WMC overriding channel selection for OTA vs cable

[wgf_bean]

First forgive me if this topic has been brought up before. If so I'm having a tough time finding it...

I have both OTA (HD HomeRun) and cable receivers (HD HomeRun Prime). Some channels are of course duplicates. For example in my area WJAR Providence shows on my OTA receiver as 10.1, and on my cable receiver as 710.

If try to watch WJAR on cable (i.e. channel 710) WMC will instead decide to use the OTA receiver on channel 10.1. How do I know it's using OTA 10.1 instead of cable 710? If I unplug the RF cable going to my antenna then reception stops. Also If I go into Tasks -> TV -> TV Signal and disable the OTA receiver either by completely removing its use or disabling 10.1 individually then when I go back to view 710 it correctly selects the cable version. So for whatever reason if a station is on both OTA and cable, WMC insists on grabbing the OTA version regardless of which I select. This is true if I watch live TV or schedule a recording.

This is a problem for me because I frequently record live sporting events that only broadcast once. So incase the cable or the OTA feed have a problem I want to record both. Then after the event I can chose which I want to keep. Currently I have only one solution to do this. I use two separate computers. One computer is configured to only use the cable feed, while the other is configured to only use the OTA feed.

Is there a way to tell WMC (perhaps through a registry key) to not get cute with channel selection? If I tell it to record 710, then I mean it and don't want it to get clever and record 10.1 instead.

[blueiedgod]

In the guide you can select preferred tuner for each channel.

I just removed the Cable duplicates of the same OTA channels, since it is more likely that cable will go out before OTA. While at it, I removed the SD versions of the same channels that we get in HD

So, my guide looks like

2.1
4.1
7.1
17.1
23.1
29.1
49.1
49
50
125
560
590
.....
etc

[wgf_bean]

Yes, I've done this in the past too. I was hoping there was a way to instruct WMC to not remap channels just because it thinks the content is the same.

Sometimes I want to record both feeds at the same time.

[DSperber]

Sometimes I want to record both feeds at the same time.

If you haven't removed the duplicates from your channel setup, and you actually do have both showing in the Guide (e.g. my 4.1 is there from Hauppauge HVR-2250 tuner, as well as 4 from TWC/LA Ceton InfiniTV4), your "source preference" setup determined which one was selected by default when the same show was available on both channels. In my case, I prefer my OTA dual-tuner to the TWC-provided source whenever possible. And WMC does that, working exactly as designed and expected unless forced to revert to the lower-priority tuner source because of lack of available tuners OTA during that time period.

But there's nothing to prevent you from MANUALLY SETTING A SECOND SIMULTANEOUS RECORDING FROM THE SECONDARY TUNER. If a show appears in a Guide cell, you can manually record it... no matter whether it shows "another recording on another channel is scheduled" with the white exclamation mark. Sure, this is WMC default behavior so that you do NOT GET DUPLICATE RECORDINGS of the same show at the same time, which of course makes perfect sense. But you can manually override that and force the second duplicate recording from the second channel. You just have to do it yourself.

[glugglug]

Yes, I've done this in the past too. I was hoping there was a way to instruct WMC to not remap channels just because it thinks the content is the same.

Sometimes I want to record both feeds at the same time.

From the guide you can right click the channel and pick "Edit Channel" then "Edit Sources" which should list each channel/tuner it thinks that channel can be tuned from. Clicking the "Split" button next to one of the sources will remove it from that channel and create a new one, which you can assign a different number.

[wgf_bean]

But there's nothing to prevent you from MANUALLY SETTING A SECOND SIMULTANEOUS RECORDING FROM THE SECONDARY TUNER. If a show appears in a Guide cell, you can manually record it... no matter whether it shows "another recording on another channel is scheduled" with the white exclamation mark. Sure, this is WMC default behavior so that you do NOT GET DUPLICATE RECORDINGS of the same show at the same time, which of course makes perfect sense. But you can manually override that and force the second duplicate recording from the second channel. You just have to do it yourself.

If the sources for a channel show both the OTA and cable receivers, then manually recording both will still result in both recordings coming from the OTA if OTA is the default on the list of both.

Thanks to both DSperber and glugglug for showing me that you can change the sources. What I ended up doing was to uncheck the alternate receivers where I don't want them. Now I can record a show that's on both OTA and cable at the same time and get the expected results - record both feeds.