Hauppauge WinTV DCR-2650 Dual Cable Card Tuner For US Market! - Page 7

I just got my 2650 today and I'm about half way there. The first guy I talked to at the Cox store told me I couldn't get a cable card. His supervisor did it in about 10 minutes.

The pairing process with Cox was easy enough. The setup with Hauppauge was easy enough and I got updated to the latest firmware and all that jazz.

None of my analog channels work. In the log it says it can't find the channel. Do the analog channels work for anyone?

My basic HDs work, basically the locals in HD. However when I get into the basic cable packages (in HD or DTV, like ESPNU) the log shows that I don't have a subscription to this channel. So if I can get this figured out tomorrow, I'll be golden.

I am a bit sad b/c I thought if this was plugged into one Windows 7 box any windows 7 box could use an available tuner. I guess I had that feature confused from the network versions. Sad panda.

why do people still have analog channels? isnt that illegal?

To fix the no subscription error you just have to call your cable company. It took a 2 minute phone call for Comcast to fix it for me.

Analog OTA is turned off, but most cable companies are still sending out analog signals for the basic service.

I called Cox today and they didn't know wtf. Is there a specific term I should use to get them to do something specific? I'm pretty sure if I asked them to do X then it would happen.

Being locked out of premium channels is a basic error, they should know what to do since it happens to cable boxes as well. They are totally incompetent if they dont know how to fix it. The only thing you can do on your end is reset the hauppauge and see if they fixed it.

I didn't realize that this only works when a cable card is inserted. I wanted to get it recognized by media center before TW came out...

Tell them to do a "cold activation" of the card. Normally they do a "hot activation" which doesnt fully activate the card.

ilrosewood, I have the WinTV-DCR-2650 on Cox (Omaha). sitlet is correct - when my CableCard was activated, I had to ask the tech to do a "cold hit" twice - the second "cold hit" finally got it up and running.

As for the "analog channels" - the WinTV-DCR-2650 does not have a built-in NTSC tuner, so it won't be able to tune in any of the channels that you'd get just by plugging an old NTSC-only TV, VCR, etc. directly into the cable jack.

In Omaha, Cox does simulcast these same channels in digital SD, and if you're using a Cox DVR or receiver, you're actually tuning the digital SD feed of those channels. However, if you are using a CableCard device, it appears that Cox does not send the channel information for these digital SD channels to the CableCard - when I look at the channel lineup information in the Hauppauge menu, it does not contain any information for channels 2, 3, or 5 through 70, all of which are broadcast in analog as well as digital SD in Omaha. I suspect that if Cox isn't supplying this information here, it probably isn't in its other markets either.

I already had a NTSC/ATSC/ClearQAM tuner card, so the fix for me was simple enough - just use that card to tune the few channels that are not sent in either digital SD or HD, and customize my channel lineup in Windows Media Center with the HD channels being the default.

I am with Cox in Phoenix and encountered the Subscription Required problem. Reading up on the diagnostic screens I found that while my CC was Authenticated and Activated it was not Staged. I had no entry for CA Time and my EMM count was zero. After a couple of calls to the Cox CC activation number where service reps did what they could (including cold hits) without success (they were all polite, patient, and sympathetic) I got a rep who did something and my CC staged, and all was well. He insisted on calling back in an hour to see if all my channels were working (they were) and I barely had the wit to ask, just before I hung up, what he had done to fix things. He told me they had five types of signals available, three of which they use, and what he sent my CC was an "RF" type, as in ReFresh. The number I called was 1-877-820-8202. I have no idea how centralized Cox CC activation is but perhaps this will help with the Subscription Required problem.

I had no idea that the tuning adapter was as big a a cable box. What a joke...

Anyone know if ota tuners can coexist with this box? I could go back to qam.

Thanks,

Greg

It appears to be working, but my signal seems weak on the ota end and cable. I get espn, but most other channels do not come in which leads me to believe it is my problem and not theirs since the tw dvr is running fine on the same cable.

There are a ton of problems using this thing. Changing resolutions seems very slow. I don't know if I can peg it to 1080 like you can on the tw dvr.

The biggest problem is that the overscan is set to 0 on the video card, and media center is showing black bars all around.

Regular windows is perfect. I need to turn overscan off in mc, but have not found a way. I do not remember having this problem in the past, but it has been a while since I used this pc. I was using it as a backup dvr.

On the positive side, tw had no real problems activating it and seemed to know a lot about it, with a dedicated number.

Any tips are appreciated. Thanks,

Greg

theres no resolution change in WMC between channels, its always the same resolution as the desktop, dont know what youre referring to

weak signal problems are extremely unlikely

Overscan is set in Media Center by choosing your type of screen. Just choose monitor to turn off overscan correction.

MC doesn't switch resolutions, so I'm not sure what you mean. I do notice a delay when going from digital to analog stations, but that's just because it needs to switch tuners.

As far as signal strength goes, you may need a booster depending on how often the signal is split after it enters the house.

The real problem was that I didn't turn the darn tuning adapter on... It was behind the tv, so I never noticed it. When it's off it acts as a pass through. Part of it was bad cables, I replaced a few and got more signal on non sdv channels.

Secondly the black bars problem was fixed by running the tv at 1080p with new drivers (ati). I'm not sure if the receiver is detecting it yet or not if I switch inputs.

This thing is great. I have 4 tuners, 2 ota and 2 cable. Next, on to the extenders!

And the old linksys extenders work! Not much more to say about that...

I just got the DCR2650 installed today. After activation, i was only able to get maybe 75% of the channels that i'm supposed to receive. So, i'm missing the other ~25%. And i do have the latest firmware and driver installed correctly. Time Warner told me i have to live with that if I'm using the DCR2650. they said they can only guarantee certified devices listed right here:

http://www.timewarnercable.com/SoCal...v/default.html

The Hauppauge DCR2650 isn't one of them!!! so there is nothing else they can do.

Anyone else with TWC living in Los Angeles area with the same problem?

what channels are you missing? Do you use a tuning adapter? I was missing a lot of channels because I did not have the ta on. We have a lot of switched video channels here.

Has anyone tried an extender? I was testing playing an extender and playing the same channel on the pc. The picture on the tv was very choppy while the extender was playing.

It's an older Athlon X2, 3600+, over 4 years old. It could be the disk too, I think everything is on one drive.

Greg

yes, i have a TA installed from the get go. I'm missing about 50 channels in all. The ones that i mainly care for that are missing are Speed HD, Travel HD, Science, HD theater, Versus HD, NatGeoWild, BBC America HD, etc.

Things got strange last night. I was using my extender and noticed that comedy central was not in the guide. I went back to the pc thinking that I may have had it taken out of the guide, it was there.

When I tried to go to the station, I wasn't getting any volume and I noticed that the audio had gotten screwed up. Once I got that going, then the video wouldn't play. It said "Files needed to display video are not installed or not working correctly. Please restart Media Center and or restart the computer". After a lot of googling and rebooting, it looked like it had something to do with the prior audio problem.

After that the tuners became unavailable. I tried powering things off/on and the digital tuner wizard popped back up, re-scanned and lost all my changes, but things worked.

The wife will not like this, but as long as the extenders continue to work it may not be a problem.

I'll try to fill in more details later, but it was late and took a couple of hours to resolve.

Im also missing some channels but on Comcast.

There were 6 channels added just last week and Im missing them all. I think those are the only ones missing.

I can't enable any of them in WMC, is there a way I can get it to search for valid channels again or is the hauppauge supposed to automatically update the list? They added BBC HD finally so Id really like to get it working.

I think this is a refresh problem because they also REMOVED channels and those channels are still in the channel list.

update: apparently you can only use the channels zap2it.com has for your zipcode, they dont have the new channels yet so thats probably the problem, I should get them when they update the list

Has anyone had any HDCP problems in Windows Media Center? I just installed this with a cable card from TWC. Im going from my HTPC to a monoprice HDMI splitter to 3 different monitors and I get a HDCP error.

Before installing the Hauppauge I never got this error. If I plug in only one display at a time it works fine. Why would using this splitter be a problem all of a sudden?

Thanks
Flan

I had a problem with an a/b splitter from Monoprice when I would toggle between my projector and tv from my av receiver (Pioneer) regardless of the input. A differrent receiver (Yamaha) did not. THe more things you put into the chain the more chances you have for problems.

Currently, if I go a way from live tv to another input (throught the receiver), I get a brief hdcp error when I return. That's the least of my problems...

I'm having a strange problem with the new tuners. When I come back to the pc after the tv has been off, the hdmi audio is getting disabled. On top of that, I'm getting no tuners are available for the cc channels. A reboot did not fix it. I rescanned the tuners and it saw the 3 atsc tuners, but not the cc tuner. I power cycled the ta and it seemed to fix it. I'm not sure of the exact sequence, but it was something like that.

It does seem to be recording.

Is anyone having problems like that? I wonder how many of us there are with the tuner.

Another strange thing I noticed is if you go to the diagnostics from the run menu and select driver download, it takes you to the silicon dust download.

Where do I hookup the tuning adapter to this unit? Does it hookup to the cable inline with the wintv-dcr-2650 or do I use a splitter to hook up both independent of each other? I assume it is inline, but I just keep getting No TV Signal on most channels even with the latest firmware, so I figured I would ask.

I believe you hook both into your computer.

Yep, the Hauppauge and the Cisco tuning adapter have USB cables you plug into your PC. When you run the Hauppauge software it will ask you if you have a tuning adapter installed, when you say yes it will install the driver for you.

The tuning adapter is for switched channels, so if you are getting non switched channels, that could be the problem. In our area espn is not switched but espn2 is. Locals usually aren't.

Remember that the ta has to be turned on and you need to run the digital cable advisor before you can get the switched channels to work.

I should have been more specific I guess. I was talking about the coaxial cable only. I know that the usb cables are each plugged into the computer. Is the coaxial cable supposed to be plugged into the ta, then from the ta to the dcr-2650. Or are they connected to the coaxial cable independently?

I have mine going into the ta, out of the ta, into the tuner.