After 3 days of frustration i wanted to know if someone with specifically my setup of 1800, Vista 64bit and clear QAM through cable was able to get it to work on either Vista VMC or even WinTV.

I cannot get this to work even on WinTV - prompting me to assume that there is something significantly wrong with the drivers for 64Bit support (basically not supporting QAM of any kind)

I have tried all the other stuff (QAM plugin beta etc) without much luck. I have also tried just plain and simple WinTV for QAM tuning and it doesnt work (though it seems to find an incredible number of channels in the scan - it just freezes when i try to tune it)

PS: I know that QAM over my TW Cable exists - the plugin detects 40 odd channels when i run it. the weirdest part about the beta plugin is that when i reboot - the Digital tuner seems to disappear completely from Vista and seems to mess up my card Audio input with no sound over standard cable via S-video and l+R audio in. 

 

I am running the same setup as you have above (Vista 64 w/1800).  I was also having the same problems as you are mentioning (no clear QAM).  I recently received a response from tech support instructing that the >4GB beta drivers should be used, and that the clear QAM patch, if installed, breaks win TV in vista 64.  Finally, you need to open the application called "Primary" in the hauppauge directory and set it to allow VMR and VMR9 only. 

In summary:
1) Clean system (uninstall QAM patch, run hwclear, reboot)
2) install beta drivers, win TV6
3) change primary settings

After doing this, I was able to successfully detect the qam channels in WINTV and display them.  Now the only problem is that I am not able to get sound.  I am intersted to see if you have a similar issue, so please let me know what you find out.  Previously, it would scan clear qam channels and report generic qam1, qam2, etc garbage without ever detecting the proper station IDs, and when trying to view an HD station, would lock the WINTV program. 

Still cannot get qam in media center.  I am able to get OTA HD in media center, but the image permenantly freezes/stutters after 5 seconds or so on any HD channel (analog is just fine).

Good luck, let me know what you find.

Regarding sound - i had the same problem when i ran the beta QAM plugin. All sound from the card stopped. I even wasted a trip to return the card and get another one thinking the beta driver had permanently destroyed it. turns out i needed to remove all drivers form the system using HWclear.exe and shutdown the machine, remove the card, boot up without it, then shut it down again and install the card once more and follow the driver procedure as if its a new install.

I suspect you have the same issue and your sound will return when you do the above.

I will try the above and let you know - btw - does the primary settings force vista into non-aero mode?

One more thing - are you using hte QAM tuning within WinTV as regular cable or that "Cable HRC" thingy?

Hmmm, I have not gone so far as to physically remove my card, but I have done the driver reinstalls.  I wonder if that will make that big of a difference.

As for the VMR, I still have windows aero on with no issues...i had to turn all of the check boxes off in the PRIMARY application otherwise funky things would happen with the QAM playback.

I tuned with the WINTV installed from the 3.4d1 driver download, and did not turn on HRC (just went to the channel manager, selected QAM, and did an auto scan).  Now to check things, I just put in one station number in the box on the top right to see if it is tuning - much faster than doing a full scan!

My primary problem now is I am unable to use the card in VMC without the screen permenantly freezing/stuttering after a few seconds but the audio continues on as if there is no problem (both NTSC and OTA signals do this).  If I change the channel, the picture resumes.  If that would stop, I would be happy with simply OTA in VMC.  I think I may return this card and get one that will function properly in VMC.  I think Hauppauge has falsely advertized when they claim this as being vista compatible on their web site.

Update:

There is a registry tweak you can read about here:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/8/281492/ShowThread.aspx#281492

that worked perfectly.  I can now use QAM in VMC!

Yeah i caught that conversation last night. I think will try it though i'm not really happy about installing a non official TV pack that wont be supported to non-OEM and is still buggy and has some strange format (WTV)

Off topic - Have you ever wondered the collective knowledge and technical information that the users of this forum have? Imagine turning this entire group into a tech support for $$. I think hardware vendors and MS (who now own this site) are extremely priveledged to have access to this group for free. It's really incredible.

 

 

This is obviously a fairly old thread but have any of you besides sadman had success with VMC/1800?

Here is my setup (s/b the same as sadman describes)

Vista ultimate x64 SP1, TVPack 2008, PlayReady with recommended patches.

Installed beta 1800 driver, WinTV, registry change and changed primary settings.

I figured this all out in fits and starts so it may not be a "clean install".

Results-

WinTv does detect QAM channels but display is black. I thought I saw somewhere that the registry change breaks the QAM display under WinTV, can anyone confirm this for me?

VMC does not specifically report a QAM tuner. It detects the analog cable and another Hauppage tuner that is listed as not supported. I tried enabling ATSC in the manual VMC TV setup but this gets me a guide with no signal found for the channels.

From what I have read here depending on the cable provider VMC may not detect the QAM signal. Then you have to use the ATSC guide and manually add the cable channels using the channel info on the SiliconDust site. Have not tried this yet. If WinTV can find the channels, seems to me VMC should find them also.

I'll try clearing out the current drivers etc. as sadman describes one more time.

As a last resort I'll try re-installing Vista etc.

Ok,

 

Got it working - just did what sadman did which was what i was doing. maybe you need to do it several times$#@!&*

Company: HP

Model Number: m8300f

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ 3.00GHz

Memory(Raam): 2942 MB

System Type: 32-bit Operating System

Windows Vista

Hauppauge HVR-1800

I can't get any audio, Please help! I'm not smart enough to understand everything being said in here. I've got a really good picture but if someone could please help me, like give me a walk through or something. I would greatly appreciate it. I don't know where to look for anything...

Going from memory and assuming your sound works in windows -

First right click on the speaker icon in the tray and open the mixer. Make sure media center is listed and enabled.

Then go through the sound setup procedure in media center if you haven't done that already.

I've done the same thing and can't get it to work with the HVR-1800.  I'm using the v4.6 drivers though.

WinTV finds the QAM channels, but not VMC

This should work-

I think I had to repeat steps 8-12 to get to work so try that also.

 

1. Before you do anything – make sure you have Vista *SP1* installed. You can check this in start -> computer -> properties. Under “windows edition” it should say “Service Pack 1” towards the bottom. Something on my PC was preventing SP1 from installing and so I ended up with the VMC TV Pack installed, but I couldn’t install the PlayReady pack.
2. I installed the TV Pack and related updates before the driver. I’m pretty sure that the order doesn’t matter, you can install the TV Pack first or the driver first. I’ve seen both instructions on this thread.
3. Install the Vista Media Center TV Pack 2008 (x64).
4. Don't reboot yet.
5. Install the PlayReady PC (x64)runtime and reboot.
6. Install the KB951685 (x64) update and reboot.
7. Install the KB950754 (x64) update and reboot.
8. Removed the drivers for my tuner using the Hauppauge HCWCLEAR.EXE app and reboot.
9. Cancel auto driver install for the 1600 – click on the option “Do not ask me to install this hardware again”
10. Run the Registry patch to enable the ClearQAM support – this post describes it: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/post/292823.aspx . You only need the one key for your card. In my case it was the 1600.
11. Run the driver only install from the 4.2 CD and reboot. You can get the 4.2 driver here: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_hvr1600.html .
12. **After reboot** (this was key, I didn’t do this and I thought I was doing it wrong), launch VMC and run the TV Signal setup.
13. It detected my analog and new QAM tuners.
14. For the guide, I used my cable company as the guide for the Analogue tuner & ‘ATSC’ as my guide for the QAM tuner. It seemed to pick up a number of HD channels. I haven’t gone back to determine if there are more that it didn’t find.