No tv signal found

Hi guys Im hoping you can help.
I bought a second hand elonex artisan off ebay. I installed Windows 7 RC. I have downloaded drivers and got everything working except my Hauppauge 150 mce tv capture card which is connected to my eurovox cable box through both component wires and an old aerial in cable.

It works fine in Wintv, Hauppauge's own software in which I am able to play and record tv without a problem. But when I try to set the tv signal up through Media Centre it comes up empty. I have tried manually configuring and scanning again under svideo etc at the end of the search process but have had no joy.

I did notice when I tried media portal (live tv didnt work in that either) that it identified my card as a Hauppage 1100 - but I definetly downloaded the drivers for the 150 mce as they were identified on the Hauppauge website.

I am beginning to suspect though that Media Centre does not live my Eurovox receiver. Any ideas?

Cheers

johngalt said:

Some details would be nice.

I have a Hauppauge 1800 PVR and it works perfectly well with W7 using native drivers (which it updated via Windows Update) for live TV (analog cable).

Ok mate thanks for the reply, what details do you need? I'm running an elonex artisan with a 3hz celeron processor with 512mb of ram onboard and a Radeon s300 graphics card. I am installed on the 32 bit release candidate of Windows 7.

I made a mistake indentifying the card - it WAS a Hauppage 1100 hybrid which was connected to my Eurovox cable box so I had the wrong drivers installed. However- I done a clean install of windows and installed the proper drivers - but it didnt help. Im still gettting no analogue signal from my box to Windows Media centre.

I did have another card in a box in the garage - the Hauppage 150 pvr (thats how I made the mistake they are very similar looking) - so I thought I would install that and see if it worked as it is a dedicated pvr rather than a hybrid. However, this card would not install at all. In device manager it was there but I was getting a message that the card could not be started (code 10).

I reinstalled the Hauppauge 1100 but once again I couldnt get Media Centre to pick up the analogue signal which is coming from two sources from the Eurovox - the rf aerial output and component cables. I enter my postcode, it downloads the area info but finds no channels. I assume this is because it is searching for freeview digital channels and not the analogue signal. I then tried searching manually on aerial/component 1 and 2 but again it finds nothing.

I dont know what Im doing wrong or if the problem lies with the card (s). This is getting to me. I have a feeling the 150 would work better if only I could get the thing installed.

The Hauppauge recording service is locking your TV card.

Uninstall of all the hauppauge software.

After that, get the hardware cleaner from Hauppauge website to clean out all the mess.

Uninstall the card from device manager.

Now shut down the computer, take out the card and restart.

After login into windows.

Shutdown the PC again.

Now insert the card back into the system and start the computer.

The card will either be autodetected or windows update might find the drivers.

If not, get them from Hauppauge.

Only drivers!! not the tv app.

good luck

edit. PVR 150 is 100% sure auto identified by win7 and it will get the drivers from windows update.

I know, I have two of them in my HTPC.

Thank you very much for your reply Squonksc but I dont think that will work with the card. The Hauppauge 1100 hybrid doesnt have onboard signal encoding and requires MCE Soft encoder which is part of the Hauppauge install pack. The only alternative would be to download the drivers and attempt to download and install MC soft encoder on its own. I'll give that a try if possible?

In terms of the Hauppauge 150 - it wont install at all. I am getting an error message that the device cannot be started (Code 10). The Hauppage website mentions this error and suggests moving the card to a different pci slot. This isnt an option though because I only have one slot where the card can go.

Cheers for your help.

murphio said:

Thank you very much for your reply Squonksc but I dont think that will work with the card. The Hauppauge 1100 hybrid doesnt have onboard signal encoding and requires MCE Soft encoder which is part of the Hauppauge install pack. The only alternative would be to download the drivers and attempt to download and install MC soft encoder on its own. I'll give that a try if possible?

In terms of the Hauppauge 150 - it wont install at all. I am getting an error message that the device cannot be started (Code 10). The Hauppage website mentions this error and suggests moving the card to a different pci slot. This isnt an option though because I only have one slot where the card can go.

Cheers for your help.

I was referring to the PVR 150. Try what I wrote in that exact order and I guarantee you it will work.

Squonksc
Thanks for your advice mate - I done a clean install, rebooted, put the card in and updated the drivers from Windows Update and the 150 installed fine. I discovered that the scart cable I was using was from an old video sender and could be used only to receive signal and not send - this also helped.
I did come across another problem which I think needs a new thread. Grateful for any advice.
Setting up remote problem

Are you running 32 or 64-bit? This may be late if you fixed everything but I post this for the benefit of anyone searching the problem and experiencing similar trouble I had.

I have another MCE box that was 64-bit and I had nothing but trouble running my Hauppauge PVR-500 which is the same as either two 150's or 250's, I can't remember. Basically it would sometimes work great then other times only one tuner would work fine while the second would experience a system conflict and make live TV choppy (it would stutter every so often.) It would happen when I had a recording while watching a different channel or switched to that tuner (a manual process.) Other times I would not be able to watch TV at all and MCE would toss up a message saying that no TV signal was available or the signal was weak. Sometimes a reboot would help and other times is made no differene. I also have Vista Ultimate 64-bit installed and it exhibited the same behavior, worse even!

I used both the Windows provided and Hauppauge provided drivers as well as avoided certain Windows patches that made things worse. I eventually got it to the one tuner working but couldn't record at the same time. This still annoyed me. And forget about my getting the Firefly remote working (although I have a media keyboard so I can live without that.)

I finally broke down and installed Windows 7 32-bit and allowed Windows drivers/patches to do their thing. Since then I have zero issues using the PVR-500 while recording on one or two tuners as well as switching back and forth. Reboots are fine, no difference, works like a champ. I lost a little of my 4 GB of RAM but that's pretty much it, not like I was getting a boost watching TV using 64-bit anyway!