MediaPortal setup with two seperate tuners DVBT and Analogue??

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mojo90

12 posts

Geek

#25297 18-Aug-2008 09:51

Hi I am running both of the following cards and trying to set up using MediaPortal:

Hauppauge WinTV Nova T 500

WinTV-PVR-500MCE

Problem is they both work fine is tuned by themselves but when I setup the Nova T 500 the picture quality on the Analogue card (500MCE) deteriorates badly.

I only have 2 x PCI slots on my MB could this be the issue or interference?

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

Joe

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#157745 18-Aug-2008 15:30

How are you splitting your incoming signal from the aerial? When you say the cards are okay when installed indivually, is that with the splitter installed as well?
The reason I ask is DVB-T can be quite tolerant of signal strength whereas analogue may not like the weaker signal with a splitter in the chain.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

kiwijunglist

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#157751 18-Aug-2008 15:53

you might also be getting electronic interference. when you put 2x tuner cards in one of them maybe closer to the gfx card and you maybe getting EF interference. someone on the forum had a similar problem. the solution was a few layers of tinfoil inside a plastic ziplock bag sitting btwn the tuner and the gfx chip.

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

mojo90

12 posts

Geek

#157768 18-Aug-2008 16:20

Thanks for your help,

The cards are both installed and work well but when I tune both in MediaPortal the analogue card losses quality..

The splitter is installed from the start..

Very strange.

Thanks,
joe

mojo90

12 posts

Geek

#157773 18-Aug-2008 16:28

kiwijunglist: you might also be getting electronic interference. when you put 2x tuner cards in one of them maybe closer to the gfx card and you maybe getting EF interference. someone on the forum had a similar problem. the solution was a few layers of tinfoil inside a plastic ziplock bag sitting btwn the tuner and the gfx chip.

Thanks,

Might be a go - Both cards are right next to each other and I only have the two slots and the newer card is very close to gfx..

Will give this a nudge tonight (fingers crossed).

Appreciate your answers!
Joe

Dingbatt

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#157785 18-Aug-2008 17:39

kiwijunglist: you might also be getting electronic interference. when you put 2x tuner cards in one of them maybe closer to the gfx card and you maybe getting EF interference. someone on the forum had a similar problem. the solution was a few layers of tinfoil inside a plastic ziplock bag sitting btwn the tuner and the gfx chip.

Yes I started the original GZ thread on the interference. The tinfoil was actually inside a plastic CD sleeve (to be as thin as possible) and great care was taken to avoid the shield touching either component where possible and still let cooling air get to the cards.

Does the problem with reception stay with the tuner card or the PCI slot if you change them round?

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

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#157803 18-Aug-2008 19:53

an anti static bag may also be a good solution to cover the foil (if this is the problem)

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

mojo90

12 posts

Geek

#159330 24-Aug-2008 14:59

Firstly Thanks all for your responses.

After many hours of playing with the following:

MediaPortal (Awesome but tends to crash and not easy to set up unless you have a good guide)
Power Cinema - easy to setup and use but very limited in capability
Vista MCE - Stable easy to setup but not DVB-T support
Vista MCE with release version of TV pack - additional tuner support great (as I have 2x dual tuner cards) still no go with DVB-T and getting guide sorted was a no go..

Conclusion - Managed to get all tuners working but not under an individual piece of software - not sure what was disrupting the analouge signal but seems to have sorted itself..

Sticking with Windows Media Centre removed DVB-T card and gonna wait for a while...

Thanks tho!

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#159377 24-Aug-2008 19:10

if you do a clean format, install the most stable drivers (the ones that a supported by your hardware), only install 1x codec and mediaportal RC2 you may find mediaportal rc2 is quite stable.

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Quidam

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#159465 25-Aug-2008 08:18

Yes, I've found RC2 to be quite stable.

Since I have a similar setup: a Nova 500 DVB-T (for freeview) + a 150 for analog (Sky TV via SVideo + Saturn for cable analog unencrypted channels) I might try setting up the analog card for Media Portal and see what the quality is like (have only been using it for Freeview HD up till now)

"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)

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#159467 25-Aug-2008 08:20

For setting up analog: www.lincard.co.nz has the frequencies for every analog channel for each city/transmitter in NZ

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mojo90

12 posts

Geek

#159522 25-Aug-2008 11:41

Ha ha .. Damn there goes another weekend..

Thanks for the additional advice - I will give MediaPortal another crack this weekend on my old MCE...

Any recomendations on OS? I have legit copies of XP Prof, Vista business and, Vista Ultimate (this is what is currently running on the main box).

I will do a ground up rebuild and see how it goes.. (My wife will kill me if I take down the Media Center another weekend)

Thanks,
Joe

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#159529 25-Aug-2008 11:58

For me Vista Ultimate was by far the quickest to setup. However at that time i couldn't get hardware acceleration going, i have since gone to XP Pro SP2 and i have hardware acceleration working for mkv files. If you use vista go with 32bit. I found XP Pro SP2 more stable than SP3, however if you go for SP2 you should turn automatic updates off and manually install the following bits; Microsoft .NET 2 Framework, PDVD8 Ultra build 1830, Windows Media Player 11, Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86), Microsoft Installer 3.1 v2 Redistributable XP, videoplayback flicker hotfix for XP, dvbfix

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Quidam

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#159548 25-Aug-2008 13:29

For what it's worth, I have the TV Server (and a client) installed on XP Home SP3 and it works absolutely fine.
I also had The Server/Client insatlled on Vista Ultimate 64 bit SP1 and that was fine as well.

One comment I want to make about Vista is that because it has WMC built in -if you set up your remote to work with Media Portal and hit something like the TV Guide button, WMC boots up over the top of Media Portal. Really annoying!

"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)

Dingbatt

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#159832 26-Aug-2008 11:25

Quidam: ......

One comment I want to make about Vista is that because it has WMC built in -if you set up your remote to work with Media Portal and hit something like the TV Guide button, WMC boots up over the top of Media Portal. Really annoying!

I resolved this problem by going into msconfig in Vista and shutting down the media center launcher. Another way was to stop Vista loading ehtray.exe in startup.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

stroke64

60 posts

Master Geek

#162292 4-Sep-2008 20:56

Dingbatt:
I resolved this problem by going into msconfig in Vista and shutting down the media center launcher. Another way was to stop Vista loading ehtray.exe in startup.

That didn't acutally work for me in Vista HP. After every reboot, Vista would restore ehtray.exe back to it's former glory.

I found this in a manual for some other remote control software, which works for the MP-VMC remote problem too. Bit of a nasty hack but it works:

From: http://melloware.com/products/intelliremote/Intelliremote%20User%20Manual.pdf

Vista Media Center Edition ehtray.exe instructions
Even if you disable the task and delete the registry entry Vista will start it again the next time
you start Windows Media Center. To disable this from happening you need to perform the
following steps:
1. Delete the Registry entry
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\ehTray.exe
2. Right click cmd (at top) and click Run as administrator.
3. In command prompt, type takeown /f C:\Windows\ehome\ehtray.exe
4. A message will be displayed that this completed successfully. This will give you
ownership of the file.
5. In same command prompt, type icacls C:\Windows\ehome\ehtray.exe /grant (your
username):F NOTE: Substitute (your username) with your current username.
6. A message will be displayed that this completed successfully.
7. In the same command prompt, type cd C:\Windows\ehome to change to the ehome
directory.
8. In same command prompt, type rename ehtray.exe ehtray.old
9. Now reboot and ehtray.exe will no longer start when you start Windows or when you
start Windows Media Center

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