I reinstalled the updates and though I didn't get a recurrence of the video error message over the course of the last couple of days, I noticed additonal issues which I hadn't seen before-- when rewinding during playback of a recording, after hitting 'play' video and audio would disappear, leaving just a blank screen. Hitting play/pause repeatedly would sometimes restart playback; other times I needed to restart the player. One time after using the rewind or backspace function repeatedly, I was left with a frozen video frame with audio playing; another time video played but without audio. I've since uinstalled the updates again, and things went back to normal. Since I never experienced the problems that the fixes were supposed to address, I don't think I'll be missing anything.

I un-installed it last night and everything worked fine now.

 

Just to chime in, I spoke too soon, we just hadn't recorded anything since before this update.  When we did finally record something new (History Detectives), we got the "Files needed to play video are not installed ..." message trying to play it back last night.  Stop and restart of the recording playback got us audio only, a third time it worked fine.  Did not have to exit VMC or reboot.

I made no other changes to the system recently other than fixing all the TV channels for post-transistion and this round of updates.  Same video driver as has been in place since last November (Catalyst 8.11).  Not running Service Pack 2 or IE8, all other windows updates are current.

Looks like I'll be pulling these back as well, probably restore back to my 4/15/2009 backup and just redo the TV Guide setup again.

FYI: I finally got around to uninstalling the 6/09 cumulative updates tonight (did not restore from backup against better judgement), and it did solve the "Files needed...." problem.  However, on 2 of 3 PCs I lost the Netflix add-in.  For some reason the wife doesn't care about the tearing and Silverlight nastiness associated with that other add-in, so I had to fix it.

mcupdate -u .... no love
mcupdate -uf ... no love
NetflixInWindowsMediaCenter.exe ... love

So, if you uninstall these update(s) and lose your Netlfix tile ... it seems that the way to fix it is by re-running the installation .EXE again. 

FWIW, the "Service Alert" tiles are also gone.

Why isn't this update available on Windows Update? I am still on the 6.0.XXX version of Media Center.

Any explanation?

ihaveaquestion:

Why isn't this update available on Windows Update? I am still on the 6.0.XXX version of Media Center.

Any explanation?

Its a TVPack only update.

I've also started seeing the "Video Error" message when trying to watch recorded TV. Restarting MC seems to allow me to watch the recording. I've also had an instance of sound recording with no video, both since installing the TV Pack cumulative update.

I have an HP quad core OCUR PC, ATI cable tuner w/cablecard, Vista HP64, 4gig memory.

I'm going to try uninstalling the update until there's an update to the update.

John

 Any update on this update?

 

I am having (what sounds like) this exact problem with my system listed in my sig. In my case I get the "video error", hit back, do restart, and I get a black screen but audio works, I hit back and restart again and the video works fine for the rest of the show. This is all inside VMC, no restart of VMC or the entire machine is needed.

 

What is interesting is that I just removed this update, and after rebooting when I play recorded tv I get only static for the audio and the video plays back very fast, like the fast forward is on, but the icon says it is playing at normal speed. When I play live TV I get clicking audio and a black screen. Other video, audio, etc work fine, including dvd's, xvid, h264, etc.

 

When I reinstalled the update things went back to normal and at least so far I am not seeing the "video error". It is too soon to call it fixed, though.

 

ORIGINAL:

 

It took me months to finally get my Vista Media Center working correctly. My worst decision was to install TV Pack.  It has caused me nothing but problems.  Tonight, I installed with great hopes, the cumulative updates for media center.  However, they failed to address the ongoing problems which I continue to experience.  Many channels display:

Service is Unavailable

There is currently no TV signal detected for this channel.  The channel may be temporarily off-the-air, please try again later.

On the same TV, I also have a cable box connected so that my kids can watch on demand.  I can watch the very same channels which VMC says it cannot detect a signal.  Additionally, the news and other favorite shows which my wife and I record appear pixelated, stuttered and suffer from audio issues.  I am at a loss to figure out how to resolve these problems.  Please help!

David - after suffering in silence for months after switching to TV Pack, I've just gotten on TGB and found your post.  I have experienced the exact same thing.  Unfortunately, I don't see any replies to your problem.  Have you found any cure?  I wonder whether Win7 will be any better?

If it's any consolation, yes, Win7 seems to be a lot better.  The recordings I made under Vista with this update that had the problem no longer exhibit the problem and just play like they should.  I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but from my perspective whatever got boned up in this update was either fixed in Win7 or hasn't yet been applied to Win7.

If I remove KB966315, it breaks TV playback. If I leave it in, I get the stupid "video files not available" error.

 

So is Microsoft just intending to ignore this problem and hope it all goes away or what? Am I really going to have to rebuild this thing *again* because of some stupid Microsoft error? Did someone get rid of the QA department over there, or what?

 

 

 

jayntguru

If I remove KB966315, it breaks TV playback. If I leave it in, I get the stupid "video files not available" error.

 

So is Microsoft just intending to ignore this problem and hope it all goes away or what? Am I really going to have to rebuild this thing *again* because of some stupid Microsoft error? Did someone get rid of the QA department over there, or what?

 

 

Not going to help you this time but for next time, imaging software like Acronis is your best buddy. I image my HTPC regularly and of course before any major update. Recently reverted from Windows 7 to Vista and was grateful for the money I spent on Acronis.