[mythtv-users] pchdtv 5500, verizon fios, and ota, oh my!

Jerry Rubinow jerrymr at gmail.com
Fri Feb 9 04:52:20 UTC 2007


On 2/8/07, Kurt Yoder <ktymyth at yoderhome.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 8, 2007, at 11:21 PM, Jerry Rubinow wrote:
> > Here in the Philly area it's plain QAM-256 on the Verizon coax.  I was
> > able to detect 60 or so signals, although about 2/3 of them were
> > music-only channels (I think) that just confused Myth when I tried to
> > tune to them.  But all the SD and HD OTA channels were there in the
> > clear and I've had no problems tuning and recording them in Myth.
> > N.b: this using an AverTV HD A-180.
> >
> > How sure are you that you have the 5500 configured correctly?
>
> I can definitely tune at least 2 HD channels using my crappy antenna
> and the 5500. They break up a lot, but that's due to low signal
> strength. Did you simply hook the coax cable from the wall into your
> 5500 and the scan for channels? What scanning utility did you use,
> and what were the settings?

Yup, straight from wall to the card (not 5500, but the A-180 as
mentioned).  I used the scan button under the DVB card configuration
in mythtv-setup.  I'm unfamiliar with PCHDTV 5500 setup, but perhaps
there are different settings for connecting it to QAM vs. an OTA
antenna?

> I'm not sure that I only get MOCA and not QAM. I just assumed it was
> so since I didn't detect any channels when scanning. Is there some
> way of finding out one way or the other? I'm assuming verizon tech
> support is useless...

I'm pretty sure a large portion of the northeast Verizon fiber is fed
from a single head end.  Of course, I suppose it's possible they
install different ONTs or different firmware on the ONTs at people's
houses that encode the signal onto the coax differently, but that
would mean nonstandard equipment.  Besides, isn't MOCA just something
that allows set top boxes within a house to communicate with each
other?

In any case, did you check the wiki or the mailing list archive to see
if there's anything about configuring a 5500 for QAM use?

-Jerry


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list