiting and hoping all this time. Once again, thank you M$FT.

While it was never engineered as an upgrade, that does not mean that we did not investigate ALL options during the release process.

JeffTucker – MSFT:

CycleWriter:

cory_MSFT:

The TV pack was never intended as an upgrade so a clean install of Vista SP1 is the only supported method...

Never? Really? So all these months of talking about Fiji, reading about potential features and waiting for a release date, you're now saying it was never intended to be anything but what it ended up being, an OEM-only release. Would have been nice to know back then instead of having us waiting and hoping all this time. Once again, thank you M$FT.

While it was never engineered as an upgrade, that does not mean that we did not investigate ALL options during the release process.

Come on, Jeff. What a freakin' cop out. If it was "never engineered as an upgrade" why wasn't that said up front instead of allowing all these months of speculation? Much has been written and said about Fiji/TV Pack in the past year of building up hope and expectation, yet nothing was ever said about it possibly being an OEM-only release. There have even been websites practically dedicated to following the development progress for months. Were you guys just sitting back laughing at us knowing it "was never engineered as an upgrade?" Sure, you may have suggested, even fought for, a different distribution method, but does that excuse the fact that we have been allowed to think we might get it as an update?

If it truly "was never engineered as an upgrade" then why not make that clear throughout the process? What did MS have to lose? Is this PR nightmare preferable to having been honest from the start? Had you shed the ambiguity early on and then found a way to release this as an update you guys would have been heroes in the VMC community. Instead, this looks like just more of the same from a company that has gotten so out of touch and downright belligerent with its customers. I have about 2 dozen family members and friends who look to me for advice on computers and upgrades. All but a few have been waiting for my green light to upgrade to Vista, which I have been hesitant to give due to my own experiences. SP1 helped allay my reluctance somewhat, but the attitude with TV Pack will probably have me recommending a Mac (I use both in publishing) from now on. Or, God forbid, Linux. I'd be willing to trade some functionality for not feeling screwed all the time.

Can someone who has this working please tell me what the secret is? I have tried every driver, reg hack, everthing and i can't get it to work. If i plug in the cable for ATSC I get clear QAM. If I plug in the cable for CABLE i get analog cable. If i plug them both in it only sees the analog cable. Please help, this is the whole reason i insalled the TV pack. Thanks

Mike,

I am having the same problem as you.  I have the TvWonder 650 PCI version (not PCIe).  I can get ClearQAM in Vista MC by plugging my Comcast cable into the "DTV/FM" input.  I can get analog cable by plugging into the "TV" input.  I have an external splitter so the same signal is going to both inputs.

The problem is I can't get both ClearQAM and analog to show up at the same time in the guide.  The TvWonder 650 PCI is a hybrid card.  Before the TV Pack, I was able to perform the "Vista Kram HDTV Hybrid Tuner Install Routine" registry hack described at http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com/vistahdtvinstall.html to get Vista to recognize two tuners.  That registry hack seems to no longer work.

Any ideas?

After doing some more reading, I'm now convinced that hybrid cards (like the TvWonder 650 PCI) are not supported in Vista Media Center.  You have to choose either analog or digital, but not both.  Bummer...

Here's an official looking post from a Microsoft employee confirming it:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/post/171741.aspx

The TvWonder 650 PCIe, however, is a true dual tuner and can tune both analog and digital simulatenously:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=923129

Apparently, that's what 'combo' means when describing a TV card - it has two tuners.  I had always thought that combo meant it came with a remote or something.

I have this tuner: http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonder650/usb/index.html

Should be the combo one (same as 650 pci-e) and able to do both QAM and analog.  I can see QAM when plugged into digital only and analog when hooked in to analog, but only analog when in both.

What gives?

Using the latest drivers downloaded from ATI, file name 8-9_vista32-64_t650usb_wdm_68908

EDIT:  NM, got it working.  Just forgot to restart after installing the driver :-/.

Hey guys,

Been doing a LOT of research on this matter and had a few questions.  I have the ATI 650 PCIe card hooked up and running.  I loaded the TV pack on my Vista x64 system (just updated not clean).

I have Comcast cable WITH the HD pack (extra 9xx channels for HD channels) and a STB to control all this.  If I have the cable box plugged into the qam port, NOT the analog port, nothing shows up, but when I plug the STB into the anolog side, it is reported as analog cable found. 

My problem is that if I split my signal like you guys say (have the stb signal go to the analog plug, and the regular from-the-wall signal into the digital) it recognizes both the stb analog and the digital qam.  WELL thats great and it scan for the digital channel (comes up with 11) BUT it will not play any of my 9xx HD channels in HD.  they are listed in the guide as HD, but play only via the analog tuner.  I also tried splitting hte signal AFTER the stb to no avail.

If you have any infor into this please help, I've looked everywehre to solve this.

dosequisrex:

Hey guys,

Been doing a LOT of research on this matter and had a few questions.  I have the ATI 650 PCIe card hooked up and running.  I loaded the TV pack on my Vista x64 system (just updated not clean).

I have Comcast cable WITH the HD pack (extra 9xx channels for HD channels) and a STB to control all this.  If I have the cable box plugged into the qam port, NOT the analog port, nothing shows up, but when I plug the STB into the anolog side, it is reported as analog cable found. 

My problem is that if I split my signal like you guys say (have the stb signal go to the analog plug, and the regular from-the-wall signal into the digital) it recognizes both the stb analog and the digital qam.  WELL thats great and it scan for the digital channel (comes up with 11) BUT it will not play any of my 9xx HD channels in HD.  they are listed in the guide as HD, but play only via the analog tuner.  I also tried splitting hte signal AFTER the stb to no avail.

If you have any infor into this please help, I've looked everywehre to solve this.

I don't have any experience using a cable box as a part of the setup.  I just ran two cables from the wall outlet to each input of the tuner card.  That gets me channels 1-99 digital, and then the clear QAM channels on top of that ( about a dozen of them ). Hopefully someone else can help you with the cable box setup.

Hey thanks for your input, yeah I understand what you mean basically its obtaining the signals then processing the actual HD ones via the second connection in the digital port. 

For me it does this as well, for all my standard NBC, abc, ect. This is great and works great, except since my wall port doesn't get the higher ups (ie AMC HD, ESPN HD)  Vista doesn't include them and thus only shows them in analog. 

Hopfully someone can post up something soon.  Thanks again though.  Also, if anyone has a STB workaround solution I'm open to it.  I have been reading up on the cablecard world and understand that its not just something you can go buy, so hopefully this can be figured out.

It's been forever since you asked this.  But IF you do want to run the feed from the STB into the analog tuner (and you can, if you want to be able to record your paid content like movie channels or get a downsampled cropped version of your HD channels, or maybe a third reason to be able to use the STB's remote?/ - otherwise if you just want the extended basic channels i'd just plug another feed in from the wall like you did for your QAM setting.

If you are running the STB feed into the analog Tuner then you'll need to run it from CH 3, just like it was an old VCR set up because what you are really doing is using the Cable STB's tuner and just passing that feed along and into the TV wonder 650, the 650 isn't doing the "actual" tuning other than to tune CH 3 which you are using to bring in the STB feed.  So if you are tuning in your cable box to the HD channels that is why they are only appearing in Low definition.  (the STB's won't out put a HD signal out that F-type TV Coaxial Feed. 

If you scanned the Digital QAM tuner in VMC and are still not getting HD pictures (i'm not 100% sure on your discription what you meant by the 11-900 channels if that's just where VMC put them or ?) but in some networks comcast doesn't broadcast ANY un-encrypted QAM...not even the local affiliates etc.  AVS forum is full of complaints like that about Comcast.  But IF it's not a matter of that and you are Actually getting the un-encrypted QAM 256 channels (again from the actual TV wonder's QAM tuner not the STB) i'd just make sure the item you are attempting to view is truly HD content and you are using the Tuners QAM tuner and not tuning that same channel in from the STB. 

To do this I'd unplug the Analog tuner (STB) until you get things straightened out and are able to properly tune in your QAM 256 HD content.