I recently purchased a Hauppauge 2250 tuner card that supports both Analog and Digitial TV. There are certain channels that I believe are broadcast in 1080 instead of something else, and I am having trouble displaying these stations. Other digital OTA stations work fine.

When I select a 1080 station, the screen shows the restart button. Clicking restart will appear to attempt to play live TV but it doesn't. I then have to go to an analog station and then back to a known good digital (non-1080) station to be able to view a digital station.

WinTV that came with the card shows that these 1080 stations have good signal quality and play fine in WinTV, but they do not work in MCE2005.

I have update pack 1 that will allow for live ota digital tv, and service pack 3 installed.

Is there a problem with MCE, the video output through S-Video, display resolution, NVIDIA drivers, or the decoder that I am using?

Thank you in advance!

Setup:

NVIDIA 7200 PCIx16

Hauppauge 2250 tuner card

Decoder: Unknown

1GB Ram

S-Video connected to TV

Area code: 62471

The only digital TV that MCE2005 supports is OTA. Any other channels, you'll have to use the analog out ports on the cable box to your tv tuner's input. You can't get 1080 over analog.
If you're saying some of those OTA channels won't show up, even though it shows good signal, check out this blog. Those channels in the guide might be set up incorrectly, which it's like that on most MCE boxes.

Let me know if I'm understanding correctly.

It is a tuner card that is only connected to an antenna, but it will do both digital and analog OTA signal. I saw that blog after I left my post, but since this is my parents computer, I will not be able to try that out for a while, but when I do I will let you know.

I have a feeling that will fix it. It's pretty simple and non-evasive. They'll never know :D.

Downlaod and install the XP Decoder Utility to verify which decoders are installed and which of those is currently active in Media Center.  Not all decoders support HDTV.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=DE1491AC-0AB6-4990-943D-627E6ADE9FCB&displaylang=en

Do not use that utility under Vista.  There is a different "Vista Decoder utility" which can be googled.

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1: Dimension 9200 - Vista Ult, 2.4GHz Q6600 Core2Quad, 4GB RAM, 160GB, 750GB, 500GB USB, Nvidia 8300GS, PVR-150, HDTV Wonder, Vbox 3560, X360, DMA2100

2: HP m376n - MCE 2005, 2.6 P4 w/HT, 1GB RAM, 250GB, 400GB USB HD, Nvidia 6200, Emuzed MAUI, X360

I still have not had time to actually look at my parents computer yet. Thanks guys for all of the good advice. If it is a decoder issue, which decoders work for HD, and which ones do not?

They already have the decoder checking tool installed, I might be able to talk them through it on the phone, even though I would rather hit myself in the head with a hammer than troubleshoot a computer on the phone.

I think it has to be a guide issue with the channel numbers not set right. You'll have to do some work and check out that link in the blog from my first post. If it can do other OTA, digital channels, then everything is set up and working properly.

Is there even such a thing as 1080p OTA channels? And you mention svideo. I don't think you can get HD anything over svideo. The video will be downgraded automatically.

I finally got to look at my parents computer. The stations were set up on the correct channels.

The issue was that the decoder was not good enough. I was using an older version of powerDVD I think. I downloaded and installed the trial version of nvidia pure video decoder and the channels that I was previously having problems with are now displaying.

There were a couple secondary channels that I had to manually enter in into media center i.e. 5.2 and 8.2 and 8.3. These channels do not have any guide data. Is there a way that I can enter in the guide data without too much effort, or am I SOL? I guess I can play around with changing the zip code around.

I believe that not all digital OTA channels are broadcast in 1080. I think the decoder that I was using could not handle the extra data. I still get stutters after changing the channel, but clicking the stop button, and then start again will resolve the stutters.

Thanks for all of your help!

Getting the guide data for the missing channels can be tricky.  In my case, I had to tell MC that I am connected to the Cable TV company's digital package.  Then I was able to map the sub-channels to the appropriate channels in the cable company's lineup.

Then I had to remove the channels that I do not subscribe to.  In my case that was a LOT of channels.  but it got me the guid data that I needed.  I think this has changed in Vista and is now easier, but I do not remember settign that up.

 

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1: Dimension 9200 - Vista Ult, 2.4GHz Q6600 Core2Quad, 4GB RAM, 160GB, 750GB, 500GB USB, Nvidia 8300GS, PVR-150, HDTV Wonder, Vbox 3560, X360, DMA2100

2: HP m376n - MCE 2005, 2.6 P4 w/HT, 1GB RAM, 250GB, 400GB USB HD, Nvidia 6200, Emuzed MAUI, X360