SiliconDust HD Homerun and Windows 7 Media Center

Every so often the cable company changes the frequency of it's channels and my Windows 7 Media Center and my HDHomerun get out of sync.

For some reason, none of the automatic methods for program assignment work for me.  I searched for it a bit and concluded it was most likely a setup issue from my cable vendor (TimeWarner).  I decided to bite-the-bullet and do it manually, but even that took some work.

My Process

1. Open HDHomeRun Setup and get a list of channels that the HDHomeRun sees.  

2. Look-up your TV signal's information on http://www.silicondust.com/support/channels/

This will tell you the type of signal (QAM64, QAM256) and helped me decode the real channel number.

3. Open Windows Media Center and go to the "Add Missing Channels" menu option.

4. Click "Add QAM Channel".  Enter the channel number.  This is the number from the "Tune" column of the  HDHomeRun Setup.  For instance, "CH18-1" would be entered as 18.1.

5. Select the proper QAM setting.  This information is available from the SiliconDust Channels website. 

6. Give the channel and name and add it.

7. Go to "Edit Channels" and click the channel you just added.

8. Go to "Edit Listings"

9. Find the proper listing for the channel.  You can type the first few characters of the channel name (i.e. KTVT) and it will take you to the matches.  Select the proper channel.

  You're done...with one channel.

10. Repeat for all the channels.  Fortunately there are only a few free unscrambled OTA channels.

I had been having trouble accessing a Dell 960w wireless all-in-one printer from my Windows 7 Professional PC, but my wife's Windows 7 laptop always worked fine.  I was troubleshooting another problem (same symptoms, but for NSLU2 network drive).  Turns out that one solution solved both problems:   http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-networking/5323-mapping-network-drive-windows-7-rc.html

Here's the content from that answer:


- Click Start
- Click Control Panel
- Click System and Maintenance
- Click Administrative Tools
- Double-Click Local Security Policy
- In the left pane, click the triangle next to Local Policy
- In the left pane, click Security Options
- In the right pane near the bottom, double-click "Network security: LAN
manager authentication level"
- Click the drop-down box, and click "Send LM & NTLM responses"
- Click OK

NSLU2 with Windows 7 Professional

I was having trouble accessing my stock NSLU2 through Windows 7 Professional, and found the following link solved the problem:  http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-networking/5323-mapping-network-drive-windows-7-rc.html

Here's the content from that answer:


- Click Start
- Click Control Panel
- Click System and Maintenance
- Click Administrative Tools
- Double-Click Local Security Policy
- In the left pane, click the triangle next to Local Policy
- In the left pane, click Security Options
- In the right pane near the bottom, double-click "Network security: LAN
manager authentication level"
- Click the drop-down box, and click "Send LM & NTLM responses"
- Click OK