Hi all, rank noob here so I apologize in advance for asking what may be a very basic question. After a frustrating experience attempting to turn an old HP dual-core AMD machine into a MythDora box, I went back to what I knew and put Windows XP Media Center 2005 on the machine. It's running like a champ with a Hauppauge PVR-150 card. Now the question. I am a US Cox Cable subscriber, and I get some HD channels with my basic cable subscription. There is no converter box - just coax from the wall right into my HDTVs with both analog and HD channels on it. My local network channels are served as both analog (whole number channels, like "8") and digital (fractional number channels, like "8.1"). The PVR-150 naturally picks up the analog signals without problem, and naturally doesn't pick up the digital signals. So I've been shopping for a combo tuner card to use that will tune both the analog and digital signals off my cable feed. I've been looking at both the Hauppauge HVR-1600 and Asus PHC3-100 units on Newegg, but one thing befuddles me: the MCE remotes bundled with each card do not have a "." key on their keypads. My HDTVs' remotes all have this key, so that you can direct-tune digital channels. So my question is: are these cards able to access dot-one channels from my cable feed? And if so, how can I access those channels via the remote keypads without having to simply scroll to them with the channel buttons? Or is there a combo card with a better remote out there somewhere? Thanks in advance for your help and advice.
The card (PVR-150) only has an NTSC tuner. Looking at the specs for the card: Channel Coverage Cable:1-125 That's why there's no "." button on the remote. The card is not capable of decoding the signal. You need a card that supports digital TV. The HVR-1600 does. "The WinTV-HVR-1600 has two tuners: a 125 channel cable ready tuner and an ATSC digital TV tuner. ATSC digital TV is the new over-the-air high definition TV for North America." The ASUS card does as well. As far as the "dot" button on the remote, I sent an e-mail to Hauppauge support because I was curious. Let's see what Kind of answer (if we get one) they give us.
Windows XP Media Center and Windows Vista media center will not work correctly with the dot channels anyway. Microsoft reneggeg on their promise to fix this in XP and vista, but have finaly fixed it for windows 7 media center. All my channels are digital, and I use the $100 version of the hvr 1600 with the black remote. I don't use the remote much with my setup (KB & Mouse close at hand), but when I do use it, I just tune to the primary chanel, then use channel up to get from channel 13.1 to 13.3 or whatever. Also, I rarely watch TV live, I don't like having to wait through commercials.
Can you elaborate on Media Center not playing nice with the "dot" channels? What have you observed? I've used Vista MC on my HP laptop with ATSC tuner card and it seems to work ok.
I received an answer from Hauppauge. It's pretty much as KB explained. Hello, You will be able to receive the “inbetween” channels or DOT channels in WINTV 7 as you referred to them. However, you will not be able to tune to them using the remote. You’ll have to manually change to them by selecting the channel with your mouse. Regards, <Name and e-mail addy redacted> Hauppauge Computer Works Inc. Technical Support New York http://www.hauppauge.com
Dailun, thank you for finding out and sharing that information. It clears things up, but sure isn't an optimal solution! So, are there really no MC remotes that allow tuning directly to the "dot" channels?
I have not seen any cheap ones. Logitech makes several programmable remotes, so you can reprogram a useless button like # to be a "dot". You could also go with something like the diNovo Mini...it has a dot, as well as all the other keys...you could tune to channel "G5.3" if it existed. It even has a mini-touchpad. As for the media center issues, you can add channels like 18.1, 18.2, etc to the channel list, but there is a serious bug with the DVR function...it sees all the channels as one channel, yet only records one of them. So, if your show is on channel 18.2, it won't even show up in the guide, as you will have two copies of the listings for channel 18.1 ; yet when there is something on channel 18.1 that is set to record, media center will record channel 18.2 instead! It is a huge mess, and like most vista bugs, Microsoft refuses to fix it because it might hurt windows 7 sales if Vista worked. WinTV7 does not have this issue, but WinTV7 is useless as DVR software, and it has built-in delay, so it cannot be used for live tv or video games (you need to get a copy of wintv6 to connect a video game, and installing wintv6 requires the removal of wintv7).
I see. So Win7 is in my future for this box, then. That's fine, as I've installed it on a couple of other machines and had great results. Thank you all for your help and explanations!
