I have posted about the some of the problems I've had with my new Gateway with an Avermedia M791 tuner card. I'm curious to know if anyone else has this card, and how it works for them.
Without going into the whole thing again, the bottom line is that after a couple of weeks of fiddling with antennae and loading & reloading software (including the latest drivers), I think I have an idea as to what is happening. (long story follows!)
As a kind of "last resort" I bought a Hauppague PVR-950 USB tuner & plugged it in. Using the same outside antenna that gave poor results with the Avermedia card, I could get all of the OTA digital stations in my area. What I found interesting is that the PVR-950 would show the different channel signal levels in WMC (i.e. some were all green, some were 5 green, some had yellow, etc.). The M791 ONLY shows either all green or nothing (just a single red bar).
Avermedia suggested a trial version of Snapstream BeyondTV to see if the card would respond any differently. I installed it & told it to scan for channels, rather than use the downloaded lineup. I was surprised to find that the same channels showed up, and when the setup wizard got to the signal strength portion, all the channels were95-98%! If I "forced" a known good channel in, it would show up as 0%. This tells me that either the firmware on the card or the driver has a glitch that does not report signal strength correctly. If is is below 95%, it gets reported as zero. Also, strangely enough, I suspect that if it's 100% (or stronger than whatever the 100% level is) it also gets reported as zero, because some channels will suddenly show zero signal strength during the scan, then suddenly show good the next time around.
I'd really appreciate any comments on this scenario, and any experience others might have had with the M791 card.

Shoot! I forgot the rest of the information:
Gateway FX-4710 with Q9300 cpu, 2.5 gHz, 4GB ram, Nvidia 9800GT video card, Vista Home Premium SP1, 32 bit version (plus whatever updates it's automatically done the past two weeks).
I have tried a basic UHF loop ($9 at wal-mart), the monopole that came with the PV-950, and a Radio Shack VU-90 LP antenna. All give similar results, in that each will show a subset of the available channels, and the signal strength is always 95-98% on the "good" channels, and zero on the others. All three antennae give decent results with the PVR-950, with the rooftop R/S antenna getting all the channels. It also feeds my HDTV, which has a great picture.
Anyhow, I'd appreciate hearing from any M791 owners as to their experiences with the card.

So.... no one uses an M791 TV tuner? What about an M780, which is apparently very similar?

OK, so does anyone have an M791 that is working correctly in Vista MCE? I still have not gotten any resolution to this problem.

I dont have an M791 and I couldnt even find it on Avermedia's website.  But some cards are, I guess the best word is "loose", when it comes to reporting signal quality.  In my experience, Avermedia is one of the more rock solid performers signalwise.

I have some Catseye DTA-150 cards that do what you are seeing. A station is either all green or a single red bar.  And repetitive scans will see the station oscillate between the two extremes.  On the other hand my Avermedia A180s and my M780 card all report consistant signals in between the two extremes.  The Catseye cards all work fine, it's just that they seem to take liberties with reporting the signal quality.

BTW, the card is reporting quality, not signal strength. Basically, a measure of the bit error rate. It may be that the M791 is using a different chipset that may be able to error correct a marginal signal better than the other cards you have and thus will show all green bars until it falls off the edge and cant correct the data stream any more and shows 1 red bar. My M780 doesnt do that however.

Also, my Samsung stand alone tuner does the max to min oscillation when fed a marginal signal. It tries to lock on, but just can't.

It seems to me that you either have a marginal signal or the card isnt working properly if it isnt detecting stations.

-dickm

***,
Thanks for that input. I really am puzzled because all my other HD tuners (I have the Hauppague card I mentioned earlier, a Vizio HDTV, and a Panasonic DVD recorder with ATSC tuner) report good signal quality (or strength - however they determine it) when using my rooftop LP anyenna, and they can receiev all of the OTA digital available in my area, but the Avermedia card will only occasionally get two or three channels. What is also oddd is that even if I use a little loop antenna, I still get about the same reception. It's like the card just doesn't have a gradual signal strength/quality report, just a binary one.
At any rate, info on this card seems to be hard to find - it's what came with my gateway, and according to the Avermedia tech, it's basically an M780 but for OEM. I asked if I could use the M780 drivers and he said no, they wouldn't work (rats!). At this point, I'm hoping to hear back from Avermedia (the tech said that he would send it up the support ladder) and/or other users to see if anyone has had a similar problem & whether/how they got it resolved.
Dave T.

I have a Gateway GM8540 and it came with the Avermedia M791. I also purchased two additional Avermedia 780s to add to the system. I had to pull the graphics card out to free up a PCI-E slot. The motherboard has built in GPU, so I am fine. After hacking the registry, I now can record 6 programs at the same time.

Has anyone had any success yet with the M791?

I also have the Gateway FX4710 with the AverMedia M791 card.  I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit, and I have a digital cable signal from Cablevision.  Both my Maxent HD TV and my Panasonic DMR-EZ475 DVD recorder receive the digital channels fine.  However, when I set up Windows Media Center and hook up the cable to the ATSC connection of the M791, All the digital channel signal strengths show as a single red bar, and I get the blue "no signal" page on each channel.  I thought it might be the Windows software, but from what's posted here, it sounds like it might be the driver software. 

I know it seems to be a little late to chime in on this but I have a Gateway LX6200 with the M791-B card and some were along one of the window updates I lost several channels that I use to get in VMC, I am giving up on the cost of cable and satellite Tv. just paying to much for channels I'm not watching. anyway I am trying to set up my PC to record some of the shows I do watch and I have lost some of the channels. I live just north of Sacramento, Ca with an outside antenna (large) pointing in the right directions, my tv picks up the channels but not my VMC. is there any tv tuners that work with out any issues. I don't really want to go and buy a bunch of cards to find one that works with a gateway pc and VMC. Lx6200 AMD Phenom 4 cor 2.2G 8Gigs ram 750 HDD on board HDMI ATI Radeon HD 3200 Avermedia M971-B Pci combo Thanks George

Have you tried the drive released on 2008/10/02?

http://www.avermedia-usa.com/avertv/Product/ProductList.aspx?IID=15&SI=true

 Gateway offers a driver at:

http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/getFile.asp?id=21426&dscr=Avermedia%20M791%20NTSC/ATSC%20TV%20Tuner%20DriverVersion:%206.104.0.5&uid=255749290

I think the digital tuner in this card is a piece of junk. The analog tuner worked just fine before we went to digital and still works using converter on channel 4. the digital tuner will only find 2 or 3 of the local channels and those are poor quality and un-watchable. The card is connected to an antenna network with 5 other TVs that all recieve all local channels just fine.

I intend to buy another card or a USB tuner but don't know what that will be just yet. Any ideas?

John

 Vista does not work with M791, but M780 works good in Vista.  M791 works with WIN 7.  No idea why?  Just use the gateway drivers and windows 7.  You are better off that way.  The M791 are Gateway only cards and thus have their own rules.  I bought three of them for $20 a piece.  Dissapointed that antenna strength is incorrectly reported in Media Center b/c of signal issues.  However, it is rock solid on regular cable tv stations.

 

My Gateway runs WIN 7 and since my last post I actually got the card to function once. It found all of the local channels and had a good picture but when I shut down the computer and re-booted it couldn't find any stations. It's still a useless piece of junk.

I had the same issue.  Don't install the updated drivers that windows update gives you.  They screw the ATSC part of the card up and can even mess up the analog as well.  If you already installed the new drivers, do a driver rollback from device manager.

 

Frank

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