Windows 7: Recording Issues Since Installing Second Tuner Card

Hi Guys,

Having some issues with my media centre and trying to rectify a solution for it, so I hope I've come to the right place....

I currently have a media centre running Windows 7 32bit and a Hauppauge 2250 dual tuner card. Everything seemed to be working fine, however, I wanted to introduce a second card. I therefore, installed a second Hauppauge 2250 dual tuner card (identical card) and ever since then I have had issues.

First of all, windows 7 detected and installed the original (first) card without an issue. No driver required, however, when installing the second card windows complained that it could not find a driver. I had to install the driver from the Hauppage website to get both cards working together. I ran through Media Centre TV setup and it detected all 4 tuners correctly.

I then ran a scan for channels and it detected 0 channels found. I removed the antena cable and plugged it into the other card. It then found all channels without any issues, but live TV gave me 'No TV Signal' errors. I then had to remove the cable again and plug it into the original card to be able to watch live TV.

Okay, so my problem is that every single time a recording is about to start, Media Centre pops up an error down the bottom saying "There was no TV signal on channel (number), so (program name) could not be recorded. Reschedule the recording after verifying the TV signal is working for that channel", however, all scheduled programs actually record fine. If I then go from Recorded TV back to Live TV it gives me 'No TV Signal' errors. I then have to exit out and go back in to be able to get Live TV working.

All of this only started happening since installing a second card and 4 tuners. I have since gone in to Media Centre settings and temporarily disabled two of the tuners (1 & 2) and the Media Centre hasn't faulted since.

Is anyone able to provide any info on this as I'm unable to find any helpful information thus far.

Thanks in advance,

Rips

Guys.....can anyone provide any help on this? I am unable to utilise my second Tuner card until this is solved.


Rips

Look I do not think I will be able to completely answer you, but it sounds like the cards are clashing somehow. I am having similar troubles with a PCIe Audio card and a network card. I do have 2 dual channel TV tuners, but one is Hauppauge and the other a different make. I rarely get the weak signal error, and I do have signal problems, so I expect that. However I too have seen the weak signal can't record thing and then the live channel is fine.

Try:
- plainly mark which is the new card and which is the old one.
- Checking in the Device Manager in Control Panel, to see if there are any problems flagged
- Installing only the _new_ card, after uninstalling them in Device Manager and removing both of them. See if Win complains that it can't find a driver. This also checks for card faults, maybe.
- reinstalling the old card as well and see what happens.
- swapping installation slots, or if you can, do not place the cards in adjacent slots

Also try asking at a more specialised forum, maybe, more specific to Hauppauge.

I am interested in your story because I have an HVR-2250 arriving this week (presumably), although it's an RMA replacement for the previous one which seemed DOA... somehow it prevented my machine from physically booting (i.e. no BIOS beep, and nothing out to the monitors... just a completely brain-dead machine) when the 2250 was inserted into the PCIe slot. Remove the 2250, machine boots perfectly. Insert the 2250, machine is brain-dead.

Anyway, thinking it to be defective I've RMA'd it and the replacement will arrive soon.

But your second 2250... did you insert it into a second PCIe x1 slot, or did you use one of your PCIe x16 slots for the second card? I will assume you put the first 2250 into an available PCIe x1 slot, but you might not have had a second one open for the second card, or maybe you did.

Also, from your description it almost sounds like you connected your OTA antenna only to one of the two tuner cards, rather than connecting your antenna to BOTH of the tuner cards (using a splitter) as would seem obvious. You do have antenna connections to both cards (via splitter), do you not?


Anyway, your story is interesting to me. No idea what to suggest to you, but I'm very interested especially in light of my own particular seeming machine incompatibility with my first 2250. I'm getting the ATSC dual-tuner HVR-2250 to replace my two ATI TV Wonder 650 ATSC single-tuner cards, one being PCI and the other being PCIe. I have used the 650 PCI card for years (under both BeyondTV originally and then now under WMC), although the 650 PCIe card is just a recent acquisition which I thought had dual ATSC tuners but it does not. For now, however both 650 cards single ATSC tuners are seen and managed by WMC without problem, both sharing the common ATI driver for the 650 family. I also have a 4-tuner cablecard-enabled Ceton card in the same machine, also managed by WMC without problem using the Ceton driver for the card.

Actually, I'm skeptical that the first card was actually defective/DOA. In my mind, there's a real possibility there is some true hardware incompatibility with my machine. I've never seen that "brain-dead BIOS" non-boot symptom ever before, and I've worked with lots of hardware and machines over the years.

As far as the driver for the 2250, I would always opt to retrieve the latest one available from the Hauppauge site and install it along with the hardware installation of the card (i.e. with your first card). I know that's what I'm going to do this week if the second RMA card actually does work in my machine. In this case I would prefer to go with the manufacturer's version of a driver rather than a Windows Update obtained version, if possible.