In every build of vista so far I've used windows updates to get the ATSC drivers, but in order to get MCE to recognize the analog channels I had to install the KRAM drivers. This has worked in every build EXCEPT RC2. In RC2 - I can have either or, but not both. The setup process in MCE skips the digital signal test and all IF I choose the "cable" method. If I choose the antennae method, it asks if I have cable or sat, and if so, I should do that first and the ATSC will be set up later, but it never does it for me. I've reformatted THREE TIMES for this.
Otherwise I'm completely happy with RC2 - I can watch HDTV with 5.1 audio without stutter now... all my previous HDTV recordings I couldnt' watch in prior builds but the files are there and now readable and watchable. I'm just bummed I have to switch the tuner setup when I want to record another show.
Has anyone else got both tuners to work simultaneously in RC2 (32bit) yet? By Simultaneous I don't mean recording on both at the same time, but just having all the channels available to record or swap through while channel surfing?
I also have not been able to make my HDTV Wonder work correctly with both the digital antenna and analog cable TV. If I leave my cable TV coaxial wire connected when running TV setup, it scans and finds that only, and skips right past detecting the digital (ATSC) antenna. If I disconnect the cable then it will find the digital antenna, but then I don't have cable TV. Very strange and frustrating. It won't even let me set it up manually. I even reinstalled RC2 a second time hoping it would possibly fix my isue. But no such luck!
For the most part I have been able to watch OTA HDTV on RC2. However I did have to replace the included Microsoft decoder with the Nvidia Pure decoder as I was having Video freezing when watching previously recorded problems. The Nvidia decoder seems to be more stable. But this may be because the shows I was watching were originally recorded with the Nvidia driver??? I'm not sure how that works.
Oh by the way, I was also using the modified Kram ATI drivers to make the HDTV wonder work with analog TV in MCE. It has always worked like a charm in the past, even with Vista RC1. No need for a second analog tuner this way!!
Please let me know if you have any luck getting your system to work any better. Thanks.
BUMP - anyone else having multiple tuner issues with RC2? Anyone know how to bypass the tuner setup area and force a config? Is this stored in the registry? Is there a way I can set it up for ATSC and then export that registry info - then set it up for analog TV and import the ATSC to get both?
This is the only version where my sound works decently with my xfi plat card and thus I really want to get MCE to work :)
My Vista RC2 build 5744 test system has 2x Theater 550 Pro cards (Sapphire Theatrix Theater 550 Pro PCI and PowerColor Theater 550 Pro PCIe) and an ATI HDTV Wonder. I added the second Theater 550 Pro card because it was relatively cheap ($45 after rebate) and I wanted to avoid any possible tuner conflicts that the HDTV Wonder could have with its concurrent analog / digital tuner issue using the Kram MCEE pack.
If the drivers auto installed in RC2 are somehow different from RC1 drivers (and earlier) such that they prevent the HDTV Wonder’s analog and digital components from being used as intended then that would be a serious problem.
However, it could also be as simple as you suggested with respect to adding key registry entries. It might be even simpler: the registry keys might be there but the tuner might be listed as not available for Vista MCE and hence only one is made available for setup within Vista MCE at any given time. In such a case manual configuration in the registry may be needed, however, a MCE 2K5 or Vista MCE tuner priority utility might do the job as well.
I would suggest that you try configuring the ATSC tuner for the HDTV Wonder and then fire up this Media Center 2005 / Vista Beta Tuner Priority Utility:
http://www.salloway.org.uk/MediaCenter/util/index.htm
Confirm that the “Enable For MCE” check box is selected for the analog tuner. If not then the utility may help to enable both. If it is already checked then manual configuration in the registry may be necessary.
To clear up confusion the ATI HDTV Wonder has two inputs - digital antenna and standard analog. It comes with it's own OTA antenna which you hook to the digital input and then normal cable coax goes into the analog for either STB or just plain 2-78 channel connection.
You cannot record with BOTH inputs at once, only one or the other, but you can change the channel to go between both of them (have both installed at the same time).
In all builds prior to 5744 the digital drivers would install and work in MCE, but the analog input was not found unless you installed the KRAM MCEE driver pack - then you could use both tuners - but with RC2 - the setup in MCE doesn't let you setup both - only one or the other. So when I go to guide, I only see 2-78 OR I see the ATSC channels. But not both. In prior versions of Vista, you could see all channels and pick which show to record off of standard or HD channels.
As for the priority tuner program - when I run it - it tells me "Unable to find 2 of any tuner type supported" so thank you for the suggestion... but apparently the program might not work in RC2 either. It seems a lot of small weird changes were made in RC2. But overall playback in RC2 is phenominal I think.
Any more suggestions on how to get both tuners recognized in MCE?
I actually checked my registry after I went through my second install. It appeared to me that Vista detected both just fine as it shows both the analog and digital parts of the HDTV wonder. I'm not sure, but they both looked enabled to me. Now this might be because I did the setup several times allowing it to set up ATSC and then later with analog. I did not check the registry after the first setup attempt. I wish the MCE reset utility worked with Vista, but it won't, I tried. Otherwise I would just try and see what it detected during a fresh setup.
I'm at work now, but tonight I will copy some of the registry settings and post them here for evaluation.
I'm wondering if the real issue here is with the guide setup. When doing a manual setup, bypassing the automatic, it says it will allow you to set up your digital ATSC signal after the analog is done. However, it never lets you go there. It goes right into downloading the guide data instead and then finishes. It's almost like Microsoft messed up the order in which the setup screens are supposed to work??? Maybe I'm way off base here with that guess. Who knows though, anythings possible with them. (Sorry for the sarcasm).
I think I've got a similar problem. On my Sony Vaio XL100 with an AVerMedia Hybrid TV Tuner Card, A16C (DVB-T/PAL/SECAM/FM) which had the Vista drivers on Windows Update.
Setting up MCE, Vista doesn't give me an option to choose Cable or Antenna:Analog as it did with MCE2005. It just automatically says that I've got Antenna:Digital and wont let this be changed.
Is it thinking the card can't do Analog?
Anyone got any interesting registry entries that might help force it?
Interestingly enough... I checked out the reg key mentioned earlier...
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners
Sadly, both digital and analog tuners are listed in seperate reg keys and I don't see an "enable" but I DO see a "disable" which is set to 0... I tried setting it to 1, but after rebooting nothing was different and running the wizard again does nothing to make me feel good about this.
I borrowed an ATI USB TV Wonder (pure analog, no HD at all) and installed that. Vista didn't see drivers on windows updates for this poor little thing so I installed them off the CD. It installed in the sense that the drivers installed and device manager doesn't list it with an exclaimation mark or such, but it does not work in MCE at all. Not even recognized as a valid device I guess. BUT - in the registry area - a new folder was created with all this devices info... strange how it shows up in the registry but still doesn't work.
*sighs* I'm presuming it's just a bad build of MCE and I REALLY HOPE they get it fixed. I've already submitted the "Feedback" thing in Vista (shortcut is on desktop after a fresh install) requesting they fix this and explaining it the best I could.
Anyone know of a forum where MS actually monitors it directly for customer support/feedback?
Thanks for reading and PLEASE POST if you get a solution!!
I have also been playing around in the registry and discovered that for each tuner listed in the Tuners section, there is a subkey called User Settings. In there look for "EnabledForMCE". When I run the TV setup for ATSC this key will have a hexidecimal data value of "ffffffff". However if I rerun TV setup and select analog Cable TV, this setting reverts back to 0 and the Analog Tuner will have the "ffffffff" setting instead thus rplacing the 0 it was before. It will always be one or the other enabled, but never both.
So I had the bright idea of setting up the Analog TV in MCE and then exporting the User Settings part of the registry to a file on my desktop. Then I reran TV setup again this time setting up my ATSC tuner. Once that was done I closed MCE and doubleclicked the saved .reg file on my desktop and imported the settings back into the registry. I doublechecked it and it looked good so I opened up MCE to see if the setup Digital TV was there now. But it's not. Bummer.
It's too late for me to keep messing with this tonight. But I was thinking that maybe I should export the entire individual tuner section for cable TV and then reimport that after running the ATSC setup. I will try this tomorrow after work and see what happens.
I'll let you know how I make out.
yeah the tough part about the whole registry editing crap is the rebooting time it takes to test out something so simple :)
I'm gonna spend a few hours on it tomorrow night as well since I really want to get my analog working so I can record Mythbusters which is on discovery (not HD) wednesday... thankfully I'm not missing an episode tomorrow night :) (sad huh?)
Also I'd like to point out that even if you trick MCE into assuming both tuners are active, where does the guide data live? I'm hoping it will pull down whatever tuner is active... but - I have low aspirations towards registry editing to solve this now.... no offense I mean - I just think there's a flaw in RC2's MCE. I'm still gonna play with it :)
Perhaps the best amount of time would be putting RC1 back on and looking at the registry values for that? Maybe even exporting and importing those values in RC2? I think I might put RC1 on a spare HD tomorrow... we'll see :)
Well I've figured it out and now have both analog cable TV and ATSC digital from the antenna when using my ATI HDTV Wonder card with Vista RC2. It will even scan for the digital signal strength.
What a pain in the rear to do it though. It involved modifying a few registry settings and exporting and reimporting others. I also had to copy the TV preference files from the HDTV registry settings from my XP MCE computer over to the Vista RC2 one. They are located in the folder..
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\eHome\EPG\prefs\
One of the files is prefs.xml and it should look similar to this once configured properly.
The above file actually lists the channels in the area that I can't get and have blocked out. There are two other files called atscchannels.xml and atscprefs.xml that have to be fixed as well.
If anyone is truly interested in how I did all this leave a post and I'll try to write up instructions. Hopefully I can recall exactly all the steps I had to take.
However, I'm sure there's got to be an easier way to do this. So if anyone else knows how to fix a registry setting or other file to make the automated setup work correctly I would still like to know how to do it.
On a final note, I upgraded my memory from 512MB to 1 GB and that helped make everything a lot faster. Especially with MCE menu response time.
OK I have a dual booting system between build 5600 and 5744 now. I have MCE configured in both - but exporting and importing various reg keys doesn't do diddly except really confuse RC2 :)
So... I'm intrigued by your XML findings... on my RC1 build I have two XML files located in my D:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\EPG\prefs folder... a atscchannels.xml and a prefs.xml. Both are tiny really...
atscchannels.xml: