Media Center and Me

Next week, June 12, is the “Digital Transition” in the US – over-the-air broadcasters will switch over – if they haven’t already – to broadcasting their signals digitally.

How will Media Center users be affected?

Luckily, our friends at Windows Help and How-to have published a detailed article on the transition that you can find here. The basics:

• If you are using Media Center with Cable or Satellite, you are likely to be unaffected by the transition.
• If you are using Media Center with an Antenna for your TV signal, you need to read on.

Attention, Old School XP users!

Of particular note, if you are running an older version of Windows XP, you must upgrade to SP2! In your IE browser, select Tools | Windows Update to find and install this Service Pack! I got nothing to say to you until you’re up to SP2.

I got cable. I’m cool, right?

This post looks at how Media Center users who receive their television signal through an over-the-air antenna will be affected. In most cases, cable and satellite subscribers will not be affected by the change.

However, some cable companies are transitioning their analog signals to digital around this time as well. If yours does this, they should provide a set-top box to ensure your service continues. There’s a great post by Media Center MVP Barb B. on this very subject here.

I have Media Center and an Antenna! What do I need to do?

The first thing we need to determine is if you have an ATSC (digital) TV tuner, or an NTSC (analog) tuner. There are a couple of ways to do this.

You can open Device Manager (Start | Control Panel | Hardware | Device Manager), then look under Sound, video and game controllers to find your TV tuner. It will frequently list “ATSC” or “NTSC” right in-line, or you can right-click on it and select Properties.

Above: Device Manager tells me I have an ATSC tuner – so I am totally good to go on this PC!

For Vista users, it may be easiest is to look at your Guide in Media Center, assuming you haven’t edited the channel numbers at all. In the guide, if you’re using an NTSC tuner, the channel numbers look like this:

Above: Analog = whole numbers. No decimals. No “DT” added to call signs. Yep, this here’s an NTSC tuner fer sure.

If you are receiving digital via ATSC, the channel numbers look like this (for Vista + TV Pack users)

Above: If you’ve got decimals and numerous sub-channels? Yeah. You’ve got ATSC and Vista + TV Pack, which means you have nothing to fear this June 12. (Except spiders. They’re creepy.)

Or possibly like this (For Vista users, pre-TV pack):

Above: Four-digit channel numbers?  Lots of “DT”s added to call signs? You’ve got Vista and ATSC, so you’re OK.

Failing those methods, you can look at the tuner itself, or search for the model online. That oughta do it. Because here’s the deal:

Update!
• If you are using an ATSC tuner, and you've experienced loss of signal or guide data, then it is possible that the frequency maps and headend updates have not yet updated for you. There are a number of methods beings discussed on TGB as to how you can find and add missing channels.
  Media Center MVP Barb sent me this suggestion:
  First go to http://dtv.gov/stationlist.htm and fill in your zipcode and get the mappings for YOUR location.
  Then you can manually add missing channels and missing guide data, as described in this post. There are other options discussed on TGB, as well, and there are updates from the team managing the fixes here. Finally, if you issue persists, use this forum to report it here.
• If you are using NTSC, then you have some work to do.

Also, if you discover that your tuner says NTSC/ATSC (or some combination thereof), this means it is a hybrid or combo tuner. If your TV signal is interrupted after June 12, simply re-run TV setup in Media Center (Tasks | Settings | TV | Set up TV Signal) and be sure to select Digital Antenna during the process.

You have an Antenna and an NTSC tuner. What do you do?

First, don’t panic. It’s going to be OK. You have a few options.

1. Upgrade your tuner

This is my very strong, personal recommendation! Upgrade to an ATSC tuner. They run between $50 and $100 usually. If you’re not the type who dares to open the PC case, you can pick up a USB tuner. Just plug it in, re-run TV setup  (Tasks | Settings | TV | Set-up TV Signal) and be sure to select Digital Antenna (ATSC) during the process.

In fact, if you plug-in a USB ATSC tuner, Windows will install the driver automatically, and as soon as you open Media Center, it detects and configures the tuner for you!

If you go this route, you’ll want to disable the NTSC tuner. Again, go to Device Manager (Start | Control Panel | Hardware | Device Manager), then look under Sound, video and game controllers to find the NTSC tuner, then right-click on it and select Disable.

From me to you, this will be the easiest, most straight-forward route for you to take to resolve any transition related issues. I know, because in preparation for this blog post, I did the following:

2. Get a DTA Converter Box

You’ve probably heard about these things. If you are going from an antenna to an old, analog TV set, they’re a great option, and up until July 31 of this year, you can get a $40 coupon from Uncle Sam for one. They run between $45 and $65 dollars, so after the coupon, you’re looking at a $5-$20 outlay. In some cases, you may actually pay nothing.

Cash savings is the only possible reason I can see for going this route, because making one work with Media Center and your Media Center remote takes some real fiddling, and an investment of time on your behalf.

Don’t worry – I’ll show you what to do. But please, before you go down this path, really think about option #1. Look, if we went out and had a few beers together and then you wanted to go get a tattoo of your ex-boy/girlfriends’ name on your arm, I probably wouldn’t stop you. But if you asked me if you should upgrade to an ATSC tuner or try and integrate a DTA converter box on your Media Center, I’d go to great lengths to get you to consider the tuner upgrade first.

Still gonna do it? OK, bub. It’s your time.

Basically, the DTA (Digital to Analog) box receives the digital signals broadcast over the air and converts them to analog signals which your NTSC tuner can understand. I picked one up today for $45 for this tutorial. I chose one with “Analog Pass-through,” which basically means if there are an low-power stations in my area not subject to the transition (e.g. – still going to broadcast in analog) I will still receive these signals. (Post-tutorial note: there or no channels doing this in my area)

I hooked my antenna up to the DTA box, and then hooked the box to the NTSC tuner. So far, so good. Lots of tightening those little Coax cables up.

At this point, I pulled up Live TV in Media Center and changed it to channel 3 (which the DTA box documentation advised me to do to run setup), where I saw the DTA set-up dialog on screen.

Using the remote provided with the DTA, I ran a channel scan to let the box figure out what digital broadcast channels it could receive. I’m not sure if I had to do this or not, but it ended up being VERY helpful. When the scan was done, again using the DTA-provided remote, I clicked through the channels it receives and wrote down the numbers and the call signs for each. I pick up seven stations, so this was no big deal, and that list really came in helpful down the line.

How about My Media Center Remote?

I told you this took some fiddling. You need to attach an IR emitter (sometimes called an IR blaster) from the IR unit that came with my Media Center remote.

There’s a little IR port on the back where you plug it in. Then you take the other end, which looks like a little eyeball, and stick it on to the DTA box right over its IR receiver.

Above: I hauled all this gear to the office today to write this tutorial, and then I forgot my camera. The image above shows an IR blaster positioned over the receiver on a set-top box. It’s from the Tuner Guy’s tutorial on setting up a set-top box with Media Center, which is basically what you are doing when you set-up a DTA converter box.

The IR blaster is what will let you continue to use your Media Center remote to change channels. When you press a button (say channel up) on the Media Center remote, it gets blasted to the DTA box via this emitter, thus changing the channel. It is similar to the set-up you must use if you are using a cable set-top box that I wrote about a few weeks ago.

By the way, if you lost your IR emitter, you better hit the Internet to order another one. I checked four stores in the area and none carried just this part. One could sell me an entirely new Media Center remote…

The next step is to re-run TV set-up in Media Center. Go to Tasks | Settings | TV | Set up TV Signal.

You see, Media Center perceives the DTA as a set-top box, so we need to set it up as if it were a set-top box.  When Media Center offers to detect your TV signal, select “I will manually configure my TV signal.”

On the next screen, select Cable. I know this is counter-intuitive. The thing is, if you select Antenna, Media Center will assume there is not set-top box in the mix. So trust me here, and select Cable.

Next, Media Center asks if you are using a Set-top Box. Answer Yes. That’s what the DTA box is.

This launches a series of steps that Media Center uses to determine the type of IR signals it needs to blast to the DTA box.

There are plenty of checks and tests along the way, and if Media center can’t figure out the DTA remote type, it will let you program it in button by button.

Just be patient here. When this is done, you should be able to change channels using your Media Center remote.

Bonus Reason to Upgrade Your Tuner Instead of Integrating a DTA Box!

After much fiddling, I determined that my particular DTA box expects to receive digital channels with a dash in them. There’s even a dash button on the remote, so I can input, say 34-1. There’s no dash button on my Media Center remote, so while I can Channel Up and Channel Down with the best of them, I can’t use the numbers to get to a specific channel.

Then again, I’m only picking up 7 channels. There are worse things that could happen. Like…

Time to Set-up the Guide!

I don’t know if you believe that technology can actually react to your mood (e.g., the angrier you are about something, the worse it seems to go) but I have found this to be true. So if you are a believer, best go meditate for a bit before heading in to the next step: setting up the guide listings.

Now that we have convinced Media Center that we have a set-top box and have our remote controlling it (to some extent), Media Center wants to offer us the set-top box guide listings that are available locally. These are all cable listings, you’ll note. What you are going to have to do is find a line-up that includes all of the channels you receive (remember the list?) and edit out the extra channels.

You’ll have to start out by entering your zip code and accepting Terms, etc…

After this, Media Center will download and present to you the available set-top box guide listings for your area. Once you select one, Media Center downloads the listings for it.

Finding a relevant guide listing is a trial and error process, which means the only way to find out if a provider’s channel listing includes the channels you are after, you have to select it, download it and then check. If the channels aren’t there, go back two steps and start again.

I found success when I selected one that included (Digital) in the title. While it had all seven of the channels I pick up, it also had 437 other channels I had to scroll through to find the seven I wanted.

With the guide downloaded, now you must edit out the channels you don’t need. Go to Tasks | Settings | Guide | Edit Channels.

Now, there were 444 channels in this listing, so I hit Clear All and then scrolled through them looking for my magic seven,

You’ll also note that the numbers the cable company uses are frequently not the numbers your DTA box uses for the channels. In this case, select Edit Numbers and change the numbers to the correct ones (remember that list, again?)

When this is done, hit Save and check out your guide. Hopefully you now have relevant guide data and the ability to control the DTA box with your Media Center remote. And, some of your sanity left.

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Obviously, there are a lot of different DTA boxes out there, and they will all be a little bit different, but the basic process for getting them to work with your Media Center remains the same:

• Connect Antenna to  DTA box and box to Tuner
• Add IR Blaster from Media Center to the DTA Box
• Scan for channels on the DTA box (and write them down)
• Re-run TV Set-up in Media Center (Tasks | Settings | TV | Set up TV signal)
• Select “I will manually configure my TV signal”
• Select Cable, then Yes when asked if you have a set-top box
• Set-up the set-top box and Media Center Remote
• Set-up the guide listings by selecting a cable lineup that has the channels you receive in it, then editing out the extra channels and correcting the channel numbers as needed.

It is also possible that for either option, above, you will have to upgrade your antenna. You’ll know soon enough into the above procedures whether or not your antenna is cutting it. Go to http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx for more details on the best antenna for your area.

So, there you have it. Again, in my heart of hearts, its a much better situation to simply upgrade your TV tuner to an ATSC tuner, but I will leave that up to you.

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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New to Windows Media Center? Start here. or here.Or even here.

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