[mythtv-users] Jason Beck's QAM guide Now on the Wiki

[Steven Adeff]

On 2/3/06, Dylan R. Semler <dsemler at macalester.edu> wrote:
> >On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Steven Adeff wrote:
> >>I've finished my initial writeup of Jason Beck's guide to the Wiki, it
> >>can be found at:
> >>http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Adding_QAM_Channels_For_HDTV_Tuner_Cards
> >>
> >>I'd appreciate it if everyone that has used it, along with Jason
> >>himself to go over it and fix things up, etc. Before making any
> >>drastic changes though, please bring them up in the discussion area
> >>for the article and give it at least a day for people to respond.
> >>
> >>Thanks for the help everyone!
> >>--
> >>Steve
>
> >- atscscan found 337 entries and so far I can lock onto everyone I've tried with
> >azap but I can't get mplayer to play any of them.  I've only tried about a half
> >dozen so I may just be unlucky but is it normal to be able to lock onto a
> >channel but not play it (it says it can't find a video stream)?  I downloaded
> >and compiled the latest version of mplayer but still no luck.
> >
> >
> This is normal.  Most of the channels you get will be encrypted, meaning
> that a signal is being transmitted at that frequency (so azap does lock
> on it), but it's encoded in a way that only the cable company's tuner
> boxes can decrypt.  You should at least be able to find your broadcast
> channels (NBC, CBS, FOX,...) coming in clearly over the cable and if
> you're lucky a few others.  You'll probably also get a bunch of music
> channels that aren't encrypted but mplayer and mythtv don't handle these
> well (I'm guessing because they only contain a few frames of video for
> each song).

there is a patch for DVB uses in the UK for DVB radio stations that
should be applicable to the digital cable music stations, it creates
its own video feed so that the audio works properly. It may even be
possible to have MythTV properly handle the single frame video in the
same way digital cable boxes do (take the frame, repeat it as needed
till the next frame shows up). I'll leave this as an excercise for
someone that knows what they're doing...

> I wrote a very very crude bash script that calls player to determine if
> a channel is encrypted or not.  I hesitate to post I'm not a programmer
> and it'll need to be modified to fit each computer it runs on.  Let me
> know if you really want it though.

post it, I may be able to help modify it enough to make it easier for
different computers to run it.

> >- atscscan didn't reveal channel names for any of the 337 channels.  I take it
> >this is info that my cable company isn't sending.  If I call my cable provider
> >what additional field of info should I ask them to transmit so that I can get
> >the channel names?  Time Warner Cable will probably just laugh at me when I ask
> >but it can't hurt to try :)
> >
> >
> I didn't get channel names either.  I went ahead and manually put them
> in which is not too amusing.
>

--
Steve