# Help with MythTV and HVR-1250



## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 18, 2011)

Hi, I just built an HTPC for Linux and I can't get my free digital cable to work with my Tuner card. The specs are: ASRock mini-ITX with AMD Zecate E-350 (AMD ATI Radeon HD 6310), 2GB 1066 DDR3, 1TB Hitachi HDD, Hauppauge HVR-1250 PCIe.

My Cable company is Metrocast Starkville MS. Im assuming the cable is the same regardless.
I called the Cable company and they claim they do not know their Modulation or Frequency settings for Extended Basic Cable over QAM. 
I have the current settings available in MythTV: 
QAM-64, QAM-128, QAM-256, VBV-8, Terestrial
Cable, Cable High, Cable HRC High, Cable IRC High
It is running Ubuntu 10.10 x86


What do I need to do cause Ive tried just about every setting and it says timed out or locked.


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## Athlon2K15 (Mar 18, 2011)

install windows problem solved


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## CJCerny (Mar 18, 2011)

The HVR-1250 can do NTSC, Clear QAM, and ATSC. That means you should be able to receive the analog channels from your cable as well as any Clear QAM channels they might have. ATSC is out because you have cable, not an antenna. Have you bothered to figure out what the NTSC and Clear QAM channels are from your cable provider yet? That's a good place to start. Once we know what you can legitmately receive, then we have some way of troubleshooting where the problem is. The NTSC channels are typically 2-69 or so on most cable providers. Additionally, all cable providers are legally bound to provide Clear QAM versions of the HDTV channels that you could receive with an antenna on their cable. Nothing else will likely be clear and you will not be able to tune it.


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## erocker (Mar 18, 2011)

Killer_Rubber_Ducky said:


> two possible solution groups to gleen from. I mean, it is a system builder issue and a Linux issue.



No, like everyone else, one thread per topic.


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## Easy Rhino (Mar 18, 2011)

i think it has more to do with the fact that your tuner card has to be registered with the cable company to get access. that is, if they use a digital box tuner then it is probably encrypted.


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## CJCerny (Mar 18, 2011)

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I sniffed a major fail in this project right from the start. You stated that you have digital cable and it sounds like you are hoping to tune all of the channels you receive with a tuner card. That will never happen. Not with a different tuner card, hardware, or a different OS. The cable company encrypts the digital channels (probably everything above 69) and you simply cannot build any kind of DVR (other than one that uses a Cable Card) to decrypt those channels at this point in time.


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## Easy Rhino (Mar 18, 2011)

apparently if you hook your PVR up to your digital set top box using component cables then you should be able to record everything that way.


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## CJCerny (Mar 18, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> apparently if you hook your PVR up to your digital set top box using component cables then you should be able to record everything that way.



It's not a DVR at that point. It's just an analog capture card, which he does not have. He would still have to run the DVR functions from his cable box, not his HTPC.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 18, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> i think it has more to do with the fact that your tuner card has to be registered with the cable company to get access. that is, if they use a digital box tuner then it is probably encrypted.



It is straight from the wall no box. Came with the apartment. My other TV tuner card works fine.

There is no digital decoder box. I will post the Channel list soon. I get Extended Basic free with rent.


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## Easy Rhino (Mar 18, 2011)

no digital encryption? so they use clearQAM ?


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 18, 2011)

Here is the channel line up. Remember, I have Extended Basic. we get ClearQAM.


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## Easy Rhino (Mar 18, 2011)

this may be a linux issue even though i know that myth tv and hauppage tuners should work well together. it seems to me that if you are getting the unencrypted signal then the OS is not uncompressing the signal properly.


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## CJCerny (Mar 18, 2011)

Killer_Rubber_Ducky said:


> Here is the channel line up. Remember, I have Extended Basic. we get ClearQAM.



Okay, there is hope. Your first post said digital cable. Analog cable and Clear QAM we can tune.


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## Easy Rhino (Mar 18, 2011)

CJCerny said:


> Okay, there is hope. Your first post said digital cable. Analog cable and Clear QAM we can tune.



clearQAM is digital cable, it is just unencryped.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 18, 2011)

AthlonX2 said:


> install windows problem solved



I believe the issue here is that I do not want to use windows. Contrary to popular opinion Windows is not the only solution.



CJCerny said:


> Okay, there is hope. Your first post said digital cable. Analog cable and Clear QAM we can tune.



Yeah, I think it is a backend problem or something but as far as I know it is set up right-minus the channel scanning problem. I can detect encrypted crap but not the unencrypted stuff. It seems to time out alot. When I contacted Metrocast, they claimed not to  know their own modulation/freq settings BS!!!

They sent a tech out but we missed him. The idea is to set it up so i can sell it locally or just keep it. I want to plug it in to the cable and record/watch stuff. XBMC works great for internet stuff like revision3 ^_^ but Myth won't work yet.


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## Easy Rhino (Mar 18, 2011)

Killer_Rubber_Ducky said:


> When I contacted Metrocast, they claimed not to  know their own modulation/freq settings BS!!!



their modulation is clearQAM. as long as your tuner supports that then you are fine. the frequency should not matter if you are running coax since all cable providers run on the same frequency. generally between 0 and 735 mhz. again, that does not matter though since the tuner is designed to pick that up.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 18, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> their modulation is clearQAM. as long as your tuner supports that then you are fine. the frequency should not matter if you are running coax since all cable providers run on the same frequency. generally between 0 and 735 mhz. again, that does not matter though since the tuner is designed to pick that up.



well, I was refering to the MythTv setting asking for QAM-64, QAM-128, QAM-256, Cable , Calbe High, Cable HRC High, Cable IRC High   settings.


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## Easy Rhino (Mar 18, 2011)

did you double check to make sure everything is compatible? your tuner with your OS, mythtv with your tuner, your tuner with your cable provider, etc?


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 18, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> did you double check to make sure everything is compatible? your tuner with your OS, mythtv with your tuner, your tuner with your cable provider, etc?



Tuner - Cable -  YES
Tuner - Ubuntu -  Yes
Tuner - MythTV - supposed to be according to wiki


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## Easy Rhino (Mar 18, 2011)

Killer_Rubber_Ducky said:


> Tuner - Cable -  YES
> Tuner - Ubuntu -  Yes
> Tuner - MythTV - supposed to be according to wiki



interesting. well i will be curious to hear what the tech says. let me know.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 18, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> interesting. well i will be curious to hear what the tech says. let me know.



im going to drop by the main office for metrocast here.

Im tempted to try the analog box thing they gave us for non- digital tvs when then switched to digital.


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## TheLaughingMan (Mar 18, 2011)

Ok.  Starkville has a few Clear QAM HD channels, but the majority of their broadcast base is NTSC (ATSC replacement for non-high def).  The signal is digital and the QAM is in there, but you should not be setting the card to receive QAM only.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_mythtvsetup

You should also post a picture of the menu you are looking at.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 18, 2011)

Metrocast told me that even though it is ClearQAM, it is actually encrypted due to licensing crap so they issued me a DTA box which I will give a shot. The screen I was looking at was the channel setup of the Mythbackend. It began on the capture card setup and went to the channel editor in sequence.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 19, 2011)

TheLaughingMan said:


> Ok.  Starkville has a few Clear QAM HD channels, but the majority of their broadcast base is NTSC (ATSC replacement for non-high def).  The signal is digital and the QAM is in there, but you should not be setting the card to receive QAM only.
> 
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_mythtvsetup
> 
> You should also post a picture of the menu you are looking at.



These are with and without the DTA box.


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## TheLaughingMan (Mar 19, 2011)

Like I said, set it to NTSC. With an N. ATSC Doesn't exist any more so why it set to scan for it? Fix that and you should be good cause that signal is not encrypted.


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## ShiBDiB (Mar 19, 2011)

Killer_Rubber_Ducky said:


> I believe the issue here is that I do not want to use windows. Contrary to popular opinion Windows is not the only solution.



Not the only sure.. but the easiest most user friendly and widely accepted solution (read best).


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 20, 2011)

TheLaughingMan said:


> Like I said, set it to NTSC. With an N. ATSC Doesn't exist any more so why it set to scan for it? Fix that and you should be good cause that signal is not encrypted.



I did set it to NTSC. MythTv set it to ATSC when i tried to scan for channels. When set to QAM it just says QAM not NTSC.


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## TheLaughingMan (Mar 21, 2011)

Mail it to me


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 21, 2011)

TheLaughingMan said:


> Mail it to me



mail what? the computer or the card? Im just about ready to install XP and forget it.


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## TheLaughingMan (Mar 21, 2011)

XP has no media center features and is no longer supported by Microsoft. Only the first one is and issue.

Also myth is not even close to the only TV centric Linux distro.


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## Peter1986C (Mar 21, 2011)

ShiBDiB said:


> but the easiest most user friendly and widely accepted solution (read best).



Generally speaking, the statement that Linux is less user friendly is utter BS. Just compare the distros that are designed to be user friendly with Windows and forget about distros like ArchLinux and Gentoo (which simply aim at completely different users, who wish to configure and control virtually everything). Ubuntu for example is different than Windows, but does that necesarilly make it harder to use? No. It is even part of their (i.e. the Ubuntu devs) design goals. Just get some mental flexibility okay? Accept that something may be different than you're used to.

And "widely accepted" is only the case because it's preinstalled in most cases and because most people don't know that there are alternatives (or sometimes the poor souls don't even know what OS they are using).

And let's not forget that on such hardware as the TS is referring to, one would like to avoid the bloatware MS rents us.

_Rents???_ Yes, we rent it (basically) from MS. We don't buy it, as we don't possess any rights on the software, except the rights to use it (within certain boundaries). We don't really own the copy. Some regard that lack of rights bad case.

*@Killer_Rubber_Ducky:* did you try XBMC? By the way, instead of manually installing the latter, you could consider the distro Element: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=element


______________________________________________________________


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 21, 2011)

Chevalr1c said:


> Generally speaking, the statement that Linux is less user friendly is utter BS. Just compare the distros that are designed to be user friendly with Windows and forget about distros like ArchLinux and Gentoo (which simply aim at completely different users, who wish to configure and control virtually everything). Ubuntu for example is different than Windows, but does that necesarilly make it harder to use? No. It is even part of their (i.e. the Ubuntu devs) design goals. Just get some mental flexibility okay? Accept that something may be different than you're used to.
> 
> And "widely accepted" is only the case because it's preinstalled in most cases and because most people don't know that there are alternatives (or sometimes the poor souls don't even know what OS they are using).
> 
> ...



Yes, I was running XBMC but it does not as of yet have any real TV tuner ability. Supposedly I can make it the front end for Myth but the Myth Backend is the part that is screwin me right now. I did run the dvb-apps and dvb-utils programs for scanning without myth but they still did not find usable channels after 2 1/2 hrs of scanning. It found channels but when you try to view them it is encrypted jibberish.

I am willing to go the route of other distros so long as they can double as basic desktops too and be user friendly. LaughingMan, What about XP Media Center Edition? or XP Pro?


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## Easy Rhino (Mar 21, 2011)

I think before you ditch the project you should install windows xp on it and see if it works. Then go from there.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 21, 2011)

TheLaughingMan said:


> XP has no media center features and is no longer supported by Microsoft. Only the first one is and issue.
> 
> Also myth is not even close to the only TV centric Linux distro.



Suggestions?


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 21, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> I think before you ditch the project you should install windows xp on it and see if it works. Then go from there.



That is my presiding Idea but LaughingMan seems convinced that there is not media center ability feature in XP except for 1 edition.


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## TheLaughingMan (Mar 22, 2011)

I am sure there is software with the card that will give you a way to view tv. Since I am late you probably already installed XP.

If you just wanted to test to see if it is the signal or the is, putting the card in you computer and turning in media center would have been the fastest way to test that.

Media Center on XP is not a program you can just install, sorry.

You once again dove in head first without a plan. I can help you right now so you are going to have to do your own research for a MythTV like distro.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 22, 2011)

TheLaughingMan said:


> I am sure there is software with the card that will give you a way to view tv. Since I am late you probably already installed XP.
> 
> If you just wanted to test to see if it is the signal or the is, putting the card in you computer and turning in media center would have been the fastest way to test that.
> 
> ...



I understand. The signal works fine in windows. I can view TV etc. For Windows Im using XBMC mainly along with VLC. Besides, with it running Windows, it'll sell faster right?


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## Easy Rhino (Mar 22, 2011)

so everything works fine in windows? makes sense since there are way better drivers for the tv cards.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 22, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> so everything works fine in windows? makes sense since there are way better drivers for the tv cards.



yeah, it is weird though, the Linux Drivers were fully supported except for analog tv. Its running xp pro with xbmc and vlc so yeah should be more appealing.


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## TheLaughingMan (Mar 23, 2011)

This seems like your usual project end.

I personally will never use WinXP ever again.  That is me though.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Mar 24, 2011)

TheLaughingMan said:


> This seems like your usual project end.
> 
> I personally will never use WinXP ever again.  That is me though.



Hey, if the software for Linux worked with the card right then I wouldnt be touching XP. If i did not have a TV tuner in there it would have been fine as is. But since Im selling it, I wanted to make it more appealing by having TIVO capability.


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## tetsuo_shima (Apr 10, 2011)

*this thread is a mess*

Unlike most of the people who have replied so far, I actually run MythTV and have successfully used an HVR-1250 with it. It's a great combo. The Windows shill(s) on this board need to calm down and try something new once in a while.

I'm answering this on my phone right now, so I can't correct all the misinformation that's been offered to the initial query as I can't see it all on my screen at the same time. However, I offer a few observations.

ATSC is for digital television, whether SD or HD. NTSC is for analog signal. The HVR-1250 cannot tune NTSC with the current Linux driver. It's much less tragic than it sounds as the great majority of signals you'd record are ATSC anyway, whether via antenna or ClearQAM. If you need an NTSC tuner, visit:

http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATSC_Devices

and find a tuner than can tune NTSC as well. You may be aware, but there are also pretty good driver installation instruction on the site as well.

ClearQAM cannot be encrypted. Encryption is a contradiction of the "Clear" part of the name. If your service offers encrypted ClearQAM, they offer nothing. This issue may be remedied in a variety of ways, but none of which I offer expertise. I can say that this particular card is likely not part of the solution. The MythTV wiki addresses your options pretty thoroughly. Hint: investigate the Hauppauge HD-PVR.

I'll post more soon, but the problem isn't MythTV or Ubuntu. It's likely your cable company or your settings. Chat soon.


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## TheLaughingMan (Apr 10, 2011)

I kinda wanted him to solve the problem himself. Thanks for the clarification as I seem to have had my standards completely backwards.

I wonder why it never occurred to a guy that uses the name "LinuxMaster9" for gamespy to just install Ubuntu and use something like TVTime to watch Live TV? It would be the same as what he did with WinXP and would have given him an environment he is familiar with and something easier to setup.


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## Easy Rhino (Apr 10, 2011)

tetsuo_shima said:


> Unlike most of the people who have replied so far, I actually run MythTV and have successfully used an HVR-1250 with it. It's a great combo. The Windows shill(s) on this board need to calm down and try something new once in a while.
> 
> I'm answering this on my phone right now, so I can't correct all the misinformation that's been offered to the initial query as I can't see it all on my screen at the same time. However, I offer a few observations.
> 
> ...



yea, we already figured that out.


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## Killer_Rubber_Ducky (Apr 12, 2011)

TheLaughingMan said:


> I kinda wanted him to solve the problem himself. Thanks for the clarification as I seem to have had my standards completely backwards.
> 
> I wonder why it never occurred to a guy that uses the name "LinuxMaster9" for gamespy to just install Ubuntu and use something like TVTime to watch Live TV? It would be the same as what he did with WinXP and would have given him an environment he is familiar with and something easier to setup.



Actually, I did install ubuntu and TV time with no luck.. I tried every tv tuning program option for the ubuntu distro and then some that i had to compile or convert from RPM. 

If tesuo is right, then I can shuck Win XP and go back to the glorious Linux OS.


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