With Hauppauge you do still need to do registry hacks on most tuners. My HVR-1600 finally works with ClearQAM on the betam with registry tweaks enabling the ClearQAM “PowerToy”. I’m still get a little sick every time I have to refer to proper cable functionality as a PowerToy.

Anyways, it still doesn’t work fully right. For example, my HVR-1600 is supposed to be a dual tuner adapter. But, Media Center only sees it as a single tuner, HVR-950… no matter what I try to tell it otherwise. It works, but only as a single ClearQAM tuner.

I wouldn’t be ticked if this was TV Pack 2008, and I wouldn’t be ticked if Microsoft committed to fixing it. But, they’ve actually done the opposite and said they won’t to both. Their notion that folks will just pony up and buy Windows 7 after that much abuse, is borderline on delusional.

In fact, they are the only tuner maker that has posted a TV Pack 2008 guide, I would suggest following that instead for Windows 7 Public Beta, from my experience it works well.

If you have an AVerMedia tuner, you’re left with plug and pray. Some tuners have had their ClearQAM enabled in an updated drive, auto-detected by Windows 7… and a lot haven’t. I would suggest writing to AVerMedia now if your tuner isn’t, as now is the time to get this stuff fixed. If everyone did, they would fix it.

If you have a WinTV Tuner, you’re going to have to follow the same steps for TV Pack 2008. Unfortunately, Hauppauge looks like they aren’t going to go back and add ClearQAM support for all their old Media Center-compatible tuners… shame on them for that.