Record pure digital cable with Beyond TV and the HD Homerun
May 4th, 2007 at 10:01 am by Tom
INTRODUCTION
Last month, we quietly released a version of Beyond TV (4.6.1) that supports Silicon Dust’s HDHomerun Digital QAM dual tuning device. What does this mean to you?? If you are up to a little setup, it means you no longer have to rely on an over-the-air ATSC signal—instead, you are able to directly tune non-encrypted (Clear) QAM channels from over your coax cable. No more unpredictable thunderstorms interfering with your recording of LOST or Heroes!
Shortly after we released version 4.6.1, I became intrigued with the idea of setting up the HDHomerun with my Beyond TV box at home. 
My motivation stemmed mostly from times when I came home to find that my HD recordings would cut off halfway through a show or were garbled at points during playback. As many existing over-the-air users may be able to attest to, dropping and unreliability of over-the-air signals can be a bit annoying. My other contributing motivation was to see if I could set it up myself—a non-technical person who works in sales/marketing for SnapStream.
Note: Over-the-air HD or Clear QAM tuning devices can be added on to Beyond TV at any time. Because of the complexity of setting up Clear QAM, I would recommend to users that you start out by setting up Beyond TV with analog or digital cable before trying to set it up with Clear QAM.
So I was ready to get rolling on the setup of the HDHomerun! My enthusiasm could hardly be contained—then I looked at a tutorial on how to set the HDHomerun up with Beyond TV. I was deflated at the thought of going through the several pages of required setup—could it really be this complicated to set up? I was determined to get an answer to my question, so I proceeded.
WHAT IS CLEAR QAM?
Before we get started– a little information on what QAM actually is. In layman’s terms, QAM is digital cable without a set-top-box. More specifically, Clear QAM is unencrypted digital cable without a set-top-box.
In more technical terms, Clear QAM can be described as an unencrypted video signal that is sent through standard coax cable from cable providers in a digital format. Most cable providers today will at least push a standard and hi-def version of the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) through their coax lines to customers. I say at least because oftentimes, additional Clear QAM channels are made available by the cable companies. Though Clear QAM is not quite cable card support, it is a step in the right direction.
BACKGROUND
A little info on my setup to set the scene… I live in Houston-proper, about 10 minutes from downtown. My cable connection is Comcast (formerly Time Warner in the Houston market) and I have 2 analog tuners and 2 ATSC tuners connected to my Beyond TV box.
The following are required to use the HDHomerun with Beyond TV:
- Home network
- Beyond TV 4.6.1 or higher
- Silicon Dust HDHomerun device
- Coax cable connection
The setup that I followed when setting the HDHomerun up can be found on our forums, authored by Jason, our head Beyond TV developer. I’ve combed through Jason’s post and restructured his setup into a more layman’s terms setup below (for people like me).
Jason’s HDHomerun Setup: http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?t=38859
SETUP PROCESS
The high-level explanation to get the HDHomerun to work with Beyond TV is to scan through the QAM channels available on your coax cable, determine which ones are not encrypted, and finally map the unencrypted channels that are found to an existing SnapStream.net lineup so you are able to get program guide data for your QAM channels.
A detailed setup process is as follows:
1- Plug the HDHomerun into the wall, connect both of the tuners up to a coax cable, and finally plug a network cable from your home network into the back of the unit.
When you plug the HDHomerun into your network, make sure you see the green network light (as seen in the figure above). This light indicates a successful connection to the network.
2a- Download the HDHomerun setup program. [NOTE: do not download the latest driver on SiliconDust's website. Download the driver directly from this article.]
2b- Upgrade to the latest version of Beyond TV (4.6.1). (Download here).
2c- Download and unzip the HDHomerun channel mapper utility.
3- Run the HDHomerun setup program (downloaded above in step 2a).
Note: When running through the setup wizard, you may be asked to install .NET version 2.0 and a video viewing client called VLC. If you do not have these prerequisites, the wizard will automatically download and install these for you.
4- After completion of the HDHomerun setup wizard, the next step is to scan your cable for available QAM channels. To do this, click:
- Start –> Run –> type in ‘command’ (brings up a command prompt)
- In the command prompt, navigate to: ‘C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun’
- From the command prompt, type:
‘hdhomerun_config FFFFFFFF scan /tuner0 channels.txt’ and press enter (see figure below).
After pressing enter, a scan will occur that searches for QAM channels and saves the results to a file called channels.txt. This text file is saved in your HDHomerun directory and is used when you later map your channels. This scan could take up to 10 minutes, so be patient!
5- After the scan has completed, unzip the Channel mapping utility into the same folder as your HDHomerun software: \Program Files\SiliconDust\HDHomerun. Now launch the executable file HDHRQamMapper.exe.
Channel Mapping Utility: HDHRQamMapper.exe screenshot
6- Click on the “Import�? button on the top right of the utility. This will allow you to import the channels.txt file that was just created after your scan. After the channels.txt file is imported, a list of every channel will populate the list. The next step is to figure out which channels in this list are unencrypted, and for the ones that are not, what channels they actually are.
7- To do this navigate to “C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun�? and launch the hdhomerun_config_gui.exe application.
hdhomerun_config_gui.exe screenshot
8- In the “Channel�? dropdown box, select “qam�?. Next, type in the respective channel number to the right of the “Channel�? drop-down box (as shown in figure below), and then select the appropriate subchannel in the “Program�? drop-down list. Finally, click on “Launch VLC�?. This will launch a playback window that plays back live content for the channel that you have just told the device to tune to.
9- As you go through each of the channels in the HDHRQamMapper utility, you are able to mark a channel as active, as well as give it a Major/Minor and Physical channel name. Finally, you are able to give it a friendly name or callsign (see figure below).
Note: The ‘physical’ channel name should be a unique number between 2-69. The combination of the major and minor numbers make up the channel that will appear in the SnapStream.net guide (Example– Major channel: 72, Minor channel: 1 = 1721 in SnapStream.net program guide). Additionally, the first half of the virtual channel should be a number between 1-99.
10- After you have marked which channels you wish to access with Beyond TV, click on “Save�? in the HDHRQamMapper utility. This will create a new file named “C:\hdhomerun_bda.remap�?.
11- We’re almost there… stay with me!
12- Navigate to: http://www.snapstream.net/configure/CustomLineupWizard.aspx in a web browser.
13- The next step is to import an existing SnapStream.net channel lineup that includes the QAM channels that you plan to tune to. We will remap the channel numbers in this preexisting SnapStream lineup to correspond to the channels that you just created with the HDHRQamMapper utility. Click on “Import Lineup�? (make sure to keep the lineup type as “Digital�? in the drop-down list).
14- Go through the channel lineup wizard, eventually selecting a channel lineup that includes all of the channels that you wish to tune via QAM (in my case, I select Cable –> Comcast Houston Digital –> Premium Tier).
Click on finish at the end of the import process. Next, check the channels that you will tune via QAM. In my example, I have checked 6 channels (see figure below).
After checking the channels that you wish to tune, click on “Import�? at the bottom of this screen.
15- Open your ‘C:\hdhomerun_bda.remap’ file in any standard text editor.
According to the hdhomerun_bda.remap file, populate the Physical Channel, Major Channel and Minor Channel in the “Import Wizard�? screen (as seen above). Once you have populated each of the channels in the SnapStream.net configuration list, click on Save and Exit.
We have created our mapped custom lineup. Next we will add the HDHomerun tuners to Beyond TV by going through the setup wizard.
16- After you have upgraded to Beyond TV 4.6.1 (as instructed to do in step 2b), make sure Beyond TV is completely shut down, and click on: Start –> Programs –> SnapStream Media –> Beyond TV –> Beyond TV Setup Wizard. Click “Next�? in the setup wizard until you get to the “Video Source�? screen.
Highlight “Add a New Source�? and click “Next�?.
17- Select “Antenna (Digital), click “Next�?.
18- Select either of the “Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner 1010…..�? from the drop-down list and choose “Next�?.
19- On the next screen choose, “Select and existing lineup�? and press “Next�?.
20- Select the lineup that you just created in the SnapStream.net import wizard, which will be named “Custom Lineup�? if you did not rename it, and press “Next�?.
21- Select “stop autoscan�? and check the checkboxes for each of the channels that you wish to include. Press “Next�?
22- Step through the rest of the setup wizard and finally, launch Beyond TV. From the SnapStream.net Program Guide within Beyond TV, press the ‘U’ key, which will force a guide update. Doing a guide update will import the new channel information associated to the QAM channels into the program guide.
23- That’s it! Enjoy your new QAM channels.
CONCLUSION
With a little overhead, it is possible to enjoy unencrypted QAM using Silicon Dust’s HDHomerun with Beyond TV. My nights of uncertainty on whether an HD recording has successfully completed are over! My initial question of, “can it really be this complicated to set up?” has been answered. Although complex, the principle on which setup is based on is straight-forward. If you would like a solid and reliable HD recording solution, the HDHomerun is, in my opinion, a good option.
May 5th, 2007 at 5:59 am
Got to step 20 with no problem. On step 20, I don’t see the custom lineup that I created. I see 2 other lineups, but they are grey, and “Select an existing lineup” is grey.
May 7th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I’m new at this I hope you’ll bear with me if these are basic questions. You said that you can plug this into the coax cable jack and get the QAM channels, but what if I am only currently subscribed to basic (non-digital) cable? Would this still work or would I have to upgrade to digital cable? I’m in the San Gabriel, California area, our cable co is Charter. Thanks for any help.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Vincent, you should have no problem getting clear QAM channels even with basic cable– at least the local channels. As for getting channels other than local channels over clear QAM, that I’m not so certain about.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:04 am
When you are setting the custom lineup up in snapstream.net, when you click on “save and exit”, it should bring you to a new screen (the snapstream.net settings screen). If the screen does not change when you hit “save and exit”, scroll to the top of the page, and you should see some type of error message that tells you why the lineup did not save.
May 17th, 2007 at 1:54 am
Step 15: My Major channel numbers are almost all over 100 but it only allows 1-99. How do i get around this?
May 17th, 2007 at 3:28 am
[...] The HDHomeRun is a dual ATSC/QAM digital networked tuner. This means it connects to your network via ethernet cable and any PC on your local network can access the tuners. You can connect each tuner to either an ATSC (over-the-air via antenna) or QAM (unencrypted digital cable via coax cable) source. I use mine with Beyond TV and it works great! More instructions from Snapstream can be found here. Filed under: Uncategorized | [...]
May 17th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
I had a few annoying problems with this set up procedure. The two really annoying ones were:
1 - The Snapstream.net site gave me an error that Physical channels had to be between 2-69. This was after I already set up the tuner to use channels 80+
2 - The .net site also gave me an error about not being about to have multiple Major channels on a single physical channel. Had to go back and reconfigure the tuner again…
May 19th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
I simply cannot get past the “Cannot have the same major channel on multiple physical channels” error in the custom lineup screen. I have completely blown away everything, reinstalled, run the wizard several thousand times and I get stuck here.
My setup is *NOT* with the HDHomeRun but rather with the DVICO FusionHDTV USB that I purchased from Snapstream. The support, drivers and documentation included with this stinks! The FusionHDTV software is so bad that it is totally unusable. I have spent the last three days pulling out all of my hair over my decision to switch to digital cable so that I can also get HDTV. Bad move…
This is an absolutely impossible task for mere mortals to perform, and I’m an extremely seasoned PC hack and still can’t figure this out. I need to remap my Comcast Clear QAM to work with BeyondTV but am having absolutely no luck. Given the fact that exactly NO documentation exists on how to do this, I am surprised that I’ve gotten as far as I have. This particular blog may indeed work for those of you that have the HDHomeRun, but I cannot find anything about how to make my setup work and I even purchased it from Snapstream!
If anyone here can help me, I would be most grateful. If I can’t get this to work soon then I’ll just send the whole package back to Snapstream and go back to analog cable. Sigh. No HD true, but no hassles either. Analog just works… Plug and play baby.
Thanks.
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I ran into problems at step three. I turned off my McFee Virus protection, firewall, etc and proceeded to run the HDHomerun set-up program that I downloaded onto the desktop. When I ran the program and a window pops up and says Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistrib.. then the program goes away and nothing happens. I’ve restarted the program, re-downloaded the program, but nothing helps. Anybody else see this problem. Any thoughts…
Thanks in advance.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Agreed Jeff. I too was very interested in this thread becuase I have the highly rated DVICO FusionHDTV PCI version and agreed… it is USELESS. It’s drivers and built in app are very inmature and need much further development. The support is USELESS and about the only answer I get is reload, restart PC etc. Anyway, enough of that.
So I felt is I could somehow borrow on this thread and remap channels for my FusionHD card to BeyondTV I’m home free for my clear QAM HD channels. The FusionHD card does recieve all local, Discorvery HD and a few others unencrypted, but I can’t get Beyond TV to support it. So like you I’m about to pull the card out and sell it and go back to analog only no HD recording….
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Thorne, I’m getting the same error that says Error: For digital lineups, the physical channels must be in the range of 2-69.
Did you locate a fix?
May 24th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Careful on step 2a. The download link is for Vista users only. I had to go to the silicondust website then to the download webpage to get the correct program to download for my WinXP machine. Besides that small issue everything else went ok. Enjoy!
May 25th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Good point Hector. I’ve changed the download link to point to the non Vista download.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:46 am
Hey, the HDHomeRun has TWO tuners. Can you add both to your BeyondTV lineup and be able to record two HDTV streams at once?
June 1st, 2007 at 12:51 am
Oh, also, according to this:
http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/hdtv-setup-center-qam.asp#pc
You need an “BDA Compliant ATSC Capture Card”. The rest of that page talks about the HDHomeRun. Nowhere on this blog entry does it talk about needing an ATSC card and it doesn’t make sense that you would need one when using the HDHomeRun to record QAM.
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:17 pm
First, let me say that I think Beyond TV and thier staff have tremendous potential. However the QAM support, is very poor when it comes to their promises not fullfiled by supporting QAM as they said they would a while back. Then HD Homerun comes out and they say they support it…. Not really. It has a 25 second delay to get to a QAM channel when first watching live TV or going from Analog to QAM. I tried OTA but kept losing the signal in the storms. The mapping is far more difficult then Sage TV and GB-PVR and both come with a Media Center and there is no delay when going to a QAM channel.. Everytime I asked about support for theDVICO cards they come with an excuse or don’t answer my blog. I have since returned their software and I am still awaiting my refund. I hope they put together a better product and live up to their commitments. I really am rooting for them, however if you are looking for decent QAM support, I would use another software for now until they get it together. Oh, you may want to read this before they delete it. Best of luck and I hope it helps! Go to the HD homerun website for the PVR software I talked about.
June 3rd, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Hmm … When you receive the error 2-69, did you have analog service? I am just wondering if the reason for that is because, if you look at the Notes Section of the HDHomeRun Dual Clear QAM Digital TV Tuner page (http://store.snapstream.com/hdhr.html), it says that you may need an analog card to record analog. Maybe it is not showing any more channels because all the rest are seen as analog.
I am new to this and have not even bought the system yet so I do not claim to be an expert. I was just reviewing all the requirements and information posted about this system and although I saw this requirement, I did not see anyone mentioning it nor I see documentation of how this is configured.
June 4th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Sure wish Beyond TV would support clear QAM on Dvico Fusion.
June 6th, 2007 at 11:29 am
[...] Read more about setting up the HDHomeRun with Beyond TV in this how-to blog article. [...]
June 7th, 2007 at 11:20 am
I too have the Dvico Fusion and would love to have QAM support in Beyond TV. I am looking into dual booting with MythDora.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
The HDHomerun isn’t even on your approved list. What a joke….
July 5th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Yes, DVICO Fusion support for QAM would be great… I don’t even use my BTV software anymore. Recording OTA, I would if I got more than 1 HD channel. And recording regular old ANALOG TV… Haha! Last time I looked at a calender, it was 2007.
SnapStream, there are TONS of us who bought the DVICO cards for the SOLE PURPOSE of QAM Recording using YOUR BTV Software. We’ve been asking for this forever. Read above for more people asking. Oh, and read below because I’m sure more people will agree with us.
July 12th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Do you know if it will support channels above 99-X, I have some in the 101-1 to 112-10.
The tuner in my Mitsubishi TV shows them, that is how I found them.
July 19th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
After importing the channels.txt file every entry in the Lock column (in channel map software) says qam256. When I select qam in the channel drop down (in hdhomerun config) there is nothing to pick from in the Program drop down. I already have VLC installed but the Launch VLC button does nothing when I click it.
July 28th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I too have been trying to wait patiently for QAM support on DVICO Fusion cards. I have 2 cards, both work great for OTA HD, and both tune in clear QAM using another product. I am hoping that someone will make a halfway simple add-on util so that I can tune QAM for BTV. From the looks of it, it should NOT be that hard. The BDA drivers are already installed. All we should need is a util/wizard that manage the channel mapping.
Any programers out there willing customize this for the Fusion cards?
July 31st, 2007 at 6:33 pm
I just purchased a HDHomerun, and cannot get BeyondTV to see it.
Has anyone else seen this? Is there a simple step I may be missing. I have folloed the list line by line, and after setting up the QA mapping, and finally getting to the “Add a new source” –> Antenna (Digital)
I only see my WinTV HVR-980 BDA Tuner…
no mention of the HDHomerun.
I have no problem connecting to it with the config GUI, and VLC.
Any thoughts?
August 1st, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Cant get past step 7. When I click on launch VLC the player comes up but nothing shows. On the HDhomerun unit theres another green light that comes on. The config GUI screens shows activity in the network rate (pps). Also when I play music or movies the player will work.
August 1st, 2007 at 8:48 pm
How do I setup direct connection between computer and the HDhomerun unit. When connecting via ethernet directly to the hdhomerun device I cant get any communication.
August 1st, 2007 at 8:56 pm
cant see hdhomerun unit on the network. how can i verify that network sees this device? Can ping the device by ip but not by name. Wondering if this may have something to do with it.
August 19th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Ok I am very interested in the HDHomerun, but a few quick questions:
Does it work on Dish Network with HD?
Does it send the recording across the network to a file server or do you have to have a computer hook to? And what type of connection?
Sorry if these are basic, but I am new to PVR scene, I always rented DVRs, and I want to be sure I am not throwing away my money. Thanks for your help (that is if any one helps
August 28th, 2007 at 9:09 am
How can you receive non clear qam channels on your TV such as Comedy Central, TLC, History Channel, Discovery Channel HD etc?
August 30th, 2007 at 10:11 am
I also bought the DVICO Fusion card from snapstream and was puzzled by the lack of support. Ironically, it forced me to buy other software to run HD PVR. I check back occasionally with the hope that Snapstream will come up with an upgrade that will work for us.
September 29th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
I’m yet another user with FusionHDTV card. I can’t believe Snapstream sells this card as a bundle with its software and it doesnt support QAM recording with it!!
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:04 pm
This guide didn’t work for me. I went to the SiliconDust site and their guide worked perfectly:
http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/hdhomerun/instructions/beyondtv_cable
October 16th, 2007 at 1:00 am
DVICO FusionHDTV5 Express - Superb Conexant CX23885 chipset & LG 5th generation tuner but still no BeyondTV from Snapstream to support QAM. With as many requests as you are seeing here, makes you wonder how many others are buying into other products - but I want this one - so listen up Snapstream - I’ll buy you a Dvico FusionHDTV5 Express for your lab and testing if you will just build your product to work with it.
Don’t get left behind.
October 31st, 2007 at 12:04 pm
I set up the HDHomerun with QAM and OTA yesterday. This is the easiest guide to follow:
http://snapstream.helpserve.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=1471&nav=0,1
If you don’t show any signal during the BeyondTV setup for the QAM, don’t worry about it, just keep going. The test should show an image, and then the rest should work out okay. The most tedious part of the setup is selecting which channels to keep out of the imported lineup. I’m hoping more channels are converted over to clear QAM over the next year.
January 10th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
[...] For those that are new to building their own PC DVR, the HDHomeRun is a great TV tuner if you want to use Beyond TV to record the unencrypted channels on your digital cable feed. Our original (and now slightly outdated) how-to on using Beyond TV and the HDHomeRun can be found here. [...]
January 23rd, 2008 at 9:18 am
wow… the entire setup seems pretty confusing. I have a nice Bundled Package that gets me what I need to see my shows, especially my New England Patriots!!! Good luck with whoever is doing this setup!
February 7th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
TimeWarner and satellite companies overcharge for a bundles of channels added that I will never watch. You can use the HDHomerun with a high quality rooftop OTA antenna to view OTA HD channels and record them as well as timeshift them. Once the hardware setup costs are digested, the content is free. With the money you save you can regularly buy a few blu-ray movies or even a boxed set for what these companies are charging monthly. You can also download movies from legitimate sites like netflicks, amazon, appletv, koldcasttv, and probably more soon enough.
The setup doesn’t seem that confusing to me and I will gladly spend some time getting my htpc/pvr rig working. I don’t need to overpay for a dummybox from a monopolistic cable co anymore. Also remember that there are different software packages you can use with the hdhomerun besides beyondtv.