TV Tuning Question Through Media Center TV Wonder 750USB

[dennisl]

The software that came with my TV Wonder 750USB Tuner is very poor. You cannot even resize the TV to any size and place it on your desktop where you want. However, Media Center does lets you do this. I have Win7 Ultimate.

I have a misunderstanding of the tuner and the channels being tuned. I have Time Warner Cable and the signal going to the TV must be analog NTSC. I hooked up an older TV about 23 years old up and the tv search found all the channels. In all about 70 or so. Of course this TV does not have a digital tuner at all so the signal had to be analog.

Anyway, when I place this cable to my TV Wonder 750USB and use every tuning option available, it does not find but a couple channels. I have used analog, digital, Qam, whatever. I am very confused. How can an older TV find every channel and this USB TV Wonder tuner fail to find any.

If I just for example hook rabbit ears up to my TV Wonder USB, the tuner will find the about 5 stations in this area that are broadcast. These of course are local digital broadcast channels. By the way when I do a search of the channels with my older TV and it finds them it is the cable coming straight into the house, not even going through any boxes.

 

[Solarstarshines]

It should be Digital Qam you are running a digital cable line

It should work either way but i do believe in setting up the media center when you do more then one setting it stays

It's possible you need to start over and get rid of already tried connections and retry Digital Qam

 

[dennisl]

If it is a digital cable line why would a standard TV that is 23 years old tune in the channels. This TV does not have a digital tuner. I tried QAM, does not tune in the channels. Something is very strange here.

 

[Solarstarshines]

If it is a digital cable line why would a standard TV that is 23 years old tune in the channels. This TV does not have a digital tuner. I tried QAM, does not tune in the channels. Something is very strange here.

Well it being USB have you tried other slots
That particular slot you are using could be down or messed up

 

[dennisl]

Got the answer from time warner. It doesn't matter what selection you choose Qam, digital, analog ant etc. You have to have a TV card that has an analog tuner also. Searched other forums and found people with same problem I have. There is a difference between what is called analog antenna and digital antenna on a search than assuming you have an analog tuner also. That is why the older tv works, it has an analog tuner. Apparantly the TV Wonder USB does not.

 

[dennisl]

For anyone reading this, the TV-HVR-950Q is an example of a good tuner that would also tune analog channels.

 

[dennisl]

Please remember answers can be way off base.

I love forums but you have to be careful. I explained originally that a analog older tv of 23 years tuned to the correct channels. Yet Solar says I had a digital cable. Well this was straightforward the signal was analog. A person can spend a lot of time wasting time with incorrect answers. If you do not know what is going on then it is better to not respond. Telling me the incorrect answer and then saying my input was messed up was completely wrong. Could not have been any further off. It is better off not to respond if you really do not know the correct answer. Forums are to help and not lead you in the wrong direction. Common sense alone said the Time Warner signal was analog.

Good luck to him but you literally have to remember the responders who are way off base. They do not help.

 

[Solarstarshines]

I love forums but you have to be careful. I explained originally that a analog older tv of 23 years tuned to the correct channels. Yet Solar says I had a digital cable. Well this was straightforward the signal was analog. A person can spend a lot of time wasting time with incorrect answers. If you do not know what is going on then it is better to not respond. Telling me the incorrect answer and then saying my input was messed up was completely wrong. Could not have been any further off. It is better off not to respond if you really do not know the correct answer. Forums are to help and not lead you in the wrong direction. Common sense alone said the Time Warner signal was analog.

Good luck to him but you literally have to remember the responders who are way off base. They do not help.

Well sorry to say you may think i am off base but in turn really you didn't provide any real information next time be more detailed in your information

That is why no one else came to help lack of information lack of help and trying to stomp on someone for helping you isn't really going to warrant help in the future remember that

 

[dennisl]

guys like you are all the same. Right up front I told you it was an analog signal. You immediately said it was a digital cable. Go back and read your response. first thing out of your mouth was it was digital. No defense. When you make a mistake own up to it. Anyway, doesn't matter, got the right answer, but surely wasn't from you. everything you said was wrong, everything. My only error was not knowing the TV Wonder did not have an analog tuner. Of course I should have realized that knowing the older tv tuner worked. I am sure you may be absolutely right on many things, but not this one. Better not to post if you really don't know what you are talking about.

 

[Solarstarshines]

guys like you are all the same. Right up front I told you it was an analog signal. You immediately said it was a digital cable. Go back and read your response. first thing out of your mouth was it was digital. No defense. When you make a mistake own up to it. Anyway, doesn't matter, got the right answer, but surely wasn't from you. everything you said was wrong, everything. My only error was not knowing the TV Wonder did not have an analog tuner. Of course I should have realized that knowing the older tv tuner worked. I am sure you may be absolutely right on many things, but not this one. Better not to post if you really don't know what you are talking about.

I'm not here to argue with you

Like i said when there is lack of information help will be hard you OWN the product so it is up to YOU to list complete specs but i understand you want to make me at fault it's ok don't need to worry about me posting on any of your threads

Have a nice day if that's possible toddles

By the way most Cable is Fiber or Digital some analog still and the fact you never said using a box or not lol so keep blaming me for your lack of info

 

[Britton30]

With an analog signal the archaic TV can tune to channels 2-13 and maybe some UHF. Or that's how I'd think it would work. As far as I know, which may not be too far, all US TV cable and broadcast have been digital for 4-5 years by FCC rulings. this was to permit OTA HDTV possible.

 

[dsperber]

I'll try to provide some assistance here. But to be honest, I've got zero firsthand experience with your particular ATI 750 USB tuner card (is it a Theater 750 USB like this one?). However I do have firsthand experience with the ATI 650 PCIe tuner card (installed internally).

I used that ATI tuner card back in Windows XP (with Catalyst Media Center as the TV/DVR app), and then also when I went to Win7 (initially with BeyondTV as the TV/DVR app, and eventually with Windows Media Center as the TV/DVR app),

Now my setup did not use my TWC cable coax as the source into the TV tuner card. I have a pretty good roof antenna, which I used to feed the 650 PCIe card OTA/ATSC (which uses 8VSB modulation as the digital tuner technique). Note that OTA/ATSC digital TV (which is the way all US over-the-air TV now works... there is no longer analog NTSC over-the-air, everything is now digital 8VSB) is how the TV tuner card is designed to work when you feed it a roof antenna input signal.

However the driver support for the 650 PCIe card (and also for your 750 Pro USB card, if that's what it is) can also support "clear QAM" input, which is the digital modulation method used by US cable systems delivering content over coax. Again, this is digital and not analog, and without a STB/DVR requires a TV tuner (or TV tuner card and drivers) that supports QAM in order to tune to these digitally-provided channels.

"Clear QAM" basically means that those channels are sent over the cable network "unscrambled" so you can receive them without a cable receiver. However the tuner (in a TV, or drivers in a TV tuner card in your PC) must support the 64QAM or 256QAM modulation method.

Now normally, a cable subscriber such as yourself would have a "cable box" (or STB, or DVR, or cablecard in a TV/TIVO) to support receipt of "scrambled/protected" channels as well as the unscrambled/unprotected "clear QAM" channels... all of which are provided in a digital form on the coax coming into your house. Without a settop box or equivalent from your cable company, you will only be able to make use of unprotected unscrambled channels... such as the local networks (which could be received over-the-air for free by a roof antenna if you had one)... if the tuner in your equipment is capable of accepting QAM.

Now, most cable companies recognize that some of their customers will not have newer digitally-capable TV's (which have a built-in QAM tuner, so that you can just connect the coax directly to the TV to receive the unscrambled channels delivered in QAM). So they may provide a "digital-to-analog" converter for free (which was offered several years back at no or little charge, when the US was undergoing its analog-to-digital transition), to allow subscribers to continue to use their old analog-only TV's and not require a new digital STB/DVR.

Although I don't have an old analog TV any longer to confirm, I don't believe TWC/LA (where I live) now delivers anything but all-digital channels on their coax, which means I could NOT use an old analog-only TV with an old analog NTSC tuner (capable of tuning analog channels over-the-air from a roof antenna) any longer if I connected the TWC/LA coax directly to that TV.

But from what you describe, that you can connect your cable company coax to your old analog-only TV and you can actually get channels, that tells me that your cable system is still providing at least SOME channels over the coax in a form usable by your TV. Can you tell me what channel numbers on the TV actually work? what is the brand/model of the TV? Do you have two coax connectors on the back... one for VHF/UHF roof antenna and a second for "cable"? If you have two separate coax connectors that suggests the "cable" connector goes to a QAM tuner in the TV, which certainly has been around for a long time so it's not impossible.

I suppose it's possible that your cable company is still providing analog NTSC channels on your coax (unlike my TWC/LA which is ALL-DIGITAL on the coax, requiring QAM tuners).

Ok. According to the specs on your 750 USB card (if I'm looking at the right one), it should support BOTH (1) digital OTA/ATSC via 8VSB from a roof antenna, (2) digital unprotected cable channels via QAM from coax, and (3) analog NTSC channels (presumably from a roof antenna, but I suppose it could also work if your cable system still delivered some low channels in NTSC form for old TV's). There's an F-type coax connector.


Before going on, can you provide more detail.

Where do you live, and what is your cable provider?

What is your TV? Does it have one or two coax connectors on the back? Is there a "slide switch" for "UHF/VHF" vs. "CABLE"?

What channel numbers can you tune to with your TV when the cable coax is connected to it?

 

[sdowney717]

My new HDTV Westinghouse can see both ATSC HDTV channels and NTSC channels.

I have watched channel 51 which is NTSC and has snow just like old TV do with a weak signal.
AFAIK, low power local broadcasters can still use NTSC.

 

[dennisl]

No, the usb 750 will not tune in analog signal. By the way the Hauppage 1191 will. I have 65 analog channels coming i n from time Warner directly through no box. 750 will not detect. I ordered a Sabrent Analog tuner which picked up all channels imediately. I display them on an older VGA monitor as it has this as an output also. Works great, has many functions. But, to display everything for over the air Broadcasts, Digital or Analog, the Hauppage 1191 is the ticket. I tried various software, the Media Center was the best as you can resize TV anywhere on your computer.

 

[Bertison]

I have a misunderstanding of the tuner and the channels being tuned.

Says it all, I guess ...