Hauppauge WinTV DCR-2650 Dual Cable Card Tuner For US Market! - Page 13

I'm not sure I buy that either. As mentioned by others above, my setup appeared to be back to normal during the same time frame all the sudden. I really dont know what the deal could be. Just very odd that the tuners going flakey for awhile then returning back to normal behavior during the same time period consistently across several people. I dont think its the provider as you mention TW, I am on FiOS, etc...and it's just to similar of an experience between behavior and timing to be coincidental on the provider side. My best guess is something in the chain wasnt playing nice with a windows update or something, but if that was the case, why would everyone suddenly be back to normal days later. Whole thing is just really odd, but hey, at least they are back to working decently again.

Are things working properly again? It's hard to say at this time of year when not much is recording. All of my network recording is done via an ota tuner, so the lost tuners are just encrypted cable.

I turned off sleep and have had no problems.

I am really hoping this thread is still active as I need help. Running the latest firmware (from April 2012) and after every sleep cycle, the tuner shows up with a warning icon in device manager and is not usable via media center. It sounds like the firmware prior to this edition was working fine for quite a few people, however, I cannot seem to find that version anywhere. Do any of you have a link to the old files?

Another question, I am using it as plain QAM tuner along with a hauppage 950q, avermedia dual, and a ati theatre qam tuner. When I go through the setup in W7, some channels only show DCR 2650 as their only available sources instead of showing all of them. What am I doing in the setup that causes that?

I appreciate the help.

I have a similar setup. WMC will only see 4 tuners, so I use the 2650 and the duet. It ignores any other tuners. I am running the 2650 with a cc. I wasn't aware that you could use it as qam, but there is no advantage to me since the unencrypted qam are just repeats of the ota channels or garbage.

As far as sleeping, turn off sleeping on that device, I think it is somewhere in this thread.

Greg

Thanks Greg. Unfortunately, "always on" is not an option for me. I have read almost all the thread and the impression I got was that prior to this April 2012 firmware, the "tuner disappearing" issue was no longer an issue. That is why I am hunting for the old firmware.

I had to go beyond a reboot this time and actually unplug the tuner to get it back...

Tried everything and ended up with a devcon script as mentioned in http://www.facebook.com/hauppaugecomputerworks/posts/287063537987365

It works most of the time however, it seems the windows task scheduler that is supposed to run the task after each resume sometimes fails to run the script. If I manually run the script it works every time. At this point I am messing around with other properties of the task trigger but hoping hauppauge will release a firmware that fixes the problem.

Thanks.

Thanks for the tip. This is the most problematic product I've ever had from hauppauge and I've had at least 6 including the hdpvr 1212 which is saying a lot.

Same here. In fact I think I am just about done with it. My machine has been on a tear again lately where I have to reboot daily prior to watching tv, sometimes more. All is fine till the computer sleeps, but once woken, you never know what your going to get. Sometimes the tuner comes back, sometimes it doesnt. Lately is mostly doesnt again. All the power settings for USB are good, no suspending or anything, and windows see's the tuner just fine in device manager when it doesnt work, but has the yellow ! for driver error. I'm convinced it is in fact a driver problem even if there are workarounds you can do to minimize them, thus something they could correct in a driver release. I'm also convinced this is a dead product to Hauppauge, weather they are done messing with this particular model or done messing with Silicon Dust (who made it), so I am about to be done with it too. I dont need the additional tuners or anything, but I think I am going to spring for the internal ceton very soon. Sure I can set the machine to never sleep, but that is not ideal to me either as I would either have to lose a tuner for recording (1 would always be going like you are actively watching tv), or purposely go to the main menu and stop the tv stream before shutting off the tv to prevent that from happening.

I recently purchased this Hauppauge with the idea of watching TV up in the bedroom with no additional charges from the caco. I had a PC that I set up with WMC, I only have basic cable, so ClearQAM with no cable card in the hauppauge should work fine. When I initially set it up, it DID work fine. Then a few days later, the wife wanted to swap TVs with the downstairs and I had to move around a bunch of stuff physically and when I next tried to watch live TV, nada. I also noticed the 'cable' light on the Hauppage was out (though I have no idea if it was on when it was working, but the docs say it should be)

The status webpage on the hauppauge reports:
Tuner 0 Status
Virtual Channel none
Frequency none
Program Number none
Authorization none
CCI Protection none
CGMS Protection none
Modulation Lock none
PCR Lock none
Signal Strength none
Signal Quality none
Symbol Quality none
Streaming Rate none
Resource Lock none

I thought hmm,.... almost looks like it's not connected to the cable outlet. So I carted up my TiVo from downstairs and removed the coax from the Hauppage and plugged it into the TiVo and live TV worked fine. So that leaves the hauppauge or windows as the issue, but I THINK the hauppauge should still get a cable lock even if it's not connected to a PC, but I'm just speculating. I'm running the most recent firmware.

I then ran the hauppauge test application DCRdiag and it reported
- either windows has not been activated (it is)
- The digital cable advisor has not been run (it has) or your system is not able to support cablecard devices (don't care, not using one)
- cable card inserted - failed (correct)
- the tuning service has not been installed (comcast does not need a tuner adapter in the boston area - not to mention this was working just a few weeks ago)

I'm at a dead end. I've tried all the troubleshooting steps I can think of

My other tuners work fine as clear qam tuners. Adding this tuner without a cc will just complicate your life. It should not...

I have used the Avermedia duet for a couple of years (internal). I am currently using it ota and it always works, so at least the network shows record.

I've given up on this thing on ever being 100% reliable... it seems to have a mind of it's own when it wants to have the tuners appear or not upon reawakening. I've disabled AV, removed / reinstalled software, firmware, drivers... but when it loses the tuner, the only thing that works to bring it back is to unplug the usb, close out media center, plug back in, and relaunch. Lost a couple of good concerts I wanted to record last week due to the no tuner found issue.

I was in communication with Haup tech support for awhile on this.. but after a few of my emails went unanswered, I figured they just couldn't figure out how to solve the problem. Oh well... will be looking elsewhere for something more dependable as I start to build my next HTPC for the girlfriends casa.

HAUP. fix this once and for all would ya?!

Mine's been 100%.....since I turned off sleep.

Which one are you looking at?

So I got one of these yesterday along with signing up for Cox cable, and right now I have to say I'm pretty damn aggravated.

My initial problem was that whenever I tried to watch any "digital" stations, I'd get a "Display device error" message about not being able to play protected content. After a lot of fishing around the 'net I found a very helpful post that detailed deleting WMC/WMP, reinstalling them, reinstalling PlayReady, and after all of that everything worked. I went through all of my stations and everything came up just fine. I put the PC to sleep for about 30 minutes or so and then came back to it later just to test if it would come out of sleep properly, and it did. Everything came up fine.

But this morning I try to turn it on......and I get that same message back. What happened between going to bed and waking up, I have absolutely no idea. I guess when I get home I'll try resetting the adapter and see if that corrects it, but who knows what it will actually take.

All of this is so unbelievably aggravating, it's so obvious that they don't want you to watch the TV that you're paying for this way. They want you to use their box, their DVR service, etc so they get more $ per month from you. The hoops that you have to jump through for this is beyond ridiculous. The only reason I even signed up for cable was football season and I already feel like getting rid of it.

Are you sure your cable card has been activated? Do you have a solid light on your tuning adapter (if you have a tuning adapter)?

Yes, because last night it all worked perfectly. I called Cox to activate the CableCard, and the tuning adapter light is solid.

What do you do when you stop using the htpc? I mean that would def work, and pc's are efficient enough that it isnt a big deal power wise, but seems like doing that adds inconvenience or additional hard disk wear. It's pretty much go through the steps to stop live tv before walking away or else still have the tuner going, which also means hard disk constantly writing nevermind leaving 1 tuner left for scheduled recordings right?


Anyhow, man this thing really seems to have a mind of its own. Mine got real bad for awhile where damn near every other time I woke the computer the tuners wouldnt come back thus required reboot, so often more then once per day not to mention many missed recordings. This persisted for weeks, to the point I was done with it and going to replace it with a ceton, but hadnt gotten around to doing so. Then all the sudden out of nowhere it works perfect again for the last couple weeks straight. HTPC has been otherwise untouched...no driver or firmware updates, no hardware or settings changes, etc.

I just leave the PC on. I rarely watch live TV, but almost always turn it off before turning the plasma off. The mechanical drive spins down on its own. The boot drive is an SSD. There's been conjecture that it's been windows updates that have been breaking this.

The 'display driver error' has to do with your video card. A few months ago, I updated my video card drivers, and would get that with every single cablecard channel. I would have to minimize WMC, then maximize it to get it to go away. I updated the video card drivers a few weeks later, and the problem has never happened since.

Well I figured out the problem and apparently it was what others are mentioning here; the last few days I've had to reset the PC after waking it from sleep for the tuner to work.

Hopefully some sort of fix will be figured out for this, but I'm not holding my breath.

So it turns out my strange spotty behaviour must of been caused by my motherboard! Just happened to of updated the BIOS for the heck of it several weeks ago. Wouldnt you know the tuner has worked absolutely flawless since! I guess there was some sort of tweak to the USB stuff in versions since the one that I had last updated to as all settings in windows as well as all BIOS settings were kept the same befoe and after. Now off to find some wood to knock on.

Now why didn't I think of that? I will try mine too...

Newegg has the Hauppauge 2650 for $70 after a $40 rebate. It also seems you can get an extra $10 off if you order between 1 - 3 EDT today, 10/18/12.

Yeah, It hits SS during that window but I've noticed lately that once a SS starts it continues past the window close time until 11:59PDT but I cannot confirm so if you want the extra $10 off order during the window.

I just purchase the unit. I am having a problem with all of the channels, I am on FIOS in NJ and I have all of the channels.. When I try channel 131 (Verizon test channel) and any channel in the 900's I get a "subscription required" error. I've been on the phone with the Verizon support guys and they're all over the place and emailing the Hauppauge support team and getting slow progress..

I need to confirm that I should have access to the 900's channel range as like my standard cablebox receivers..


Thanks..

On my Prime you have to have the CableCard your provider issues you both authenticated and most importantly activated before it will pass your subscribed channels. I'd ask, can you tune any channels via the CableCard and your new 2650? This would say the drivers, connections and such are working. Your "subscription required" is most likely coming from the CableCard - it is tuning the channel and evaluating whether to pass it along and deciding you have no subscription since your cable provider hasn't activated it, or at least told it which channels you are subscribed to.

Check if you have logs being generated by the 2650 you can read -- often they'll point you in the right direction. As far as activating your CableCard and what Verizon/FIOS needs to do I'd use Google and see what you can find but clearly this issue needs to be elevated with your provider - it's their card and they need to get it activated!

One other thought - how do you know the card is working? Can your provider confirm this? I had a bad Motorola M-Card from my provider (Mediacom) which they could not get working even with their folks at both my house and their facility!

If you're not getting all your subscribed channels, Fios is at fault. I have Comcast and I had the same problem at first. I read somewhere to instruct the company to do something, I think it was a term like cold hit, but I can't recall at this moment. Otherwise you have to call at different times to locate the one or two personnel who actually know how to activate a cable card.

TW in my area has a lot of switched video channels. I got the encrypted qam channels at first, but not the sdv. Eventually they did something and it all worked.

From my understanding, those "900" channels are the HBO's and such and those are the only channels on FIOS that require proper pairing, and require WMC to view them. So if you are having this problem with WMC, either you hadn't passed the DCA, many on verizon skip this step as a few months ago it wasn't needed, or something is either wrong with your cable card, its staging, its pairing and/or other provisioning of all your channels. Make sure you pass the DCA and call verizon to re-provision it. I haven't heard about this problem with verizon, but some cable companies have a hard time provisioning the equipment if it is already elsewhere in the billing system, from a user standpoint, it is often easier to get a new card rather than hoping to get in contact with the right person to properly remove the card from wherever it may still be in the system but the companies are getting a little better with this. It's also possible that there is a problem with your tuner, I doubt it since it is tuning the other channels.