direct tv and wintv cards...........anyone

[btwell]

okay i have a wintv card by hauppauge
i finally got everything installed properly and have sound
I now ONLY get the local channels
i have tried 2 different software
wintv that i got from hauppauge website and powervcr

i am on win xp pro
1.2 ghz
640 RAM
60 gig hard drive

my setup
i have direct tv and used a splitter to run to my pc and tv

i ONLY get local channels on my pc

there are 2 options, cable or antenna
i have tried cable on both of these software and have had no luck

anyone familiar with this or anyone have direct tv with wintv card that can help me out

thanks

bt

[tjdmobile]

I hope that I am not looking at this from the wrong angle here, however:

I have the ATI AIW RAdeon 32 DDR. It will receive cable, Antenna, and direct inputs. Capturing Direct TV broadcasts, however, only can happen using SVIDEO, Composite, or Channel "3" (or "4"). I wish the software would come with a way to control the DTV box, but at this point, I have to set up "Timers" on DTV box to do my recordings on the PC.

Cheers,
TJD

[VideoMann]

I think this is a common problem.

1st - A PC-TV tuner card or a VCR have the ability to tune to a finite number of channels in a certain frequency range. (120-180 Channels). This was very good 5-8 years ago because Cable TV Channels did not beyond 100 channels in general.

2nd - It is common for most Cable Systems to have 200-500 Channels (of which 40% are Pay-per-View and 15% info-channels at any given time but nevermind that)

3rd This means that most VCRs andprobably many TV tuning cards cannot get channels beyond 180. You therefore need first to feed the Coaxial cable directly to the PC TV-tuning Card and let it scan for all the Channels it can lock into. It will probably be anything between Ch2-120 (maybe 180). After that you should be able to tune-in to any channel in that range that is not-scrambled. If you want to get channels beyond that you will probably need to use the tuner of the Cable Box and feed the signal from the Cable Box to the PC TV-tuner card and set the PC TV-Tuner Card on Channel 3 just as you would on most VCRs. Ypu would be switching channels with the cable box not the PC TV-tuner card.

If you want to do both you would need a Signal switcher that either feeds a direct coaxial cable OR a coaxial cable coming from the cable box to the PC TV-Tuner Card. It all sounds confusing but it is simple if you think it through as to what signal you want to feed to the card.

----------------
Common pitfall:

1 hook coaxial cable FROM Cable box out to PC TV-Tuner Card AND THEN ask the PC TV-Tuner Card to scan for channels. In this case it will only find the channel 3 (or 4) since that is what signal comes out from the Cable box. Remember the Cable Box tunes to all the channels but the signal it sends out is in the frequency of Channel 3 or 4 nothing else.

What should be done as I said earlier is to hook the PC TV-Tuner card directly from the wall coaxial cable with no Cable Box inbetween and then ask the PC Tuner Card to scan. This way it will find all the possible channels the TV-tuner card was designed for (Ch 2-180). After that you have to make the decision if you need to see channels beyond 120 or 180. If you do then you need the Cable Box as a tuner and leave the PC TV-Tuner card on Channel 3.

This same situation happens also when setting a VCR. Sometimes you can set a VCR as the switcher to send the signal to the PC TV-Tuner card but it gets a little more descriptive and complicated.

[treetop]

Not as comprehensive and detailed like the above posts but here go my 2 cents in case it helps.

I have DTV, cable TV, and a AIW. The way i have it hooked-up is as follows: DTV feed to back of receiver (sat. in), cable tv feed also to back of DTV rceiver (ant. in), DTV receiver (out to TV) goes into a VCR (ant. in), VCR (out to tv) then goes into AIW TV input.

When i'm watching DTV, the tv card is on channel 3 and i switch channes with the DTV receiver. When i want to watch cable TV, i just switch off the DTV box and it automatically feeds the cable signals to the tv card; from there i switch the channels with the (AIW) tv app.

The VCR is only for VHS captures so it's mostly a silent player in all this.

Hope this helps.