Deactivating unwanted channels

[lordon]

I have 3 HDHomerun Dual boxes for Over-the-Air use. I just bought another so I can have a total of 8 OTA tuners. I'm using TunerSalad so I can use more than 4 tuners. But whenever I run Setup TV Signal to add the 2 new tuners to my WMC installation, all the channels that are available from OTA and my Cable company get activated even though I deactivated many of them because my Cable package doesn't offer the channel or in the case of OTA channels they are too weak to get good reception. How do I add the two new tuners without this happening?

[Scallica]

Have you tried MCE Backup and selecting the Channel Lineup option only?

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/24631/ba ... -mcbackup/

[dmagerl]

Just create a Favorite Lineup.

[jerryt]

http://1geek1tool.com/guidetool

The channel list can be modified and then saved to a networked folder

[barnabas1969]

Favorite lineups are nice, but they have a drawback: The recorder will attempt to record shows on the weak or non-subscribed channels and fail to record. This is because the recorder will use all channels that are active in the guide, not just those in a particular favorites list. It's better to disable the channels.

Several people have had success with backing up their lineup with Guide Tool (paid version) or MCE Backup, but some have problems with these tools corrupting the MCE database.

Guide Tool is nice, but the OP is asking how to add the new tuners WITHOUT needing to deactivate all those channels again.

Since the OP is using HD HomeRun tuners, he can disable the unwanted/unsubscribed channels in the HD HomeRun Setup program. I believe there's even a way to duplicate the settings from one tuner to the next. Then, when Media Center does a channel scan, it won't even detect the presence of the unwanted channels. The HD HomeRun settings can also be exported/backed-up so that they can be restored to a different system or after an O/S re-install.

[STC]

^ I 'think' with guide tool, you can duplicate channel selection/deselection to different tuners.

I'm not 100% certain but I recall the option to do that vaguely.

[jerryt]

I have applied a saved channel profile using Guidetool, on different hardware, accessing different HDHomerun tuners, and it worked perfectly.

[barnabas1969]

^ I 'think' with guide tool, you can duplicate channel selection/deselection to different tuners.

I'm not 100% certain but I recall the option to do that vaguely.

Yes, that's correct STC. But the problem the OP is asking about is that when he adds a new tuner, he must go through TV Setup in Media Center, which wipes out all of his guide customization. The only thing that will prevent this is some sort of lineup backup/restore as previously mentioned. However, some people have problems with these methods of backup/restore. So, if the OP goes through the pain of deactivating the unwanted channels in the HD HomeRun Setup program this time, and then saves his HD HomeRun configuration (there's an actual supported way of doing this which can be found on the Silicondust forum)... then he'll never need to do it again.

[STC]

Whenever I had to re-init WMC, and the tuner channel config defaulted to all channels for all tuners, I restored one tuners lineup using guide tool (purchased version) and it restored the lineup to all four tuners on my infini.

[edit] Using guide tool, once you have saved a lineup selection from any tuner, you can restore the selection to any other tuner or group of tuners.

[staknhalo]

It's never worked for me (Guide Tool 'restore' feature).

[STC]

^ Guide Tool?
Restore has worked every time over here, even across tuner cards / HTPCs.

Saved me lots of time.

[barnabas1969]

My point was that the restore in Guide Tool or MCE Backup doesn't work for everyone. And, since all of the OP's tuners are HD HomeRun's, he can use the built-in features of the HD HomeRun software to guarantee that he will never, ever have to disable channels in his guide again... provided that he backs up his HD HomeRun settings. I'd have to go searching, but I know that there is a way to reliably backup the HDHR settings, and you can even copy them to multiple PC's that share the same pool of tuners.

The advantage of doing it this way, is that if you ever have to re-scan channels, add another HDHR tuner, build a new HTPC, or whatever... you can simply copy your old HDHR settings file(s) and run TV Setup in Media Center. The HDHR settings prevent Media Center from even knowing that those unwanted channels exist.

[staknhalo]

^ Guide Tool?
Restore has worked every time over here, even across tuner cards / HTPCs.

Saved me lots of time.

Yeah it always says it backups successfully but it never restores the lineup on 2 different HTPCs. It might have something to do with the fact that I have to manually add my entire lineup via QAM. WMC can't set the channels up via just scanning.

[STC]

QAM may be the culprit.

As an option for the OP, my point is that HDHR tuners should work fine with guide tool just like infini tuners do.

[barnabas1969]

QAM may be the culprit.

As an option for the OP, my point is that HDHR tuners should work fine with guide tool just like infini tuners do.

Yes, they do. I have HDHR Prime tuners, plus a few QAM tuners. All work fine with Guide Tool for the purpose of enabling/disabling channels, adding channels, and merging channels.

But since he's using HDHR tuners, the HDHR setup software is a more permanent solution to the problem.