an unusual problem regarding tv tuners/wmc

KevinArnold · 26 May 2010

Hello all, I'll try to make this make as much sense as possible.

I bought a tv tuner that doesn't pick up everything my television picks up. I have a cable subscription that is delivered to my apartment via coaxial cable.

Now, here's where the unusuality comes in.

Even though I am only paying for basic cable, I get many, many channels that I don't think are part of the basic package (ESPN/ESPN2/TLC/etc). My hdtv picks these channels up when I have the coaxial simply plugged into my television (no cable box). However, these channels are found on places like 102.410, 55.1241, etc.

Is it possible to pick those up with a tv tuner? I recently bought this one:
Newegg.com - AVerMedia AVerTVHD Duet - PCTV Tuner (A188 - White Box) - TV Tuners & Video Devices
and it picks up my channels like 7.1 (abc hd) 5.1 (fox hd) and the like, but does not pick up anything past channel 50 or so.

Is it possible to pick up the 102.410s of the world with a tv tuner? What type would I need? Is there some key information that I am not understanding? The requested channels ARE digital, yes? Because I noticed my card does not pick up NTSC, but that shouldn't be an issue, right?

Thanks much.

Crunchy Doodle · 26 May 2010

Your tuner is a QAM tuner and should get all the unencrypted digital channels coming over your basic cable connection. Your TV has a QAM tuner also, so you should be able to get all the same channels. There are a few caveats. I don't believe Windows 7 Media Center can tune to a four digit subchannel like 55.1241. I'm pretty sure we are limited to three digits each for the channel and subchannel, such as 102.410. On my Time Warner Cable the channels range from 22.626 to 134.345. There are a few clunkers with four digital subchannels, such as SPIKE 101.8401. The SiliconDust HDHomeRun dual QAM tuner can tune to it with the SiliconDust setup application, but MC7 can't.

Another issue is that TW sends data to our one QAM HDTV set to make the channel numbers it displays more friendly. Often, these are not the actual channel numbers needed in the MC7 TV setup. For example, what the HDTV shows as channel 2.1 (KCBSDT) is actually 82.542. The guide information is at 2.1 - all of which is doable in the MC7 setup. So physically KCBSDT is at 82.542, but I set it to display as 2.1 with the guide listing for KCBSDT. This has to be done manually in the MC7 setup. It takes a while to get used to the idea of physical and virtual channel numbers and how they map to guide listing data. I've done it so many times now, I have most of it memorized. I'm not sure this is a good thing.

Search around for discussions on how QAM channel mapping is done.

Bye.

KevinArnold · 26 May 2010

thanks a ton! I found a LOT of the information I was looking for thanks to you!