Lost my Clear QAM digital channels in WMC

[adkbob]

I've got a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 that has been working flawlessly with WMC since I built my current HTPC running Win 7 Ultimate. Last week I installed Oracle's VirtualBox 4.3.18 to play with the Win 10 Preview. I noticed the next day that all of my scheduled programs were being recorded in SD and then noticed that all my clear QAM channels were missing from the WMC line-up. When I tell it to rescan all the channels it will see about 10 clear QAM channels during the scan but about 2/3 of the way through the scan it only shows 4 HD stations that I don't recognize. I installed Hauppauge WinTV 7 and it sees all the clear QAM channels just fine so I know it's not the TV card. I have uninstalled VirtualBox 4.3.18 but nothing I do gets the clear QAM channels back in WMC. I'm dreading doing a complete reinstall of Win 7. Anyone have experience with this problem?

[signcarver]

Have you tried manually adding the channels? Whenever I do clear qam on WMC, I almost always have to delete what it finds and enter all the channels manually. Part of my problem is that WMC insists I have OTA (ATSC)channels available on channel 4 and my clear qam channels on physical channel 4 confuse it as 4.1 on my system is SD channel 6, 4.2 is SD channel 5 and 4.3 is SD channel 10... which are CW, CBS and Fox... WMC insists 4.1 should be NBC (100+ miles away) and 4.2 and sometimes 4.3 are subchannels of that.

When you add a clear qam channel you must use the physical channel (here OTA 5.1 is 73.2) and if your provider uses 4 or 5 digit program numbers, you will probably have to use guide editor.

[Jimmersd]

Where are you located?

[adkbob]

Where are you located?

I'm from Jimmer's hometown, Hometown U.S.A.

[wayne1935]

Have you tried setting up WMC again - not the whole Win7?

[adkbob]

Have you tried setting up WMC again - not the whole Win7?

Yes, I tried resetting WMC via MediaCenterRecoveryTask in Task Scheduler but it didn't fix my problem. WMC still can't see the Clear QAM channels but WinTV can.

[Crash2009]

Maybe Win 7 got chewed up. Try System Restore. Pick a date prior to your experiment.

[wayne1935]

Have you tried setting up WMC again - not the whole Win7?

Yes, I tried resetting WMC via MediaCenterRecoveryTask in Task Scheduler but it didn't fix my problem. WMC still can't see the Clear QAM channels but WinTV can.

I was suggesting that you go back to the beginning and setup media center all over and remove all traces of WinTV before setting up MCE.

I gather from earlier posts that you are in Glens Falls which is TWC territory. Here in Saratoga Springs TWC went all digital several months ago which 'bricked' all my QAM tuners (including a 950Q USB tuner but I never used WinTV). I now have to use a cable card to record to MCE. We have just the basic package; so we can get channels up to 22 without any kind of box for the TV or the HD Homerun Prime. TWC gave me a Cisco TA box when I picked up the cable card but I don't use it because it seems to be only necessary with SDV and the TA was causing some nuisance issues in watching and recording at the same.

Interestingly, we are still getting analog stuff to the TV but the cable card only sees digital cable TV. I thought TWC had turned off the analog channels.

Wayne

[signcarver]

If you still have analog, they are not supposed to encrypt the locals. More than likely they moved them around (perhaps in preparation of going all digital) and WMC just doesn't detect them properly (in some cases they may have moved some to below channel 14 which WMC doesn't check for and must be manually added... for me all clear qam channels must be manually added regardless of where they are)

Since WinTV can see the channels, it isn't a question if clear qam exists but rather adding the channels to WMC but I will agree that sometimes other programs (such as WinTV) do occasionally cause some problems with WMC.

For just basic 99% of the time one does not need the TA but TWC has been known to neglect traditional cablecard maps since they rely so heavily on the TA.

[adkbob]

Have you tried setting up WMC again - not the whole Win7?

Yes, I tried resetting WMC via MediaCenterRecoveryTask in Task Scheduler but it didn't fix my problem. WMC still can't see the Clear QAM channels but WinTV can.

I was suggesting that you go back to the beginning and setup media center all over and remove all traces of WinTV before setting up MCE.

I gather from earlier posts that you are in Glens Falls which is TWC territory. Here in Saratoga Springs TWC went all digital several months ago which 'bricked' all my QAM tuners (including a 950Q USB tuner but I never used WinTV). I now have to use a cable card to record to MCE. We have just the basic package; so we can get channels up to 22 without any kind of box for the TV or the HD Homerun Prime. TWC gave me a Cisco TA box when I picked up the cable card but I don't use it because it seems to be only necessary with SDV and the TA was causing some nuisance issues in watching and recording at the same.

Interestingly, we are still getting analog stuff to the TV but the cable card only sees digital cable TV. I thought TWC had turned off the analog channels.

Wayne

Wayne,

I reset Win 7's WMC before I installed WinTV. I don't know what this MCE is that you're referring to. TWC didn't get rid of standard def here in Glens Falls (nor anywhere else because the FCC won't allow that) but if you have a cable box (or in your case the Cisco TA box) and enter 13 in the keypad it will automatically take you to the 4 digit channel that is the digital version of WNYT. I subscribe to the absolute basic version of cable @ $15 a month, channels 2 thru 23 with one of two more channels past that. PBS and the local networks came through in Clear QAM on WMC just fine for a few years but now since my problem started I can only get it to work in Hauppauge's WinTV v7 which absolutely sucks for scheduling recordings.

[signcarver]

If it works in WinTV, it will work in WMC you just have to manually add the physical channel number and then map it to the correct channel (granted these channel maps may change at any time). Again, WMC does a horrible job at detecting digital channels... I don't care if it is clear qam or ATSC (OTA), I consider myself lucky if it ever correctly finds more than 2.

To quote the Hauppauge Manual "For some reason, Media Center says it doesn't find any stations. However, it actually does find them..." I would say that it is usually the case that it "does" find them however the scans begin at 14 so any clear qam below that will need to be done manually... Also 4 digit (sub/program) numbers like TWC often uses must use a tool like guide editor to add them manually as WMC does not let you enter more than a 3 digit program number... WMC will list channels it detects that are up to 4 digits long if you "edit channels" however TWC also has some 5 digit program numbers and in this case Guide Editor must "always" be used. I believe the lineup in your area changed in September.

MCE is what some old-timers call WMC as it was XP "Media Center Edition" and many will refer to WMC under vista as VMC to distinguish it from Windows Media Center since windows 7.

[wayne1935]

Have you tried setting up WMC again - not the whole Win7?

Yes, I tried resetting WMC via MediaCenterRecoveryTask in Task Scheduler but it didn't fix my problem. WMC still can't see the Clear QAM channels but WinTV can.

I was suggesting that you go back to the beginning and setup media center all over and remove all traces of WinTV before setting up MCE.

I gather from earlier posts that you are in Glens Falls which is TWC territory. Here in Saratoga Springs TWC went all digital several months ago which 'bricked' all my QAM tuners (including a 950Q USB tuner but I never used WinTV). I now have to use a cable card to record to MCE. We have just the basic package; so we can get channels up to 22 without any kind of box for the TV or the HD Homerun Prime. TWC gave me a Cisco TA box when I picked up the cable card but I don't use it because it seems to be only necessary with SDV and the TA was causing some nuisance issues in watching and recording at the same.

Interestingly, we are still getting analog stuff to the TV but the cable card only sees digital cable TV. I thought TWC had turned off the analog channels.

Wayne

adkbob,

I was wondering if you got your 2250 QAM tuner working with WMC. I'll be spending more time indoors in the next few months before we go to FL; so I thought I'd try to get our USB QAM tuners working with cable if you had any success.

I meant to post that TWC began encrypting local channels several months ago. The digital change happened a couple years ago.

The cable from our modem directly to our 7 year old Sony HDTV gets all the Starter tier channels (that's all we subscribe to) just as your WinTV plus a few analog channels from the higher tier. We get 6 (NTSC), 6.1 (1080i) and 6.2 (480i) but no 6.1 in 480i. Although we do have an antenna to the TV, I know this the cable lineup because we get TW9 and FOX appears as 8.1 whereas FOX is 23.1 with the antenna. Although there are separate inputs for cable and antenna I can't find any info as to whether or not there are separate tuners.

Wayne