Comments on: Microsoft Offers QAM for Media Center, Just Not to You

By: Christopher Price

Christopher Price — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:12:51 +0000

Jack, odds are the 7 channels are due to your cable operator only pushing local channels over ClearQAM. To access additional channels, you’re looking at needing to acquire a CableCARD tuner.

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:41:52 +0000

if i have the hvr-1850 , a relatively newer card, i can see the qam tuner in wmc but it only sees 7 channels, when i try to edit chnnels none of them are good…

is the registry hack necessary in my case?

By: Christopher Price

Christopher Price — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:01:13 +0000

I’m certainly not saying that it isn’t, but the HDHomeRun is one of the few devices that works without major surgery… still…

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.

By: mhealy

mhealy — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:01:27 +0000

Actually, I used a Hauppage 2250 while writing the guide. ClearQAM support in Windows 7 is far better than even TV Pack 2008 had to offer. With only a handful of exceptions ClearQAM seems to be working very well for most hardware.

By: Christopher Price

Christopher Price — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:25:22 +0000

Keep in mind that your guide only works on the HDHomeRun. And, it works because HDHomeRun ships good drivers that don’t really require a lot of tweaking to enable ClearQAM.

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.

By: mhealy

mhealy — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:45:33 +0000

They have included native ClearQAM support in Windows 7 Media Center. It’s somewhat of a painful process still in build 7000 but not so bad to put anyone off of using it. I have a small write-up o getting it working on my blog: http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/01/manually-adding-clearqam-channels-to.html