Hey folks,
I have an EVGA 680i Nvidia mobo and run Vista Ultimate 64 (applies to 32 as well as I have ran both over the months on this hardware). I have 2 AVERMEDIA PCIeX1 Combo Cards and can confirm that they work weather I plug them into either of the 2 available PCIeX1 slots or the single PCIeX8 slot or either of 2 available PCIeX16 slot on my mobo.
I also have an Adaptec 31205 HBA Raid card that is also PCIeX8 that equally works in any PCIe X8 or X16 on my motherboard.

(this forum is not allowing longer posts for some reason, I hope greenbutton is not running on VISTA, because it's a little buggy)

I'm not sure why people are having so much difficulty with these tuners not showing up properly or stuttering video, but I have dealt with more VISTA/NVIDIA related problems in 6 months than I care to admit.
On the positive side, the tuners dropped in and worked with the original Vista 64 780 drivers and I was able to watch HDTV on both tuners after MAKING SURE ALL COMPONENTS were properly configured with the drivers in device manager. I even had Windows Update keep bugging me to update the Bridge Component repeatedly even after it was installed and the driver was not a newer version.

I seem to recall reinstalling the drivers cleanly and forcing the driver update manually if all the components for each tuner didn't get picked up, but it was many months ago and can't be sure as I had more problem with graphics cards, chipset problems, and bios bugs which kept me quite busy.


I have tested with ATI/HAUPAUGE/NVIDIA/AVERMEDIA OTC ATSC tuners from before MCE 2005 when I worked at Niveus Media and NONE of these tuners will pick up stations as good as most HDTVs with built in ATSC tuners. I receive most of my channels via an on roof antenna and disconnected all 12 coax connections in my house except the 2 I use for my tuners to ensure enough gain to receive the stations properly. A signal amplifier can help depending on the station your trying to receive, but can exacerbate multipath/reflected signals so your mileage will vary.
Regarding stuttering during playback of ATSC TV; I record Frasier on 2 different OTA digital channels that play late night reruns and episodes that are on one channel playback perfectly and the other recordings on the second channel stutter randomingly during each episode. I was able to record the same episode on both channels and realized that one channel simply wasn't as strong as the other because the stuttering was missing from the second showing of the same showe. So I had signal drop outs which can at times appear to be bugs in your system's hardware/driver/mce, but can simply be intermittent signal strength issues, temporary ones caused by weather, sunspots, an airplane, a bird on your antenna or broadcaster error.
Keep in mind until all TV stations stop transmitting analog in 2009 & the amount of power they devote to digital transmission is limited (ie They use less transmit power for digital during the day then they do at night during primetime and that is less than 1/2 to 1/3 of what they could use if they stopped analog broadcast altogether ), but that will be ameliorated assuming they don't push the date again, because originally analog transmission was supposed to cease in 2005!

Installed this card today and it's working great.  Has anyone figured out how to turn down the brightness on the analog tuner?  It's a tad bright for my taste.

aeroguy:

Installed this card today and it's working great.  Has anyone figured out how to turn down the brightness on the analog tuner?  It's a tad bright for my taste.

In case anyone else is curious how to do this, I'll answer my own question.  I found this thread: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/206848.aspx which had a link to a MCE Video Settings download:

http://mcevideosettings.oabsoftware.nl/index.php

I'll try it tonight to see if it works.

Well, the MCE Video Settings tool didn't work for me.  I got an unhandled exception and it asked if I wanted to continue or quit.  I continued but the application was greyed out.

Has anyone else tried it?

Edit:  Is anyone else having problems with an overly bright analog picture?  I wonder if it's a bad card.

It's not just you, this seems to be pretty common (if not pervasive).  We've gotten used to it for the few shows that we don't record OTA, but it would sure be nice to have a way to adjust this.

Aside from this issue, I really do love these cards, they (2 of them) work very well in our system.

g.

Interesting pieces of data, jcarcopo. 

I'm not surprised that the card works in x16 slots for your nForce 680i config, given they are typically used for SLI / GPUs.  More to the point, even I didn't have a problem running with x16 (and I'm apparently the one with the most severe slot specific detection issues in this thread).

Interesting however, that your 'generic' x8 slot (hosted by the x16 capable 680i southbridge / MCP root port) did work.  Someone else earlier posted a similar update saying that they got the card to work on one of their non-GPU PCIe slots.

I'm still waiting for an update from Felix to get to the bottom of this card + G965 chipset / Asus P5B-VM type MB incompatibility issue.  It can be because of the chipset (find it hard to believe that Intel chipsets of all, wouldn't be compliant to PCIe specification), motherboard implementation (less likely, given that except for a few chipset specific resistor strappings etc., there aren't many chipset features that you can typically control on board, AFAIK), or a combination of the two.  In the interim, it's wait-n-watch for the outcome of Felix's experiment for me...

Hi Folks,

I have tested AVerTV Combo PCIe x1 on several different motherboards both AMD and Intel based platform on PCIe x1, x4 and x16, and it works everywhere.

I think that problems that you have its related to BIOS of your ASUS motherboard, and unfortunately I did not have chance to find this particular mobo.

Just in case, try to see if Asus have a new BIOS available.

Felix

AVerMedia Technologies, Inc

 

MrNeutrino - I can't believe I didn't clue in to this possibility before.  When I first got my current living room mobo (Asus P5W DH Deluxe) I had huge problems installing Vista with a tuner card installed (any tuner card).  As it turns out, Vista implements mmconfig for the pci and pcie busses. 

I didn't clue in because at the time (last December) I didn't have my Aver Combo cards yet.

Asus eventually released a new BIOS version that fixed this, but there was a workaround - from an elevated prompt, run

bcdedit /set configaccesspolicy disallowmmconfig

I don't know if this will work for you, but since the combination of an Asus P5 board and Vista caused problems for many with pci/pcie cards, maybe this will help?

g.

 

Dear TheGreenButton.com folks,

 

If you are interested in watching Unencrypted "Clear" QAM, aka Digital Cable channels on Vista MCE with AVerTV Combo PCIe x1 M780 tuner, I have great news!

 

AVerMedia Technologies just released  BETA Drivers (both x86 and x64)  and a BETA Plug-In for Windows Vista Media Center, that allows you to receive Clear QAM channels under Vista (only)Media Center  instead of ATSC Channels.

Please install Beta Drivers first, then run ClearQAM.exe to scan for Digital Channels (make sure that you will connect your Cable feed directly to the Digital tuner part of AVerTV Combo PCIe x1 M780 tuner, bypassing your Cable setup Box), after that Export Clear QAM channels to MCE TV Guide (please follow instructions on PDF file).

Please notice that with this Plug in you can only watch Unencrypted "Clear" QAM Channels, not your Premium Channels. Some of the channels that Plug in will recognized will be Encrypted by your Cable Company and  you cannot see then, you will have to manually removed them from MCE TV Guide. Also you can manually rename Clear QAM Channels in MCE TV Guide.

 

Please download Beta Drivers and Vista MCE Plug-In from the following FTP:

ftp.aver.com

user name: beta

password: betatest

 

Good luck, and AVerMedia is looking forward to hearing your VALUABLE FEEDBACK.

You can send us your feedback to the following email address: beta@aver.com

 

 

 

Best Regards,

Felix Kolotinsky

Product Manager

AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.

 

Please keep in mind that AVerMedia Technologies will not be held responsible for the Beta version software.

This is a great day.  It's about time you guys stopped the HDHomerun from stealing the QAM thunder.  Finally sweet QAM in VistaMCE with the cards that had the ability the whole time.  Aver rocks!

This is definitely great news.  I want to try out the beta, but where can I download the files?

Quote:

    Please download Beta Drivers and Vista MCE Plug-In from the following FTP:

    ftp.aver.com

    user name: beta

    password: betatest

Thanks very much for taking the time to test this out, Felix!

Since I ended up returning this card LONG time back (2-3 months?), I definitely can't confirm either way re: whether the new BIOS will or still won't work with this card.  I do see that a non-descript new BIOS updates has since been posted with a mystery fix.

Unfortunately, the local Fry's has since taken this card off the shelf preventing me from trying it out again via a B&M store.  Fry's decision to take this - one of the best featured card - off the shelf was kind of non-sensical.  Then again, we're talking about Fry's - never know what will come and go from their shelves...  unless you (Felix) know something we don't in this case.

Anyway, intead of having to risk having to RMA the card again by ordering online, I'll ask around to see if someone I know has it for a quick test.  The VMC QAM driver is definitely worth the risk if it's proven and confirmed by the online community!  Will upgrade my MB to make the card work in that case!

Groovejumper, thanks for sharing your experience, if even late. :)  I'm still trying to understand what in the world a good MB manufacturer like Asus could have goofed up on, so as to prevent a x1 card from working in the x4 slot.  Anyway, I'll also try your suggestion along with the BIOS update, if / once I get my hands on this card.  Else, I'll wait for folks to prove its VMC capabilities and then consider a bunch of upgrades to enable the whole setup.  Thanks for sharing though!

Felixk:

Dear TheGreenButton.com folks,

 

If you are interested in watching Unencrypted "Clear" QAM, aka Digital Cable channels on Vista MCE with AVerTV Combo PCIe x1 M780 tuner, I have great news!

 

AVerMedia Technologies just released  BETA Drivers (both x86 and x64)  and a BETA Plug-In for Windows Vista Media Center, that allows you to receive Clear QAM channels under Vista (only)Media Center  instead of ATSC Channels.

 

Are there any plans to make this work with Windows XP Media Center Edition?