Using Clear QAM Cable with the AirStar HD-5000

I just recently have successfully got my AirStar HD-5000 to work with Clear QAM
Channels with My Cable Setup. I'd like to share what I have found out.
Many people don't know that most Cable providers Adelphia, Comcast, Time Warner, etc. have HD available on their standard cable connection. Check here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=45 or test for yourself below.

Now letts get started.

First make sure your cable is connected to the tv Tuner card.
Then start up your knoppmyth system.
Next we will scan all standard Frequencies for HDTV Channels.



Now Open channels.conf using your favorite ediior you will see somthing like this (but a alot more entries)


remove all with no name on the far left. Those are usually useless. {edit} unless you use comcast who does not include the station name, thanks xsecrets {/edit}

To understand how to read the above file. Heres a quick rundown on the format


Next we need to stop mythtvbackend

Once Stopped. We will test the Channels.conf and the HDTV Tuner card.

We will now run azap using the name of one of the Channels Found in Channels.conf.

While running run the following command in a separte terminal.

Run it for about 30 secs then hit Ctrl-z
now letts watch it


if you see and hear video, great it works, if you don't repeat the earlier steps then do some troubleshooting.

Goto zap2it create a new listing use "broadcast" select only the HiDef channels found above.

Now Start Mythttv-backend



Then goto mythtv-setup change tv source to cable and do a scan for channels (we do this go get the mplexid field added to the mythdatabase that is needed to display HD Content.

Yet again we need to stop mythtv-backend.


Now log into the mythtv mysql database


First we are going to get the Zap2it xmlid number for the channels

type:


You Should see something like this
+--------+---------+----------+--------------------+---------+---------+-----------------------+
| chanid | channum | callsign | name | xmltvid | mplexid | freqid | serviceid |
+--------+---------+----------+--------------------+---------+---------+-----------+-----------+
| 1011 | 4_1 | WRCDT | WRCDT (WRC-DT) | 19578 | NULL | 4_1 | NULL |
| 1013 | 5_1 | WTTGDT | WTTGDT (WTTG-DT) | 20367 | NULL | 5_1 | NULL |
| 1012 | 7_1 | WJLADT | WJLADT (WJLA-DT) | 19579 | NULL | 7_1 | NULL |
| 1014 | 9_2 | WUSADT2 | WUSADT2 (WUSA-DT2) | 47155 | NULL | 9_2 | NULL |
| 1026 | 26_1 | WETADT | WETADT (WETA-DT) | 19581 | NULL |26_1 | NULL |
| 1027 | 26_2 | WETADT2 | WETADT2 (WETA-DT) | 21526 | NULL |26_2 | NULL |
| 1028 | 26_3 | WETADT3 | WETADT3 (WETA-DT3) | 32050 | NULL |26_3 | NULL |
| 1029 | 26_4 | WETADT4 | WETADT4 (WETA-DT4) | 32052 | NULL |26_4 | NULL |
| 1008 | 695 | WETA | WETA | NULL | 3 |597000000 | 2 |
| 1010 | 696 | WETA | WETA | NULL | 3 |597000000 | 3 |
| 1009 | 697 | WETA | WETA | NULL | 3 |597000000 | 4 |
| 1004 | 710 | NBCHD | NBCHD | NULL | 2 |597000000 | 2 |
| 1000 | 711 | FOXHD | FOXHD | NULL | 1 |543000000 | 1 |
| 1003 | 713 | ABCHD | ABCHD | NULL | 2 |546000000 | 1 |
| 1005 | 715 | CBSHD | CBSHD | NULL | 2 |546000000 | 3 |
| 1007 | 716 | WETA | WETA | NULL | 3 |597000000 | 1 |
| 1001 | 524 | HDNET | HDNET | NULL | 1 | 543000000 | 2 |
| 1002 | 525 | HDMVS | HDMVS | NULL | 1 | 543000000 | 3 |
+--------+---------+----------+--------------------+---------+---------+-----------------------+

Write down the mplexid, feqid & serviceid values from the bottom. We will need these soon.

now where going to add mplexid to the top type:

*do the same with all of the top channels

next onto it's rather simular for freqid, type

and last serviceid:

lets take a look and make sure everything looks good. so again type:

Now to remove the duplicate channels that don't have the xmltvid's
type:

use the command '

if everythings in order.
then type

to exit

*Tip (if you have mythweb open the web site click on the configure option and click on channels. Then put a check in the box to remove)

ReStart mythbackend

Start up the frontend and test.

Thats it.. I hope this information helps out. Most of this imformation is from the Mythtv_users Mailling list, IRC #linuxtv and my own experinces.

This is a great writeup, and I've been waiting for something like this!! thank you for that.

One thing that might get many people in trouble is the very first part where you say anything without a callsign to the left is useless will have anyone using comcast cable discarding all their channels as comcast strips the psid out of the stream.

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Xsecrets

Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle...wait that is the other way around. This also appears to work for the pcHDTV 3000. I'll have to play with this some more later. Great write up! Note: You may have to stop the backend first before trying the scan...

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

In theory this should work for any atsc tuner that uses dvb drivers. I'm definitely going to be working on this soon.

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Xsecrets

I tried this on both a 3000 and the AirStar. Both picked up 6 channels which is less that I get OTA. I couldn't capture a test video (0 byte file)... Think I'll just stick with OTA myself.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

well since I moved my ota sucks maybe two channels that don't come in very reliably, but I know from my tv's built in tuner that I have several unencrypted qam channels coming in over the cable, so this will be great for me.

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Xsecrets

I decided to give this a shot (very nice write up, thank you!), but I haven't gotten it to work yet.

I have comcast cable, so as Xsecrets said, I didn't get channel names, but atscscan did find several channels, they just had "names" like [0001] and so on. I edited the file and renamed them to TST01, TST02, etc...

Then I moved on to the azap. That's where I got some strange results. This is what azap is outputing:



...and so on. Everything seems to be right (though honestly I don't really know what all these fields mean), except my signal is always 0000. I tried this for a dozen or so of the channel.conf entries, all with the same result. Does anyone know what might be happening here?

dmesg seems to report that it found my card okay and that it registered the frontend:



Although I'm not sure what "master_xfer failed" and the readreg error means, but other log files I've read (after many google searches) seemed to have the same thing, so I'm assuming that's not the problem.

your azap results look fine says lock means it found a channel. I got that far a long time ago then gave up not knowing what to shove into the database, which I hope this writeup will help me with once I find another cable splitter and some time. I know I had one around here about a week ago. why is it stuff disappears exactly when you need it?

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Xsecrets

Yeah, the FE_HAS_LOCK is encouraging, but the 0000 signal is not. When I try to cat the dvb output I just get nothing (file size is 0). I'm sure I must be doing something wrong (i.e. stupid!) but I have yet to discover what that might be. I seem to be having this same exact problem when using an OTA antenna as well, so I doubt my problem is specifically QAM related. I hope I don't have a bad tuner card... Anyway, I'm not ready to give up yet!

Just a thought - I assume snr is "Signal to Noise Ratio". If so, how can the signal to noise ratio be a non-zero value if my signal is 0000?

argh this is a great writeup, but I'm still stuck with the problem I've always had I can't find the mplex id from just the freq vid/aud pid etc info I can get, and mythtv will not insert anything into the db from a channel scan unless the psid is found, so I have no way to get my mplexid. anyone know how to determine the mplexid?

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Xsecrets

ok forget about the mplex stuff the new svn code will scan channels without psid, however even though I get good results from atscscan and azap



whenever I try to cat to mpeg file I get a 0 byte file. Anyone got any ideas. I know there is unencrypted qam on the cable because my hdtv's built in tuner can display it.

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Xsecrets

never mind I found the problem from a thread in the pchdtv forums. you have to use the -r switch to azap to get a recording.

azap -a 0 -f 0 -d 0 -r -c channels.conf tst12

when I did that I got a good recording. looks like I might be getting close here.

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Xsecrets

I am having some problems. When I used the atscscan command that was in the write up I got an error. When I left out the ~ or used /.azap/channels.conf it worked fine. Then when I go to the azap command I get an error that says /root/.azap/channels.conf file not found. I used the commands:
azap -a 0 -f 0 -d 0 -c channels.conf ts001
azap -a 0 -f 0 -d 0 -c /.azap/channels.conf tsoo1

All with the same results. Any suggestion?


Edit: Sorry I discovered my mistake. I was typine a spance between - and c.

success!!! I now have hdtv over qam!!!

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Xsecrets

Sweet! If only I got more channels than OTA..

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!