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OOPS... I just discovered that I posted this in the wrong forum. Sorry about that. I hope a moderator can move it to the proper section..


I'm trippin out over this, I have no clue what's up with this. I'm thinking the tuner card is failing.

I have a windows PC with two Hauppage tuner cards in it.

I have an HVR-1250 ATSC OTA tuner - http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr1250.html
and a WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2 - http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_novahds2.html

I've posted some screen shots below.

Anyway, here's what's been happening. A week or two ago I tried to watch Doctor Who on EBRU G19. There was no signal. Hmmm.. I checked and the weather was clear, it was cold outside and everything else was coming in fine.
Then I recalled that the plastic over the LNBF (it's a Direcway) had disintegrated and maybe ants had gotten into it again. A few years ago that happened and shut it down. Or maybe a spider made a web in it.
So I go outside with a can of compressed air and blew out the LNBF, just in case. It was dark and I couldn't really see anything in the tube but blew it out anyway. I went back inside and bingo, the channel was back on.
So I watched a few episodes and all was well. Then a few days passed where I didn't watch. I saw Doctor Who was on again so I switched to that dish and once again I had no signal. Well bummer.

I go back out again with the compressed air and hit it a few good shots but I didn't get a signal this time. Then I thought maybe it had to do with the big changes they made on G19 at New Year's so I downloaded a current .ini file for Galaxy 19 and tried to rescan the satellite. Horizontal transponders all came in but not one single vertical transponder would scan in. Well it was like 11pm at night so the next day I went outside and took the LNBF off the dish, thinking it had either bugs or water in it. I took it completely apart and got to the circuit board inside. The pathways were all clean and clear and the circuit board was also clean and dry. I could see nothing at all wrong with it. So I cleaned everything up extra clean, like new and put it all back on the dish. Still no signal on vertical. So I was thinking MAYBE the switch was bad. I replaced the 22khz switch but that didn't do it. I swapped out the Discque switch but that didn't do it either.

I then removed the switch completely and just ran it straight through, still no vertical. Then I took my little meter outside, it's that little handheld meter that also has a screen and a tuner built in. I hooked it straight to the dish and I was getting all of the horizontal and vertical signals as if nothing was wrong. It worked perfectly as it should. So then I go into the house and I remove the wire from the back of the PC and connect it to the meter. Still working perfectly, getting everything as it should be. I put the wire back on the PC and then it's back to no vertical again. :

The very same tuner card however was tuning MeTV, Movies! and Bounce plus the other stuff on SES1 C-band. Weigel stuff on SES1 is vertical. Why would it tune C-band vertical but not KU vertical?
Both signals are fed to the same tuner card over the same wire.
The other tuner card, the ATSC OTA tuner card had no issues at all, it was functioning perfectly but I wanted to mention that since it is an integral part of the whole thing.
I tried numerous times over the next several days to rescan G19 and every time I would get only horizontal transponders on KU but when I put my meter on the wire it picked up everything perfectly.

The app is called MyTheater, it's deadware and hasn't been updated in years, apparently the Russian that published it gave up on it years ago.
Quite a few years ago someone (my ex) installed it on the PC, when I had zero clue about anything. I was an ignorant button clicker at the time.

The reason this app was installed was because at the time there was no other app that would deal with unusual switch setups.
I've found no real need to switch from it other than it simply being badly outdated and now unable to handle some of the newer FEC rates being used and odd video formats such as Movies! uses.
Later I would look into the other satellite tuner apps and most of them were also deadware and were simply terrible and I did not like them, most were confusing, hard to understand and not one of them would allow unusual switch setups such as I have.

I assumed that the KU circuit in the card must be flaking out so I gave up on it for a few days and decided I need to start trying to figure out how to replace it. It seems these cards are not very easy to come across anymore. :cry:

I was about to compose this post and I wanted to get a few screen shots of it showing how it wouldn't scan any vertical transponders so I ran the scan again and all of a sudden it's working again! :
Now I'm totally confused. I don't know what to do and now I don't trust this thing. I'm sure that it's either the tuner card or the app. I know of no way to test to determine if the app is at fault.
I did a full power down on the PC, several times. I powered it down, turned off the switch on the back and removed the power cord. I figured that should reset it incase it was suffering a little digital anxiety but that never made any difference.
Nothing has changed between the last time I tried and it did not work and this time when it did work. I have not powered it off or changed anything between then and now. It just decided to work all on it's own.

This is the first time it has ever done this to me so I have no idea. I am not a computer guru, I don't know anything about windows or the MyTheater app, I'm a Mac OSX user and all I use it for is photography and surfing.
I am not a programmer and wouldn't have any idea how to program a computer. I'm still an ignorant button clicker when it comes to computers.


One huge disappointment has been that it (the pc tuner card) absolutely will NOT operate an HH motor, period. No way, no how. Fine. That's why I ended up with multiple dishes and weird switch setups.

One of the wonderful things about my setup is that with this setup, it combines OTA and FTA usage into one, seamless unit. I can hit the channel up and down button and hop from FTA to OTA and back again with a single remote control as if they were a single tuner all rolled into one.

That has been such a treat to have everything "all in one". I've not been able to find anything else out there that will do this.

At one time there was some talk that the AZBox could MAYBE, "coming soon" be able to tune US ATSC and FTA S2 all in one tuner.
I tried to keep up with that but I found the subject very confusing and obfuscated and impossible to follow and I was never, ever able to get any absolute, definitive YES/NO answers that would have allowed me to go forward and make the purchase. As far as I could figure, there was some weird problem with their add-in ATSC tuner card that never quite worked right but was "going to be fixed soon"

After giving up on it for a few years I went looking again last year and saw that AZBox dropped all those type tuners and went to some rinky-dink flimsy tuners that are strictly FTA only and that OTA is off the options list, permanently.

So what I'm wondering is if there are any other FTA S2 and ATSC OTA tuner cards for a PC that will work with the MyTheater app and have the two cards operate as one seamless unit the way they do now?
Remote control is an absolute must. A single remote control that operates both tuners as one.

One other option I'm entertaining is buying a second MicroHD. I know it won't tune OTA but the PC OTA tuner card it working just fine. I would just have to switch between the two I suppose, no more seamless integration as I have now. And I would end up with even ANOTHER remote control to juggle here at my desk where I do most of my TV watching anyway. I do have the first MicroHD in my bedroom so that I can watch pretty much anything I want from there but like lately, if I wanted to watch Doctor Who on EBRU I would have to go lay in bed to watch where I can't do internet at the same time. I just fall asleep so why bother?
Of course though if I do get another MicroHD then that will solve the problem of not being able to operate an HH motor from that room. Then I can get a second HH motor and have two motorized KU dishes which I could operate from either room. Now that would be handy.

I am rather attached to the PC tuner setup though, I've been using it for several years and it's very handy and I can record stuff to disk and keep it forever or edit clips to post online if I want.
If my tuner card is going flaky I think I would seriously consider searching for replacements that will operate the same way they do now. If that's not possible then my next option would be a second MicroHD.

The one I have now has been working flawlessly and I have no complaints at all, I would buy another and I would recommend one to anyone shopping for a GOOD tuner. The only problems I ever had with it were not of it's own making but because I was using old, flaky disk drives to record on. All my own doing.

Thanks!

(The channel list shown below has a lot of old, dead channels in it that I haven't gotten around to cleaning out yet.)