Hauppauge 2250 on WMC vs LG Smart TV built-in tuner

Background: I've been working on setting up a whole-home dvr using WMC and a couple of Hauppauge 2250's on my Windows 7 server with an Asus Chromebox flashed with XBMC for a front-end.

Currently, my TV (LG 60PN5700) is plugged directly into coax split from my cable modem through an amplified coax splitter. Just using the LG tv's built-in tv tuner, I'm able to pull roughly 75 channels (analog and QAM - a mix of HD and SD). My LG tv had no trouble placing the channels in the proper places (local ABC on 3.1, NBC on 5.1, etc).

When I run coax from that same amplified splitter to my Hauppauge 2250 card, WMC isn't grabbing even close to the same number of channels. I went into the guide setup and enabled all of the channels that it wasn't able to pull station ID's for, but after a few hours of digging I'm still coming up short on channels like local NBC. WMC has mapped 5.1 to some UHF public access station despite the guide being for the proper cable area.

My first bit of confusion is why WMC is having so much trouble getting station ID information off of my cable signal, when the LG tv was able to pull it. A perfect example is HGTV: the LG tv tuner successfully found the channel, assigned the correct virtual channel number to it (49), and labeled it "HGTV." I find it hard to believe that the station ID information is missing if the LG tv can pull it without any sync'ed up guide or manual input.

Does anyone know if there's a way to see the channel information that my TV is using (QAM channel, frequency, anything) and use that to manually tune the channels through WMC?

I've also noticed that some of the channels that the LG tv is picking up (neither of the two mentioned above) have small "lock" icons associated with them on their info screen. Usually that means that they would be scrambled, but the tv is tuning into them loud and clear.

I haven't been able to find a QAM channel listing for Time Warner in my area. Does anyone know of an online database that's up-to-date?

I'm scratching my head trying to get my WMC to just come close to what my TV can do... so that I can eventually start doing things like using the DVR function that spawned this whole endeavor.

Any ideas?

Do you have a signal booster of any kind?
Splitting the signal cuts power a lot.

I have a Motorola signal booster after my antenna before my splitter with is a high grade 2500mhz splitter and channels come in powerful on anything

Look on Hauppauge site too remember seeing something about QAM mapping

I don't remember if that is the same tuner I used to have but I ran into the same issue. TV would pick up all sorts of channels just fine, tuner had issues only picked up a few. Ended up just not using the tuner as a signal boost still didn't help.

HisSvt76 said:

Do you have a signal booster of any kind?
Splitting the signal cuts power a lot.

I have a Motorola signal booster after my antenna before my splitter with is a high grade 2500mhz splitter and channels come in powerful on anything

Look on Hauppauge site too remember seeing something about QAM mapping

Click to expand...

I'm using an amplified splitter. I know that the Hauppauge tuners are pretty sensitive to signal strength. The tuners in my server are coming through the same amplified splitter as my TV.

Silicondust used to have a great QAM mapping site, but it is no longer available. I think it went bye-bye in 2012/2013.

I don't why WMC sucks at this but it does. In the past I would just use the local Silicon Dust list that is no longer available. The last time around when I setup a 2250 in WMC. I installed the Win TV app included with the 2250 and it found all the open QAM channels. Some where in the options/properties of Win TV. It will list the channel frequency for each channel in the line up. After I was done copying the info to Excel. I uninstalled Win TV because it was a buggy POS. Also I hope you have lot of time on your hands manually entering all the missing channels and matching them up for the correct TV listings.

Well, that sucks. I purchased the brown box version of the 2255's (didn't come with WinTV). If WinTV has the feature that you're talking about, I saved more than $9.95 by going with the brown box (the cost of WinTV) so I'll still come out ahead.

A part of me is opposed to dropping $10 on software that I'm going to delete in a week, but I guess it would be good to have the software around as a channel mapping tool. Aggravating, but eventually worth it, I suppose.

I don't mind the heavy up-front time commitment, if it works. I'll just make sure to disable the guide auto-updater so that all of my work isn't lost unexpectedly.

Well that sucks, The only alternative quick solution I can think of is posting is for info on your local cable system over at AVS Forums http://www.avsforum.com/forum/45-local-hdtv-info-reception/ or at the Green Button http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/ and somebody may provide the channel mapping info that you need. I noticed with my local cable system Cox Las Vegas that all the open QAM channels where in the same frequency area from 100.00 up to 103.9. Look at the channel properties on the few channels that WMC did detect and go from there on trial and error. You can manualy add channels into WMC and see what channels come up active then delete created channels that are not active. It will be time consuming and a pain in the ass but you will eventually get the job done. Silicon Dust why did you forsake us in our time of need.

Thanks, I'll give it a shot.