Windows 7: Dish Network via WMC 7

I am running Windows 7 64-bit and am trying to get the composite/s-video signal from my Dish Network 522 STB via a brand new Avermedia Volar Max USB TV card to show in WMC 7. To the best of my knowledge, there is absolutely no way to manually select the composite/s-video inputs in WMC without going through the whole STB/IR blaster song and dance. I am using this nifty adesso remote which seems to work fine in WMC, but has no IR emitter capability.

My old HTPC uses an antiquated ATI all-in-wonder and with the ATI MMC software, it is very easy to simply toggle between the composite, s-video and TV tuner inputs. It is crazy that WMC doesn't have this ability! I can input the signal via channel 3 on the coax input, but the picture suffers quite a bit. SD is bad enough on a 51" rear-projection TV without making it worse! Plus there is the horrible delay when using the STB remote, so I am about to give up on this option.

Here's the next option I am considering. Send back the Volar Max and get a Hauppague 1850 that comes with a MCE remote and an IR blaster. Theoretically, this should enable me to set up WMC to show the guide for Dish Network in my area and control the STB accordingly... Or is this a pipe dream? If I use the IR emitter from the Hauppague remote, will the Adesso remote be able to work the STB remotely?

the composite & svideo inputs show as channels in wmc on both my hauppauge 1800 & 2250 tuner cards.

Selecting the channel activates the input(s). Possibly they are there and you didn't realize it. It took me a while to find them.

So are you saying it creates a channel on the guide for each of these inputs?

I was mistaken.. It is the software that came with the card that allows the inputs to be selected as a channel.

However, using a stb and the composit inputs is still an option. I don't have your hardware but my hauppauge cards work.

Connect your stb to your card inputs and then run the tuner setup. It should detect the inputs as a stb provided the wmc drivers for your hardware support the inputs.

EDIT: you need to have an ir blaster. wmc won't finish the setup if you do not have a way to control the stb but you already knew that.