this is a development of my earlier mce2005 reghack found here:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/post/75872.aspx

I've finally gotten around to putting a tv tuner back into my dedicated media centre box, a tried & trusted half height analog pvr150. The apartment complex where I live has a kind of analog cable redistribution system which takes some analog terrestrial and digital satellite channels (along with the camera at the front door of the building) and moshes them together in a haphazard way over the analog spectrum. Setting up TV for media center here you select region (ireland) - county (limerick) - service provider (there is a selection of 4: chorus analog/chorus digital/unmapped analog/unmapped digital). If I select chorus analog it will perform a scan and return nothing, if I select unmapped analog I wont pick up very much either.

As with 2005, the irish cable tuning space is defined after the initial guide download and then imported into the registry here:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune\TS353-1]
where 353 is Ireland and -1 defines cable. The trick is to intercept this process and put my own values in.

I was able to to work out a list of frequencies (kHz) that the channels of interest occupy and then using the magical power of excel convert them to hex.

615250000    24ABF850
639250000    261A2E50
663250000    27886450
695250000    2970AC50
471250000    1C16B450
495250000    1D84EA50
511250000    1E790E50
567250000    21CF8C50
591250000    233DC250
719250000    2ADEE250
743250000    2C4D1850
535250000    1FE74450

once this was done I went to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune\TS353-1] and exported the key and made a backup. I then edited the file so that it looks like this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune\TS353-1]


"1"=dword:24ABF850
"2"=dword:261A2E50
"3"=dword:27886450
"4"=dword:2970AC50
"5"=dword:1C16B450
"6"=dword:1D84EA50
"7"=dword:1E790E50
"8"=dword:21CF8C50
"9"=dword:233DC250
"10"=dword:2ADEE250
"11"=dword:2C4D1850
"12"=dword:1FE74450

explicitly defining the frequencies of interest.

I re-ran the tv setup portion and selected "unmapped analog cable", after the download of the guide data but before the scan for channels I windowed VMC and nuked the TS353-1 portion of the registry and imported my reg file.
At the scan page I deleted all the pre existing channels from my earlier attempts and then went ahead and scanned. Once this was done it was a simple (if not time consuming) matter of associating the guide listings and re-ordering to my liking.

As I said the chanel lineup is a bit of a gestalt of different sources but I do have guide data now for most of them.

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http://www.spore.com/view/profile/Vengence_IRL