Peter Near's Blog

At this point I have no reason to believe that Microsoft will be officially supporting ATSC over-the-air high definition broadcasts in Canada, although they fully support it in the United States.  My feelings on that business decision are the subject of another post, in this post we will discuss unsupported workarounds to get ATSC working in Media Center.

First, some background.  Like the United States, Canada has decided to transition all television broadcasts from analog to digital.  These new digital signals have greater effective range, provide a crystal-clear high definition picture, and as with all over the air network TV broadcasts are free and legal to access.  It's worth noting that over the air signals represent the best high-definition picture quality you can get for network television - better than cable and much better than satellite.  While high definition is available for a fee via cable and satellite, those high definition channels are subject to ever-increasing compression and picture quality degradation as they try to squeeze more and more content into your subscription.  And unlike cable and satellite, over the air broadcasts are not encrypted and can be easily incorporated into a Media Center setup, copied over to your iPod, and are generally easy to use.  The United States has nearly completed their digital transition, and will be shutting down the analog broadcasts in February 2009.  Canada is well into its transition, with most major markets now broadcasting in digital and 100% of the country switching over to digital by 2011 before we shut down our analog transmitters.  Here in Toronto, I can get access to every major US and Canadian network in full high-definition glory using a $40 antenna that I put in my attic.

Here's how to get digital high-definition (ATSC) broadcasts into Media Center.

If you're using Media Center in Windows XP or Windows Vista, follow this link for detailed instructions.

If you're using Media Center in Windows 7 or Vista with TV Pack 2008, continue reading below.  I've tried to provide excruciating detail, but don't get scared.  It's not difficult, I'm just going a bit overboard with screenshots and explanation.

Prerequisites:

• 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.
• You will need an ATSC tuner for your Media Center PC.  At this time, the only tuner whose drivers support this Windows 7 workaround is the HDHomerun.
• Neither of these items are the sort of thing you can walk into WalMart and find on the shelves, but there are several online vendors including eBay sellers who carry these items.  I personally have purchased from Sensuz, a Toronto-area HTPC dealer, and have been very happy with their service.

Step 1 - Install and Configure the HDHomerun

You can put the HDHomerun anywhere in your house that has both a connection to the antenna, and a connection to your network.  Personally, I have my router and my antenna connections in the basement near the electrical panel, so that's where I chose to install the HDHomerun as well.  The HDHomerun contains two tuners, so you'll need to use a good-quality splitter from your antenna cable which then you can use to connect the included coax cables to the tuner.  Insert your network cable into the tuner, plug in the power adapter, and that should be the last time you touch the tuner.

The rest of the setup is now done on your Media Center PC.  Download and install the latest beta drivers for the HDHomerun from the SiliconDust website by clicking here.  When the HDHomeRun Setup program launches select "Canada" as your country and enter your postal code, then click "Next".

Change source to "Digital Antenna" for both tuners (Windows Media Center should automatically get selected as the application), then click "Next".
 

Click on "Scan" and let the HDHomeRun discover all of your local ATSC channels.  Once all the channels are found, click on "Finish".  You've now completed setup of the tuner and drivers.

Step 2 - Configure Media Center to use the HDHomeRun tuner

Since Media Center doesn't allow ATSC tuners to be used in Canada, the HDHomeRun drivers fool Media Center into detecting it as a QAM digital cable tuner (which is supported).  I'll walk you through the setup of the tuner in Media Center.  Launch Media Center and navigate to Settings, TV, Setup TV Signal.  We want to set up Media Center using the correct region, Canada.  If Media Center doesn't automatically detect that you're in Canada, be sure to select a different region and choose "Canada".

Enter your postal code, and agree to the terms of service (assuming you do indeed agree to the legaleze).

If Media Center doesn't automatically detect your tuners (remember, this is beta software still) then you can manually configure the tuner.

Select the cable provider that most closely matches the ATSC lineup in your area (be sure to choose a provider that has HD service, that will make life easier for you later as we set up the guide).

Next, Media Center will scan for ATSC channels.  This process took awhile for me, up to fifteen minutes. 

Congratulations, your tuner is now set up!  However at this point, you likely won't have any guide listings associated with the channels that were detected via the scan.
 

Step 3 - Map guide listings to your ATSC channels

For those of you who have used the Vista hack, you may like me be a little surprised by the way the guide works now.  For each channel on each tuner you can specify which guide listings should be used, which is incredibly flexible.  Media Center also now has some much-welcomed logic in the Advanced Record Settings that allows you to specify that any given recording should be recorded in HD Only, HD Preferred, SD Only, or SD Preferred.  Because of this feature, I personally would recommend that you always attempt to associate your high-definition ATSC channels with listings from your cable company's high-definition channel lineup so that the recording logic works properly.  I'll walk you through how to set that up. 

First, navigate to Settings, TV, Guide.

Select the first channel that you want to work with by clicking on the callsign of the station.

In the settings page for the channel, click on "Edit Listings"

You'll now be taken to a list of all the channels that your Media Center is aware of (including channels that were set up via other sources, such as Analog Antenna or Satellite if you have those are part of your setup).  This list is organized alphabetically, and you can type in letters to skip to the appropriate point in the list.  Select a channel with HD listings.

If you select a channel that also comes in via some other source (for example you get CBC Toronto on both cable and antenna) you will be presented with the option to merge the guide listings or to copy the listings.  Select "copy" so that you can manage the ATSC channel independently.  Once you've selected the correct listings, you'll now see that the listings are associated with the ATSC channel.  Click Save.

The first example was an easy one, because my local cable company happens to carry CBC Toronto in high definition.  I wasn't so lucky with the Buffalo-based stations, as Cogeco carries the US network feeds from Detroit instead.  This forces you into a choice:  either select local listings which are not in high definition and lose some of that "HD Preferred" logic I discussed earlier, or select a high definition channel from the same network that may not have the exact local listings for your area.  For me, I mostly care about primetime high definition content, so I chose to just use the Detroit guide listings.  Let's set up my local NBC affiliate, WGRZ.  Select WGRZ and the click on "Edit Listings".
 

I scrolled down to the W section of the guide listings and scanned for other listings that were labelled "NBC Affiliate".  I did a quick google search to verify that this channel was in the same time zone as me, and then selected these listings.

I also chose to rename this channel to "NBC - HD" as somewhat of a visual reminder to me that the guide listings are only valid for the network, not necessarily the local station.

Click on save, and at this point you can keep assigning channels or you may choose to go to the guide and test things out before continuing.  Once you assign guide listings to all of your ATSC channels, you're done the setup and should be able to enjoy pristine high-definition recordings on your computer and throughout your home on your extenders.
 

Just for kicks, I decided to take screenshots of the new Advanced Record options for HD Only and HD Preferred so you can see what I was talking about earlier.

 Questions and Answers

I'll try to capture some key answers that come in over time here in this section.  To kick things off, here are some things that came to mind for me.

What happens if I select "Merge" instead of "Copy"?
I've found that by selecting merge, Media Center assumes that all sources for a given channel are standard definition.

Doesn't Media Center support Analog Antenna in Canada, and can't I use those guide listings?
Yes analog antenna is supported and you'll get the listings for your local channels, but because it's analog Media Center will assume that all channels that use these guide listings are standard definition.

But isn't it incredibly stupid to support Analog Antenna but not Digital Antenna, given that analog channels are all shutting down and digital is the government-mandated standard for all of North America?
Yes.

Media Center didn't automatically detect all of the channels that were detected by the HDHomeRun, is there any way I can manually add them?
I personally had this problem with CFTO here in Toronto.  I manually added the channel by navigating to Settings, TV, Guide, Add Missing Channels, Add QAM Channel.  I then entered in the channel number noted in the Guide Number column from the HDHomeRun setup utility (9.1 in this case) and it worked fine from that point forward in Media Center.