# How do you activate the cable tuner in the vip222?



## brant (Jul 6, 2008)

Does anyone know how to get the cable channels in the vip222? The manual says just hook the cable up to the OTA input; i went into the HDTV setup guide and changed the tuner setting to "cable", but I can't figure out how to access them from the receiver.


----------



## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

I think you need to do a channel scan after you select cable. 

But since I haven't had cable in a really long time I can't test this myself. The 222 does not have an NTSC tuner in it.... So I really do not know for certain if this works or not.


----------



## oljim (Aug 6, 2002)

The 222 or any HD VIP will not work with cable. The 222 has a ATSC tuner for off air, cable is QAM


----------



## brant (Jul 6, 2008)

the manual and the setup inside of the vip222 say that it will tune for cable. the options I have are "cable, IRC, HRC, off-air" - I think on my tv it was set to IRC for cable tuning. I haven't tried the channel scan yet, but manual only. I wasn't getting any signal. I'll read through the manual more but I couldn't find any other mention of it except in the off-air channel section.


----------



## oljim (Aug 6, 2002)

Foget what the manual says it will only tune in OTA digital channels


----------



## brant (Jul 6, 2008)

oljim said:


> Foget what the manual says it will only tune in OTA digital channels


its looking that way.


----------



## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

If your cable company is one of the two or maybe three in the country (if any still do) that distributes cable HD via ATSC instead of QAM, it will work for you.


----------



## brant (Jul 6, 2008)

Jim5506 said:


> If your cable company is one of the two or maybe three in the country (if any still do) that distributes cable HD via ATSC instead of QAM, it will work for you.


I honestly don't know the answer to that. I know that if my TV is in antenna mode, I can still receive my cable channels but the channel numbers aren't the same as if it were in cable mode. I'm keeping my cable for FSN south & Sport South that I can't get w/ the dishHD package. I can still hook it directly to the TV, it'd just be nice if I could run it through the receiver.


----------



## Cap'n Preshoot (Jul 16, 2006)

One -potential- problem of running your CATV signals through your Dish receiver (if it were even possible) is as we have seen many times, the receiver goes into a semi-lockdown state during rain fade and won't let you do anything until the sat signal is reacquired and the receiver goes through its 5-minute ritual. That is, unless you know the secret (turn off, then on, then immediately switch to the guide)


----------



## Michael P (Oct 27, 2004)

brant said:


> the manual and the setup inside of the vip222 say that it will tune for cable. the options I have are "cable, IRC, HRC, off-air" - I think on my tv it was set to IRC for cable tuning. I haven't tried the channel scan yet, but manual only. I wasn't getting any signal. I'll read through the manual more but I couldn't find any other mention of it except in the off-air channel section.


Those settings are for the TV 2 RF outputs, not the tuner! Anyway all of those cable settings are ANALOG technology.

The OTA tuner is just that - over the air, period! In the analog days OTA signals and cable signals were the same NTSC, but now that we're digital cable uses a different standard than OTA.


----------



## Cap'n Preshoot (Jul 16, 2006)

See page 11 of the DBStalk review of the 222 here:
http://www.dbstalk.com/nippjas/ViP222_review.pdf

About 3/4 the way down the page. This should end speculation & inquiry.

.


----------



## brant (Jul 6, 2008)

Cap'n Preshoot;1676641 said:


> See page 11 of the DBStalk review of the 222 here:
> http://www.dbstalk.com/nippjas/ViP222_review.pdf
> 
> About 3/4 the way down the page. This should end speculation & inquiry.
> ...


Well actually, it doesn't. I read the document. It states that the 222 has a cable input (p.9). It says only digital and QAM channels cannot be tuned (p.11). For OTA, its ATSC only. But again, that review clearly states that it does work with cable channels. It also states that in the HDTV setup that the tuner type was for "input", not for output as michael p. suggested and is found on p. 23.

I haven't tried fooling with it anymore since my post the other day. Maybe tomorrow I will get to that. I may not need it though since it looks like RSN's are coming to dishHD in a couple of weeks.


----------



## Michael P (Oct 27, 2004)

brant said:


> Well actually, it doesn't. I read the document. It states that the 222 has a cable input (p.9). It says only digital and QAM channels cannot be tuned (p.11). For OTA, its ATSC only. But again, that review clearly states that it does work with cable channels. It also states that in the HDTV setup that the tuner type was for "input", not for output as michael p. suggested and is found on p. 23.
> 
> I haven't tried fooling with it anymore since my post the other day. Maybe tomorrow I will get to that. I may not need it though since it looks like RSN's are coming to dishHD in a couple of weeks.


The "cable" channels that the 222 (and 622) can tune to are the ANALOG modulated frequencies: "the options I have are "cable, IRC, HRC, off-air". No HD from cable since on cable you need an 8VSB tuner to receive anything digital.

I'm surprised that the OTA input would accept anything analog (since they did away with analog OTA on the 622), which is why I stated earlier that these settings refer to the TV2 RF output. On the 622 I had 2 choices for the TV2 RF output Off-Air or Cable. The only difference between the two is the "name" of the channel (i.e. off air ch 21 is the same frequency of an analog cable channel around ch 73). They give you this flexibility in order to accommodate virtually every type of NTSC tuner you may encounter as your "TV2".


----------



## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Michael P said:


> The "cable" channels that the 222 (and 622) can tune to are the ANALOG modulated frequencies: "the options I have are "cable, IRC, HRC, off-air".


You're confusing your TV2 output options with your input options. The ViP series _cannot_ handle analog channels.


----------

