This article refers to Windows Vista only. For instructions to get ATSC working with Windows 7 or TV Pack 2008, follow this link: http://thegreenbutton.com/blogs/pnear/archive/2009/01/22/329807.aspx
Windows Media Center has supported high-definition ATSC for a few years now, but never officially in Canada. In case you don't already know, you can get crystal-clear high definition video with dolby digital sound in most major Canadian cities just by plugging in an antenna. Some enterprising users figured out how to force Media Center 2005 to receive ATSC in Canada, but that method no longer works in Vista. Below is a new method that works in MCE 2005 and Vista Media Center.
Prerequisites:
- You will need a decent ATSC tuner for your PC. I am personally using a DVico Fusion5 USB, and an ADS InstantHDTV. Both of these cards work well with Vista. While I haven't tested myself, several people recommend that you stay away from the ATI HDTV Wonder.
- You should get a good quality UHF antenna. In most cases I've read about it comes down to a Channel Master 4221 or Channel Master 4228 depending on your distance from the transmitters. Consult this handy chart (PDF) to select the right antenna for your area. I personally have a 4221 in my attic which was both easy to do and very neighbour-friendly.
- Because I know someone will ask, I can't vouch for any particular vendor but I do know that Sensuz is a canadian supplier who sells the tuners and the antennas and I personally bought my equipment via US vendors on eBay.
Step 1 - Configure MCE pretending that you are in the United States
Microsoft has at this point only enabled ATSC tuners for consumers in the United States. Lucky for us, it's pretty easy to pretend that you are an American in Media Center and get it working.
- Navigate to Tasks, Settings, TV, Setup TV signal
- When asked if Canada is the correct region for setup, select no and choose a different region.
- Select United States as your region.
- Continue with automatic setup, Media Center should recognize your ATSC tuners automatically. Configure all of your tuners as if you lived in the United States.
- When you reach the guide setup area choose any zip code, I used 14201 for Buffalo. Continue setup process as if you lived in Buffalo, actual provider you select for cable or satellite is irrelevent as we'll be overriding that later anyways.
- Once you reach the end of the setup, Media Center will test signal strength for the digital stations that it thinks you should be able to receive. Ignore this section, it will get overwritten later anyways.
- Finish setup, and test to make sure that Media Center is at least working (it should be).
Step 2 - Copy the ATSC tuner settings from the registry
By this point, Media Center has configured your ATSC tuners to work, and we want to make a quick copy of that configuration from the system registry to use later. Note that playing with the registry can be dangerous, and if you're not comfortable doing this by yourself you should call that buddy/kid/grandchild who knows about computers to help with this step.
- Start the registry editor by clicking the Vista Start button, and typing regedit followed by enter into the Start Search box.
- Navigate through the registry tree by clicking on the plus arrows on each of the following branches: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners
- Right-click on the tree branch labeled {71985F48-1CA1-11D3-9CC8-00C04F7971E0} and select Export.
- Save the file on the desktop and give it a memorable name, something like us_atsc_tuning.reg
Step 3 - Configure Media Center for Canada
Now that we have the configuration that makes the ATSC tuners work copied, we want to get it working for real with the Canadian region and your actual cable or satellite provider.
Navigate to Tasks, Settings, TV, Setup TV signal When asked if United States is the correct region for setup, select no and choose Canada. Complete setup to get your cable or satellite provider working with the correct guide. Note that MCE will not detect your ATSC tuners this time around, which is normal. We'll correct that in the next step.
Step 4 - Force the ATSC tuners back in to Media Center
Media Center should now be working in its boring old analog, low-definition glory. Only a couple more steps to supercharge it to HDTV.
- Close Media Center
- Double-click the registry file we saved earlier on the desktop to import it back into the registry. You will get a warning when doing this, again if you're not comfortable editing the registry you should stop. Otherwise select yes to insert the tuner settings for ATSC.
- Navigate to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\EPG\ATSC and modify its value from "0? to "1?.
- Restart your computer, and/or restart the Windows Media Center Receiver Service and the Windows Media Center Scheduler Service. The scheduler may stop but not restart, as far as I can tell that is not a concern.
Step 5 - Manually add the ATSC channels for your area
Since ATSC isn't supported in Canada, the Canadian guide won't have any information about channels available in your area. Media Center includes a settings wizard to add in missing digital channels. At this point it should be noted that even in the US there isn't really an ATSC guide for media center. Instead, it tries to infer guide listings by matching the station name to one that's in your standard analog lineup. Bottom-line: it'll work just fine in Canada.
- Find a listing of the ATSC channels that are broadcasting in your area. Unfortunately this might be easier said than done, here are some suggestions on how to go about this:
- If you live in the Toronto area, check out this web site. Translating into MCE terminology, the Digital TV channel is what you'll find in gray text on this page, the assigned frequency is in red text (or if there is no red text then the assigned frequency is the same as the digital tv channel).
- If you live in the Ottawa/Montreal area, check out this web site. Translating into MCE terminology, the Digital TV channel is what you'll find in gray text on this page, the assigned frequency is in red text (or if there is no red text then the assigned frequency is the same as the digital tv channel).
- If your tuner card came with its own software, do a scan with that software and make note of what it finds. Without knowing the specific software you're using, I can't coach you on what numbers go where in MCE.
- If you have a high-definition television, do a scan with the TV and make note of what it finds. In most cases the TV will be showing you the Digital TV Channel, which for MCE is only half of the picture. To get the assigned frequency, use this list of Canadian OTA stations.
- Navigate to Tasks, Settings, TV, Guide, Add Missing Channels, Add DTV Channel
- On the first page, Media Center needs to know what channel you're trying to add. What it's looking for here is the "virtual channel", which is probably the same channel that your television shows you when watching that channel. For the purposes of this article I'm going to walk through adding the Buffalo Fox Affiliate. Their Digital TV Channel is 29-1.
- On the second page, Media Center needs to know the frequency that the channel is broadcasting on. In the world of digital TV, this may or may not be the same as the channel you added on page one. In the case of Fox Buffalo, the assigned frequency is channel 14.
- On the third page Media Center wants to know the name of the station, or more specifically the four-letter callsign of the station. This callsign is what MCE uses to match up the guide listings with your existing guide so it's important that it's correct. For Fox Buffalo, the callsign is WUTV.
- Add all of the channels you need for your area and then click on Done on the Add Missing Channels page. Note that after you hit done, it will chug for quite a bit as it builds the new guide based on matching the channel names.
- Go to the guide and make sure all of the new channels are properly listed (they will be located above channel 1000).
Additional Notes/Tips
- Because ATSC is somewhat new, your cable provider might not always carry the local station. For example, there is a brand new CW affiliate broadcasting in Buffalo but my local cable company doesn't carry it. Instead, they carry WPIX which is the CW affiliate in New York city. So in order to get listings for that channel which are reasonably accurate I simply lied and told MCE that the name of the channel was WPIX; it matched up the listings and now I have a guide.
- Also because ATSC is somewhat new, it is not uncommon that the engineering department of your local station has something configured not quite right. Media Center is especially finicky to these settings. If you're getting "No signal detected" errors when you're certain that the channel is working fine, take a look at this article for more troubleshooting steps.
- If you want more information, feel free to post comments here of course but also be sure to check out the OTA HDTV forum and the HTPC forum over at Digital Home Canada.