Planet Replay

[wildintrovert]

My local Comcast cable recently began offering approx. 6 digital channels and I had to get a converter box in order to receive them. I'm now getting my program guide through Wirns and Schedules Direct.
I realize that ReplayTV was created for analog TV and the Comcast program guide from Schedules Direct lists channels 2 thru 99. Of course with digital TV, channel numbers go up into the hundreds. There is also a Comcast Digital guide available on Schedules Direct. I tried selecting that but after many attempts I could not get it to download that schedule either to my laptop or to the Replay box.
Does anyone know if it is possible to get channel numbers higher than 99 into the program guide in the ReplayTV box? If not, I may end up having to get a Tivo which I would prefer not to be forced to do.

[hdonzis]

I moved your topic into the WiRNS forum since it involves WiRNS...

I am aware than Comcast typically has two lineups, the channel 2 - 99 lineup, which is kind of analog channels, but uses the Comcast DTAs to tune the entire channel range to get the digital channels as well. If this is the lineup that you are interested in because you are using a Comcast DTA, then this is the lineup that you would select in Schedules Direct and use in the ReplayTV...

The second lineup is their digital lineup, which typically requires their digital cable box and not their DTAs. This offers channels 1 - thousands. If you are using their digital cable box, then this is the lineup you would select in Schedules Direct and use in the ReplayTV...

So, first you need to determine which lineup you are using, the "analog" lineup of channels 2 - 99, or the digital lineup of 1 - thousands. If you are subscribed to the digital lineup, then there isn't supposed to be any problem loading that from Schedules Direct. You might want to try first selecting that lineup on Schedules Direct and editing it down to only a couple hundred channels to see if that makes any difference on being able to download it. Once you get it into WiRNS, you should be able to see it in the WiRNS ChannelGuide and be able to upload it to your ReplayTV. If you are unable to download it into WiRNS, post your WiRNS log and debug log to help determine the problem...

Henry
_________________
Here's my Poop

[wildintrovert]

After many hours of trial and error I finally got my ReplayTV to download the Schedules Direct Comcast - Digital channel lineup from Wirns, so it is indeed possible to put a Channel Guide into a Replay that has channel numbers higher than 99. Yeaaaa!
To do this I first deleted the Comcast - Cable lineup in Schedules Direct and then added the Comcast - Digital lineup. I then clicked on the Edit tab in Schedules Direct and deselected many, many channels that I either am not receiving with my Comcast service or channels that I never watch so I ended up with about 50 channels in my guide. (I'm not sure if Replay has a limit as to how many channels it will store in its Channel Guide or not).
In my ReplayTV 5504 box, in Setup I had to change Analog Cable Box to Digital Cable Box. Yes, Replay will recognize the same box for either setting I learned. However, it did not want to bring up Wirns Comcast - Digital at first but showed a blank screen for service provide and automatically selected "Other" instead of either Analog Cable Box or Digital Cable Box. However I was then able to go back into "Change ANT/CATV" and select Digital Cable box and this time it brought up "Wirns Comcast - Digital" as my service provider. After that I was able to complete the setup and my Replay downloaded the digital cable lineup I had selected in Schedules Direct.
I later added and subtracted a couple channels in my Schedules Direct lineup but it seems that a day or at least a half day has to pass after the Schedules Direct lineup is changed before I can download the new lineup to my Replay by clicking on "Connect to ReplayTV Service Now ".
For some unknown reason I am able to download the Replay guide to my laptop on Wirns but can no longer download the Channel guide to my laptop. It will show that it is updating the guide but it won't display it on my laptop. A minor problem as I'm now able to get the proper channel guide into my Replay box.
Because I spent so much time on getting this problem worked out I'm passing this infomation along to just possibly give a little help to others.

[hdonzis]

I assumed that you already knew about the steps that you had to take. For example, in order to see the change in your Schedules Direct account, you first have to have WiRNS perform a manual guide update to get those changes into WiRNS. You then have to have the ReplayTV peform a net connect (Connect to ReplayTV Service Now) to get the new lineup choices into the ReplayTV. Then you can go into your Network and Inputs settings to change your video provider. You also could update WiRNS and then change ZIP codes on your ReplayTV to do the last two steps in one...

There are memory limits on channel information for both WiRNS and the ReplayTV. There is no clear number of channels, but really more show information. For example, if you have mainly movie channels, then there are only about 12 shows a day, so it can store more channels. The problem channels are ones that have shows every 15 minutes, which is like 96 shows a day. Anyway, the limit is on the number of total shows in the guide, not number of channels or anything else...

If you want to see changes in your ReplayTV channel guide, you have to have WiRNS download the guide first. Having the ReplayTV net connect (Connect to ReplayTV Service Now) DOESN'T cause WiRNS to download fresh data. WiRNS downloads fresh guide data once a day and that's what it will then serve to your ReplayTV all day long. The typical setup is to have WiRNS download guide data at some time and then have the ReplayTV net connect a little while after that. If you want to update things later, then you have to first perform a manual guide update and then you can perform a net connect...

Henry
_________________
Here's my Poop