I seem to be having this problem downunder (Australia) as well. Will send my logs to Jess soon. Would be good if Microsoft could make the whole world a better place!

Hi,

I have the same problem with my Black Gold dual dvb-t pci-e tuner from http://www.gta-ltd.co.uk/. All channels of mux 2 give no signal found in Vista MCE, whereas on the same pc in XP MCE (I have a dual boot setup) they are all fine. I'm on the Durris transmitter. I shall email Jess privately, but wanted to post this to this forum to say Black Gold is having the same problem.

cheers

Remco

Crystal palace seems to be at the root of my problem as well, can see the tower from the back garden *sigh*

 

I've PM'd Jess but basicalyy the same problems as everyone else, works great in Totalmedia but in VMC I get the same issues as others.

LazyG:

Crystal palace seems to be at the root of my problem as well, can see the tower from the back garden *sigh*

I feel your pain, I'm in Catford so close enough for my toaster to pick up a signal (as long as I don't plug the toaster into Media Center <bg>).

knows, it's not limited to London, I'm in Leeds on the Emley Moor transmitter with the same problems

For the record, I have the same problem. Freecom DVB-T USB stick trying to tune in from Crystal Palace. Luckily, this is my second tuner and my other is the Hauppauge that actually does work, so I can at least still watch and record TV. Just not two at once :(  I'll PM my info to Jess when I get a chance.

AndyStubbs:

mmace - the Hauppauge Nova-T 500 dual tuner card works pretty well, its a PCI card though and not PCI-E if that's any use to you.

Are there any cheaper ones that work?
I'm looking to buy one today if anyone can recommend?
£70+ is a bit steep, you can buy set top PVR ones for £80 these days
don't need a dual tuner, PCI or USB will do

mmace:

AndyStubbs:

mmace - the Hauppauge Nova-T 500 dual tuner card works pretty well, its a PCI card though and not PCI-E if that's any use to you.

Are there any cheaper ones that work?
I'm looking to buy one today if anyone can recommend?
£70+ is a bit steep, you can buy set top PVR ones for £80 these days
don't need a dual tuner, PCI or USB will do

The standard Nova-T pci card also works pretty well (it's the single tuner version), you should be able to pick one of those up around the £30 mark.

I'm in Melbourne, Australia, and I can't pick up some channels from the Mount Dandenong towers using Vista Media Center. I'm using a Compro E700. I can pick up all channels fine using the supplied software, and Vista Media Center detects all of the channels, but can't display channel Nine or any of the SBS channels (SBS, SBS HD, SBS2 and SBS News). After having a professional antenna serviceman came, we decided it was a software or hardware issue, because we're really close to the towers, and the signal is quite strong. A quick search on the Internet led me to this site. It's great to finally know what is causing the problem.

I really need to access all channels using Windows Media Center. It's much less clunky than the Compro software, and the Xbox 360 Extender can only access TV through Windows Media Center.

Randall

Unfortunately, for the time being it looks like your best bet is using a tuner that is known to work; you can get recommendations here from other users. We understand the problem but currently have nothing to share about a Media Center solution. We've found that the tuners that exhibit this issue aren't tuners we recommend for use with Media Center; I know that's a really confusing thing, that a tuner could work with Vista but not MCE, and I don't have anything nice or politically correct to say about that subject so I think I'll shut up now.

Guys,

I have an hp Pavilion dv6000 series laptop containing the HP Digital Tuner EC300 and experienced exactly the same problem.  (I purchased it in November 2006 with xp mce on it and then upgraded to vista using their express upgrade kit, whereupon the card would tune into the stations but display a 'no signal' error).

The tuner card appears to be sourced from a company called Yuan who presumably make a number of other cards.  HP's drivers for the TV tuner card on their website (either version 17 or 18)* now fix this problem, so I assume it has been (or shortly will be) sorted out on all the cards Yuan make.

As a result I am surprised if no manufacturer has reported this issue to the MCE developers - it seems weird that some (if not all) of the manufacturers have found it easier to find a driver workaround [although maybe this is from experience, if what jess has said about timescales to get things on windows update?]

Anyway this is probably not very welcome news for anyone with a Freecom tuner if the manufacturer still hasn't updated the drivers ;-( .  I guess the reason manufacturers and/or microsoft are only getting patchy feedback on this issue is that it is also dependent on where you live because it only occurs where there is a frequency offset.  Most of the reports seem to be coming from the UK (although I've seen one from Australia).  Like many of the posters I receive signals from the Crystal Palace transmitter, as does much of London, which it goes without saying is a big market in the UK.  So it was a big problem for me.  Some parts of the UK may not have problems, or it only affects channels they don't want to watch.

Good luck to anyone with Freecom or any other ones that are still not fixed, I'm just glad I was one of the lucky ones.

* Beware:  HP's instructions included in the softpaq file ("spxxxxx.exe") you have to download are not particularly clear.  Although you run the exe file and it asks to install in a particular location (usually \Program Files) this *hasn't* actually installed the drivers!  If you have first removed your existing drivers using device manager (probably a wise step anyway) this can readily be confirmed.

To install the new drivers you actually have to go into the folder you installed the softpaq to and run the separate .exe file contained in that folder.  This is a program actually written by Yuan and it installs the device driver files in the correct location.  (You may need to rescan TV stations afterwards, although I didn't).  I've emailed HP to point out their instructions could be clearer.

JessZahn:

Unfortunately, for the time being it looks like your best bet is using a tuner that is known to work; you can get recommendations here from other users. We understand the problem but currently have nothing to share about a Media Center solution. We've found that the tuners that exhibit this issue aren't tuners we recommend for use with Media Center; I know that's a really confusing thing, that a tuner could work with Vista but not MCE, and I don't have anything nice or politically correct to say about that subject so I think I'll shut up now.

Jess,

That leaves us with a situation where we could buy tv cards that are certified for windows Vista (such as the Compro E700 card) that will not actually work correctly if at all within Vista MC. This really won't do much to inspire consumer confidence!

Hi everyone. I am Chris Matichuk, the PM for PCTV Tuner Devices. Just to let you know that I have been watching this thread, and have taken the comments to heart.

What We've done: We've verified that this issue appears to be localized to certain tuners, and even certain drivers. As you can see from several examples in this thread, the issue goes away with an updated driver from the IHV. Further, some of the highest volume PCI tuners do not have this issue, and this is likely why *no* PC OEM has reported it, and why it hasn't been on our radar.

But it does point to an issue in the driver implementation. Something that would have been great to catch in the WLP tests for a TV Tuner (self certification tests for the Windows Vista logo). Unfortunately, it wasn't included. And, I'm not really sure how we could incorporate this as it depends on having certain headend equipment setup in a certain way to simulate the issue. As a note, we haven't been able to simulate the scenario in our Redmond office using our headend equipment and the tuners mentined in this thread as having an issue.

I will notify a broad set of semiconductor partners and IHVs about the issue. This will help.

What will also help is if you contact the IHV directly and log your complaint.

Thanks for your assistance on this. Your passion is appreciated. If you have additional feedback, Jessica knows where to find me.

And thank you Jessica for the outstanding job supporting this forum.

-Chris

Chris,

Thanks for your input on this subject. I suspect that the reason that you are unable to simulate the scenario in your Redmond office is due to a lack of dvb-t transmitters in the area using frequency offsets.

With regard to the major IHV's with the highest volume PCI tuners not having the issue I would like to outline that they did in fact originally have the issue. Hauppauge had this issue with their range of dvb-t tuner cards at Vista launch and it took several months before updated drivers were released to workaround the problem - a problem that I initially raised as a bug during the Vista beta test program towards the later part of last year. Interestingly the bug only appeared during the RC stage and the problem was not present prior to that particular release.

In order to finally resolve this issue may I suggest that yourself or one of your team contact Hauppauge or one of the other major IHV's that have working drivers and ask them what they needed to change in order to deal with the frequency offsets that VMC has problems with. Perhaps given this information form the IHV's the root cause and ultimately a solution may be reached that everybody is happy with.

Currently we are going in circles and to be honest it is becoming a frustrating situation. We have already identified that the problem affects MUX's that transmit on offset frequencies and that the drivers supplied by IHV's work correctly within Vista using pretty much any DVB-T software. It only appears to be VMC that encounters a problem locking on to broadcasts from these MUX's. Given that the IHV supplied BDA drivers do in fact work with other applications running on windows Vista I don't think it is particularly reasonble to expect the consumers to have to take responsibilty for chasing the IHV's for a solution. To my mind the problem is not with the IHV's drivers but with VMC's live TV application - it fails to lock on to signals that the tuning application has identified during a scan - again other TV applications have no problem with these signals indicating that the fault is not with the BDA drivers.

Chris, thanks for the post but with all due respect I fail to see how you don't have enough information to simulate the scenario.  There are many of us on this forum and others that have conclusively proven the exact issue - there is nothing complicated about it, an offset DVB-T transmission is all that's required to precisely reproduce the issue.

Likewise, you claim that one of the high volume tuners don't have this issue.  So far the only tuner that appears to work is the Hauppage range.  Every other manufacturer appears to have this issue.

And as to Jessica's comment of 'the tuners that exhibit this issue aren't tuners we recommend for use with Media Cente' that's not a very good comment on the state of VMC.  How exactly are we meant to know at purchase which tuners you'd 'recommend' for use with VMC?  I bought a tuner with a little logo that says 'works with windows vista' on it, and is shown as being compatible with vista media centre, why is that not enough?  Someone somewhere is treading on very thin ice from a trading standards point of view.