Help: Vista Media Center does not recognize the OTA ATSC tuner

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viperman999

New member
Hello,

I've been at this for weeks and haven't really found a solution for it. I think I might be alone on this issue.

Here's my system configuration:
cpu: Intel E6300
mobo: Asus P5B
ram; Corsair 2gb DDR2
tuner: ATI TV wonder 650 pci (bba - hybrid tuner)
graphics: HD3870
audio: Audigy ZS2
OS: Vista Home Premium / Ultimate x64
antenna: Terk HDTVi

I have only the ATSC antenna connected to the DTV input of the card. I ran MC setup but no signal is detected. It suppose to detect the antenna ATSC digital tuner but it doesn't:confused: . The analog (NTSC) input works and gets detected when I plug a live cable to analog input.

Things I have tried and still not ATSC antenna detection:
a) various 650 drivers

b) powercinema 5 (for input source I have analog antenna, analog cable,

composite and s-video)

d) tried catalyst media center version 1.0 for Vista

e) updated to different mobo bios

f) tried various video graphics drivers

g) tried the MS kb929011 for DTV not being recognized - but when installing it, it says update does not apply

h) tried another TV Wonder 650 PCI

i) tried Vista home premium 32bit and Vista ultimate x64bit

The funny thing is it works fine under Windows XP. I can use any program such as Powercinema and it detects the (antenna) digital tuner. I get 10 HD channels in my area. I'm buffled and greatly need any help. I can provide any other additional information. Thanks.
 
Disable any drive emulators you have such as Daemon and Alcohol. If its anything like DVD maker, it may scan only the first drive; see its not a burner and not check your others.
 
Based on experience with the PCI version of the card, you need to substitute the 2 XP driver files in Vista if you want anything but Vista's MC & possibly the new CMC (distributed with new cards) to see the digital signal. It should still work with Vista MC -- have no idea what will happen with CMC or Pwr Cinima. At any rate, if you wanted to try swapping the driver files, you should be able to verify if the basic hardware functions are there or not using something like the easily installed (& un-installed if you didn't like it) GB-PVR.

If I remember correctly MS had an update for the 650, that totally messed everything up -- you can check update history to see if it was installed -- almost all updates can be un-installed by going to the Windows sub-folder with the same name as the fix and double clicking the uninstall program. Also, Vista's MC was pretty flaky when it came to detecting signal strength for the digital tuner -- quite often nothing at all was detected, other times it showed a good signal, but either way it always worked. go figure. At any rate, always manually install rather than use the auto routine IMHO.

More guessing: For HD &/or DVB from the 650 in Vista you need to have suitable decoders -- you can set the defaults for Vista & MC using a utility over at the Green Button. Apps (& their DS filters) that play perfectly nicely together in XP can have a grudge match in Vista -- I have problems between Cinemaster audio & Cyberlink -- using Cyberlink Video decoders as default, Cinemaster audio will cause no DVB/HD playback & can even crash the playing app. Since for DVB (whether QAM or OTA) you're not capturing/digitizing anything, but simply decoding the stream for display, I could see a decoder problem screwing up the whole process. Easiest way I found for detecting a problem -> record DVB/HD in XP & try playing it with wmplayer in Vista.

Last thing I can think of at the moment, check device mgr to see just what driver files/versions are in use for the 650. While I haven't had problems since Vista came out of beta, it used to be able to hold onto old driver versions, and could insist on using them; it's similar to problems you could get in XP from old INF files left in the windows\inf folders. If Vista is using MS drivers for the 650 instead of newer ATI versions (compare to expanded ATI install files), you might have to find the older versions on hdd and delete.
 
Thanks for replying. I got a chance to try some of the suggestions you have provided.

Device manager shows a driver date of 11/26/2007 version 6.14.xxx.265. I using the latest theater driver 8.4. I don't thinks much has changed since 7.12.

I tried playing the recorded ota HD file on Vista using WMP in Vista and it runs fine.

I had a chance to get the digital antenna is Vista media center by choosing USA instead of Canada. But I still can't get it to detect the BDA. This is same for any other PVR software I use.

Under Vista x64bit, the best decoder is installed and provided by MS. You can't change the decoder and the utility only works with 32bit.

Which XP driver files should I substitute to Vista? Can you give a list?

Thanks
 
The two driver files are atinavrr.SYS in the system32\drivers folder, & atinpprr.ax in the system32 folder of windows. I have in the past (not with recent CCC for my 2600 pro) been able to swap them out in Vista after disabling the 650 in Device Mgr. Now I just boot into XP to swap, though I'd guess if you can't dual boot maybe safe mode or Sys Internals PendMoves (at Microsoft.com), or just renaming files in repair console etc.

Using GB-PVR: it seems a pretty cool app -- just no CC when I tried it -- is easy to install, doesn't do a lot to your system, and was only a pain setting up the guide stuff - I used the Yahoo info app in Vista, though the gbpvr site gives instructions on several alternatives. What I really liked is when you set up your tuner you get detailed, plain text logs, showing where things broke down if unsuccessful. I don't know how much help it'll be, but it is one fairly simple way of finding the tuner works, or doesn't, and hopefully points to why. With the latest .NET versions I was also able to use EVR with it.

Sorry about the mis-cue on the utility to change decoders. If you can play dvb/hd in wmplayer, "for me" that's always meant no problems elsewhere with decoders, so hopefully that's one less thing to consider.
 
Still no luck. I'm starting to give up on this. I starting to think I may be the only with this issue. Could it be perhaps the motherboard/chipset (Intel P965) that won't allow the card to work properly under Vista?

If I disable the unified driver (latest version) in the device manager, the system would bluescreen with reference to atinavrr.SYS. I manager to replace the xp files to vista in safemode but after loading vista, there's a code 48 in device manager for the unified driver. I had to remove the theater driver thru programs & features and reinstall the driver. Upon reinstalling the driver it bluescreens with the ati reference.

I will try GB-PVR but not entirely confident it will work since Pcinema and CMC doesn't even detect/see the digital tuner. Booting to XP makes me seem to forget the issue in Vista.
 
The TV Wonder 650 PCI Hybrid card is by default restricted to either analog or digital mode in Vista Media Center setup. If the analog tuner is already setup in Vista Media Center then that would explain why you couldn’t configure the digital tuner. To configure the digital tuner you would simply re-run Vista Media Center setup and be sure to deselect any analog tuner component of the TV Wonder 650 PCIe Hybrid card.

This may not be your problem though.

The use of additional TV software programs in Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate Edition might benefit from disabling some of the “ehxxxx” services run by Vista Media Center.

The Vista Kram HDTV Hybrid Tuner Install Routine posted by “enter” may help but it doesn’t overcome the hardware limitations of the TV Wonder 650 PCI hybrid non-concurrent design. So if you use both analog and digital components of the TV Wonder 650 PCI Hybrid simultaneously you will in all likelihood end up with corrupt or miss recordings.
 
As best I could track down, in Vista GB-PVR uses the same sort of BDA setup as XP, & the latest Vista drivers for the 650 were not compatible. Playing around in Graphedt Vista has another BDA Network Provider (signal source) that is not available in XP, & that's the only source the Vista 650 BDA tuner would connect to. If the XP driver files won't work -- maybe because 64 bit? -- It may not be worth the trouble even thinking about GB-PVR...

Simple enough to check though if you wanted & didn't mind playing around in Graphedt: I get 5 BDA Network Providers listed in Vista, and the only one that will connect to the ATI BDA Digital Tuner (under BDA Source Filters) is the Microsoft Network Provider. In XP it connects to any of the first 4, ATSC & DVB C/S/T, which is what most every app I tried expected. MC apparently doesn't connect the card the same way, & didn't mind whether I used XP or Vista drivers.

Otherwise Agustus is very right when he suggests turning off all the MC (eh___) services when trying other software with the 650. Might need to keep an eye on Task Mgr as one has a way of re-starting. The link enter posted is the way I got both tuners working in MC, but having the analog tuner set up had no effect on setting up the digital -- it just swapped out the digital for the analog so I could never show both and run the channels from the digital up into the analog range. [to go digital I just went to 2 (analog) and went down from there -- but that was after the stuff at the site enter posted]

It couldn't have anything to do with something weird going on in Vista 64 with USB could it? My old m/board USB drivers would NOT work with the 650 drivers after 1/07 in XP Pro SP2. Prior to that ATI didn't as fully implement what I'll always consider a hack to add USB for their dongles without writing drivers. :nuts:
 
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