WMC does not display HD for 2250

[JanSiegrist]

Greeting all
WMC is not displaying HD for my OTA channels.
Setup: Win7 pro on Dell Quad core w 6g of ram, primary drive [C] is an SSD.
Monitor is connected via HDMI.
Schedules Direct / EPG123 is used for both Verizon Fios Cable and Local OTA channels for 02896 [Providence RI]
At least on their web site I'm listed as having both.

Tuners: 2) HD HomeRun's (3 tuners each) using cable-cards for Verizon Fios
1) Hauppauge 2250 card (2 tuners) attached to OTA Antenna

I actually have a few problems:

1) WMC does not show the names of any of the OTA channels however they do tune if clicking on the 'No Data Available'
Does anyone know of a way to get 'both' the Cable and OTA channels to display in WMC?

I have asked the folks at Schedules Direct [EPG123] for advise but they know nothing of WMC and suggested I try here.

2) The bigger issue is that WMC does not play the OTA channels in HD.
Also, the program that is for the Hauppauge 2250 [WinTV8] tunes and displays the OTA channels just fine in HD.
Likewise WMC plays and records the Verizon Fios channels just fine.
Also know that in WMC the Fios channels show as whole numbers like 7,9, 200 and the OTA channels show as 7.1, 7.2, 10.1 etc.

Anyone out there have a solution to any of these issues? Anyone know if I purchased another HD Homerun and attached it to an OTA antenna would that fix things?
Thanks in advance
Jan

[Space]

1) In the EPG123 configuration GUI you need to add the OTA lineup (click on the "Lineups" button and "Add new" to search for and add a new OTA lineup). You then have to match the guide listings to the lineup in the EPG123 client. I believe if you have auto-match enabled it will happen automatically the next time an update is done, otherwise you need to manually do it in the EPG123 client GUI.

2) Not sure why the OTA channels are not displayed in HD. Cable channel numbers have no "dot" in them, OTA channels have the dot (to denote subchannels), there is no problem here, that is how it is.

The HD Homerun Prime does not support OTA (antenna), but there are other HD Homerun tuners that do. I have no idea if it will solve your problem with the HD issue, as I don't know why you are having that issue.

[JanSiegrist]

Thanks so much for the quick reply, I'll will attempt what you say in the client later this evening. Yeah the not displaying in HD is a huge issue. I remember years ago I had 'just' this tuner in WMC and it did in-fact work just fine. This box I'm putting together is a new build - recently Verizon Fios ceased to carry CBS on any channels so I blew the dust off this old tuner card and was attempting to use it as I still had a good working OTA antenna on the roof. My TV still displays the OTA channels but have no way to record anything OTA. You get so used to skipping over commercials ...
Any recommendations on an OTA tuner that is known to work well with WMC?
Thanks again
Jan

[Space]

The Silicon Dust products are always a good choice, but I have no personal experience with their OTA products.

The Nexstar dispute with Verizon is also affecting my service, fortunately they only own channels in my region that I don't normally watch (they are the affiliate of "The CW"). I feel sorry for areas where Nexstar is the affiliate for CBS, NBC, ABC, or FOX.

[JanSiegrist]

Again, thanks so much for the input. I did as you suggested adding a new lineup in EPG123, for my EPG installation this could only be done in the main EPG app, not the EPG client. You then need to go into the client app and re-build database and re-deploy. WMC now shows the OTA channels - with names - as well as the cable ones.
The really good news is when tuning the OTA channels in WMC they now show in HD. So it must be that without the name of the channel some other embedded information is not seen by WMC.
So bottom line: Issues resolved !
I'd still prefer to find a WMC replacement that will run in Windows 11 but I could handle Linux as well. From what I can tell so far nothing will tune the channels like HBO or Showtime - DRM channels?
Thanks again for your help and input, much appreciated.
Jan

[Space]

I'm glad that it fixed things for you, but I don't understand why it would have fixed the HD/SD issue, that is a mystery to me.

Perhaps they simulcast the channel in both HD and SD versions and you were tuning to the SD version (for instance channel 7.1 is the HD version and 7.2 is the SD version).

But other than that I can't think of any reason why adding the OTA lineup would make a channel that previously displayed as SD now display as HD.

[garyan2]

You didn't need to rebuild the database, you just needed to map the new OTA channels in your lineup to the WMC tuners.

WMC doesn't know what is HD/SD when there is no guide data for a channel. It uses the guide listings to say whether it is HD or not.

[JanSiegrist]

To garyan2
Greetings Gary - this is un-related item but since you are the expert - I thought I'd ask - as you may know I'm trying to get cablecard tuners working on a Win10 install by copying reg settings / keys from a working Win7 install. - when epg123 installs the WMC database (guide) where is that exactly and what is the filename? Also what criteria does EPG123 look at to determine if it installs just OTA channels or both OTA and CableCard channels? My setup contains both HDHR OTA and HDHR CableCard tuner boxes - the OTA portion installs and works perfectly.
Any info or thoughts you can share is much appreciated.
Jan
Thanks in Advance
Jan

[garyan2]

EPG123 technically doesn't know anything about WMC. It just creates the file containing the guide listings for whatever lineups and channels you select to download and creates the MXF file to import into the WMC database. The import is handled by the WMC utility program loadmxf.exe. The WMC database is located in c:\programdata\microsoft\ehome folder with filename mcepg3-x.db. It is a SQL database. The epg123 client will query/interact with the database to be able to do its many functions/capabilities but nothing to do with the actual tuners themselves.

It is WMC, during TV Setup, that determines what tuners are available to be scanned and used. Nothing to do with EPG123. I am not sure what WMC does to determine what tuners are available, whether it is looking for hardware signatures, BDA drivers, mcglidhost, or something else.

Out of curiosity, have you tried the WMC installer known as v13 to see if you have the same results? It has been on my TODO list for a while to build a new WMC installer based off of v13 rather than 8.8.5. There are some file differences that may make a difference, but I think it is low probability.

[JanSiegrist]

Thanks for the reply - can you point me to the v13 installer?
Jan

[technodevotee]

@JanSiegrist

Did you manage to get hold of V13?

Some people say it works OK with cablecards on 1511 and some people say that only V12 works with them.

I stopped making it available publicly due to the possibility of introducing vulnerabilities by backdating the DLLs in the system folder but I can send you a PM with a link to a copy in my dropbox account if you need it.

[JanSiegrist]

@technodevotee
Yes, I'll try it if you can make it available. I'm on FB as jan.siegrist.50
thanks - I've been trying a bunch of things but without much success.
Jan

[technodevotee]

I've send you a PM on here as I don't use FB

[JanSiegrist]

Ok got it.
All I can says is wow looking thru it's contents. Someone or group did a huge amount of work back in 2015 or so on this. Looks like a ton of things were tried.
Thanks so much, I'll let you know what I find.
Jan

[technodevotee]

@JanSiegrist

Not sure whether you are referring to MDL or TGB there.

A bit of background info about V13:

I don't like V8 myself because you can't run WMC full screen in RDP and you have to set Windows sound to stereo and WMC sound to whatever, otherwise you get problems.

I'm not interested in watching TV in an RDP session but I do want to be able to run WMC full screen and I need both Windows and WMC set to 5.1 surround sound like I used to have in V12, so purely for my own use, I made V13 using the files from V12 with a modified version of V8 installer and incorporated the workaround scripts that I had created. I also had a PC that needed 32bit WMC so I made one of those as well.

I never expected it to get into the wild but people were having problems using tuners that used to work in V12 so I offered it to them to try. Some people said it worked for them and some people said it didn't.

That was when I got embroiled in extenders, DVB Link and cablecards - thing I'd never come across before. I have to take my hat off to the guys and gals who worked so hard to get where we are with this. The amount of effort that has gone into it is truly amazing.

I still use V13 out of preference now - even on Windows 11.

[JanSiegrist]

Again thanks so much, I'll give it a try later this evening.
Jan

[JanSiegrist]

Still no luck on seeing the HDHomeRun Prime tuners, I've installed V13 and tried the fixes outlined. At this point I'm going to press on using a Win7 box for WMC and a 2nd box for HDHomeRun software, and possibly another PVR like Plex or NextPVR. If/when I get rid of cable entirely WMC seems to work fine with the HDHomeRun FLEX 4K on a Win10 box. The big unknown here will be how (if) it will handle ATSC3 signals. I'm currently attempting to get an ATSC3 channel out of Boston (30) miles away but so far no luck. I'll be trying different antennas shortly...
Thanks for all the help!
Jan

[technodevotee]

I read somewhere that ATSC3 uses H265 and according to this thread: https://forums.mydigitallife.net/thread ... st-1769508, WMC doesn't support H265.

Code: Select all

The problem is WMC itself, even using the LAV codecs and DVBlink it doesn't understand the H265 stream.

[StinkyImp]

This is anecdotal but I'm running a Win7 Pro WMC machine and can view H265 video files with no problem using Plex, but not WMC.

Interestingly... I can point Plex to my WMC (*.wtv) recordings and watch them with Plex. I've also connected my tuners to Plex and am impressed with the picture quality so far. I don't know about its recording capabilities since I don't have a Plex Pass.

I'm not advocating for anything, just offering my experience. I'll switch to "something" at some point, but until then, they'll take my WMC when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

[prsa01]

So, it sounds like WMC can successfully record h265 but can't play it? I don't know if it's possible /difficult to plug a different player into WMC (vlc,???).

Interesting.