Black Screen in Live TV

[Ewen]

Hi

I have an interesting problem where MCE can Find all of the stations in melbourne but will only show live tv for channel 7...which is a problem because i dislike that channel.. and for any other station it shows a black screen. The controls still work and it displays a time status bar that moves but no image or sound comes??? it can also get the guide information for all of them without using the internet.

I'm running Windows 7 on my 17 920 with a ATI HD4650 Graphics card and i'm using a Pinnacle 2001E Dual DVB-T Usb Stick.

Has anyone got some ideas to fix this? or another program i can test the drivers with?

Cheers

 

[smarteyeball]

Normally the two main causes for no image or sound are either poor signal strength or bad codecs. Since you are able to still see 7, I'd say it's signal strength.

 

[Jonmor68]

If you have a program like Ulead Movie Maker or Cyberlink Power Director, they have an option to record tv.
So if you install one select country on instalation, then run a channel scan for Australia, Victoria, Melbourne you can then try changing channels to verify it's working properly.
My Compro E800F works perfectly on Win 7 without even having to install the Compro software, which is crap anyway. I get Adelaide ch. 2,3,7,9,10 in both sd & hd plus all the secondry channels and digital radio channels.

 

[Ewen]

cheers

hmm thanks smarteyeball, it could be bad signal as i tried using my laptop with the supplied pinnacle software and the reception is pretty average... but its interesting considering my set top box rarely has an issue giving me crystal clear reception though...

 

[smarteyeball]

the Compro software, which is crap anyway.

Even that's a generous description for DTV

hmm thanks smarteyeball, it could be bad signal as i tried using my laptop with the supplied pinnacle software and the reception is pretty average... but its interesting considering my set top box rarely has an issue giving me crystal clear reception though...

I can only put it down to the software because like yourself, through a STB or straight into the TV, the reception is perfect and in my case, so is VMC and 7MC. However some free Windows based players and some Linux based ones have a lot of issues piucking up all the channels.

Another slim possibility is that when you initially ran the tv set up and input your postcode, it may have downloaded the incorrect signal frequencies for your location. it's doubtful that this is the issue, but it could be worth re-running the set up and inputting a more generic (city) postcode.