Dear Tech industry, stop treating "niche" like it's a dirty word

Dear Tech Companies,

I've noticed a rather disturbing tread in the modern technology ecosystem. This new attitude of discontinuing products and support for anything that's not wildly popular with a hand wave and an explanation of "it was a niche product, used by a handful of users." It happened with Windows Media Center, it happened with damn near everything Google has ever released, including Google Reader. Yes, us weirdos doing weird things with your products may not be legion (although I often suspect the number of users are often downplayed when they announce cancellations) but we're important.

When you release some untested and untried new idea, wobbling on its baby-deer-standing-up-for-the first-time unsteady legs, who do you think are the first people to try it, embrace it, and evangelize it? We ohh filthy early adopters. We pave the way for these products to become polished and easy to use. We provide feedback and most of the time free testing. We are arguably responsible for some of the success of your biggest money-makers.

I realize everyone needs to make a profit, but please try to consider us in the whole technology ecosystem. Throw us a bone. We don't expect experiments that never took off to get months of developer hours and support love. Most of the time, we just want the products and services that we've been using for years to stay working. We'd probably pay to keep half the products around that you burned to the ground.

We may be doing strange, geeky things, but we were your biggest fans and customers first, and geeks built this industry from the ground up.

Fixing HDHomeRun ClearQAM channel tuning on Time Warner in Austin: A guide

There are quite a few compelling reasons to roll your own DVR. For one, if you've already got a Home Theatre PC, a tuner can be had for relatively cheap. For another, if you're running Windows, you've probably already got the software, and despite Microsoft working their hardest to kill it, Media Center is still a very good DVR.

Since I wasn't even going to entertain the thought of trying to setup a cable card, I picked up a SiliconDust HDHomeRun DUAL. I have lifeline cable through Time Warner, and so I thought I'd screw it into the wall, set it up and get a nice broadcast network DVR. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite so easy.

Basically, Time Warner has some really screwy channel encoding on their ClearQAM transmissions, and Media Center wasn't picking up half the channels at all, and the other half were being tuned to the wrong network. Here's how to fix it:

1. Follow the HDHomeRun setup instructions. Get it onto your network and plugged into Time Warner
2. Follow the directions on this page, under the heading software installation
3. In the HDHomeRun setup utility, uncheck invalid channels. I actually disabled everything that wasn't a broadcast network, since that was all I wanted to record. I also disabled the Spanish speaking channels. I ended up with about 11 networks enabled. 
4. Follow the directions on the HDHomeRun page under Windows Media Center - Configuration
5. You'll now notice that media center is completely messed up. Channels will be tuning to the wrong networks, and half the networks won't show up. 
6. Exit Media Center
7. Download Guide Tool, run it, and allow it to populate your channel list. I had several hundred channels that were all garbage.  Compare these to the list in the HDHomeRun setup utility. Delete every channel that isn't a legit channel.
8. Get Guide Editor from this page. WARNING: This tool has no documentation and is not at all intuitive 
9. If you look at the merged lineup tab, you'll notice your networks. Pay special attention to Source Channels. The first you'll see is a channel number and WMI. As far as I can tell, this is an internal "channel" used to sync and update guide data.
   
   The important bit is what's after. You'll see channel number followed by [2 devices] This SHOULD match the QAM tune value in your HDHomeRun setup utility, for example: Channel 7.1 should say "7.1 [WMI], 6.6[2 devices]" It will however, probably have some other value, probably another channels QAM tune value. 
10. Now, delete every channel with an incorrect value
11. Now it's time to add your channels back correctly. Click over to the Scanned/Wmis Lineups tab
12. Select "Scanned (Digital Cable (ClearQAM))" in the Select a lineup dropdown
13. At the bottom half of the utility, you'll see a section to add a channel.
    * Go back to your HDHomeRun utility and locate the first network.
    * Copy the Guide Name (KTBC-HD) in HDHR to the Callsign box in Guide Editor
    * Copy the Guide Number (7.1) in HDHR to Guide Channel# in Guide Editor
    * Make note of the Tune value in HDHR, then change the Channel # field (under Tuners to use for this channel) to match. For example, if HDHR says CH6 - 61) set the first box in Guide Editor to 6, and the second to 61
    * Verify "Create a new channel in the guide using this source channel" is checked
    * Locate the dropdown under Listing for new channel. Click it, and find the channel number associated with the network, for example: 7.1 - KTBCDT - KTBCDT (KTBC-DT)
    * Click create channel
14. Click back over to the Merged Lineup(s) tab. You should now see your channel with the correct Source channels values. For example, 7.1 will now say 6.61 [2 devices]
15. Go back into Media Center, locate the channel you added and verify its guide data is correct, and that the correct channel is tuned. 
16. Repeat steps 11 through 15 for each channel, matching them to all the channels listed in HDHR
17. Open Guide Tool again. You'll notice some or all of your Channels don't have a Subscribed Guide Service. Click each channel, locate its corresponding channel in the Guide Services pane, click on it, then right click the channel and select "Subscribe"
18. Go back to Media Center and verify all of your channels still have correct guide data and still tune to the correct channels

Honestly, this process was so tedious that if I owned an antenna, I wouldn't even have bothered and just hooked that up instead. The cable companies have worked pretty hard to make sure the only thing that can easily interface with their system is the cable box you have to rent for 10 bucks a month. Windows Media Center is no longer getting any attention from Microsoft, and there's literally NOTHING else that works with their DRM. When Microsoft finally phases it out, the cable companies will smile smugly and point it it and say "See, we told you, customers would MUCH rather pay us lots of money for sub-par boxes with tiny hard drives." They'll be so busy congratulating themselves that when streaming finally destroys them, it will come as a rather nasty shock. I cannot wait.