Guys,

I have a ATI Cablecard Vista 64 SP2 service from TimeWarner Cincinnati. Worked fine to begin with but lately (probably but not sure) after SP2 i get Black screen when tuning to TV. When i switch to another channel i get a Blue "restricted blah blah" screen. When i reboot it starts working fine but needless to say its frustrating because all my scheduled recordings dont work.

Anyone got any idea on what the problem could be?

Check all your firewalls since the update incase something go changed back to a default.

When you get a black screen what do you get when you go into network and click on the ati device and then the card? Is it still authorized? Any change to a video driver? Any change to a display?

John

there is no change to anything when i check ATI device during the black screen. It is still authorized. No change to video driver & no change to display.

BTW this seems to be more random than anything - not necessarily everyday but every other day.

THis is driving me insane - the key thing to note is the this computer never sleeps or shutsdown so its obviously some process that happens every day/other day:

the things i can think of:

1. Home Server backup everynight does something to it
2. Guide data gets updated and then does something to the cablecard
3. TW Cable is sending some kind of DRM signal to the cablecard every so often.

Any ideas are welcome.

Next time you have a black screen, see if you can restore picture without rebooting by trying the following:

1. Unplug power to the tuners and replug (wait for the bong/bong when you unplug and then wait for the lights to come back to green/green) and check

2. If that doesn't work, try switch user and sign back in.

3. See if the problem exists on any extender as well as the media center

Each of the above would point in a different direction so see which will restore. If the first works, then you have some task that's running (some scan) that's looking at the USB ports and disrupting the tuners. I don't know of any DRM that time warner can sent short of unauthorizing the card. They can updaate the VCT but if you have M cards that sholdn't matter. With S-cards that could require a reboot but it wouldn't happen that often.

The other tests would point to software interferrence or a driver conflict with your video card.

thanks will try them out - though the unplugging of USB while machine is on will be a bit of a challenge - its an internal ATI card and USB is on MB header

Well you can turn the cablecard on and off without opening anything up. Go to Network/ATI device and then click on card. At the top of the browser window there is an entry POWER and 1. Change that to 0 and the cablecard is shut off. Then change it back to 1 and it will turn back on.

Now I have external tuners and that's not as reliable as just unpluging the power and repluging, but it does work. I have on the couple of occasions I tried it gotten it to work but one time I got an error and hard to cold reboot the machine and cablecard tuners to get it back.

John

no go on any direction. Tried to power off and on using 1 & 0. Still didnt solve it. Also tried loggin off and on.

Strange thing is the system stopped recording half way through something and gave me a black screen randomly. the event viewer shows as "restricted content". this is absolutely bizarre since it was half way through.