Ok I have been working on this for 2 days now and I am about to pull my hair out!

I have an HP Pavillion Entertainment dv6000.
I am trying to use a Hauppauge-HVR 1950 Tv Tuner to record via Media Center.
My configuration is as follows:

-PC to Hauppauge via USB
-Hauppage to Comcast Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD via S-Video Cable and Red/White audio  cables.
-The ac power cord naturally is plugged into the +6v outlet on the tuner.
-The IR blaster cord is plugged into the Blaster port on the tuner and placed via adhesive to the front of STB by STBs IR receiver.

With this configuration I can run Media Center and go to Tasks>TV>Set-up TV and run set-up.
I have only been able to get as far as selecting the correct channel. I can see the preview of the tv and S-Video is selected. In the following step, I always run into "IR Hardware not found."

I have done TONS of research and have reinstalled drivers and made sure they are working properly. From what I have seen so far it really doesn't have much to do with the manufacturer of the tuner or even the STB, but possibly a driver? I have updated all my drivers though and they are working properly. However, in all the forums I have seen so far this is a widespread issue but no one has really given me a good answer to fix the problem. I have even tried the "trick" to make the tuner override the IR setup (via selecting coax), but to no avail. Is it possible I just need to get an additional IR remote that is genuine Microsoft? The current one I have came with the tuner and works correctly, the light comes on and i can use the remote to guide the media center menus, but still, "IR Hardware Not Detected"!!!!!

I am trying to do this for my fiance as he is in the military and currently in Iraq and I thought I'd be nice and tape football games and mail them to him, which starts in August so I'm trying to complete this ASAP!
Any possible soulitions are more than welcome and many thanks in advance for the help!!

I have only ever been able to get this type of setup working when using the microsoft usb ir receiver which comes with ir blasters.

This is what they look like:     

http://www.kikatek.com/product_info.php?products_id=65564&source=froogle

They seem to be in really short supply at the moment though.

Did the tuner come with it's own software? You could maybe use that software with the blaster until you sort out media center?

Maybe other members can shed some more light - I have blasters for my tuner cards and would be interested if anybody has got this to work.

The Hauppauge-HVR 1950 may not be using the same APIs as Media Center which may explain why you are getting that error message. If you want a STB setup, you will need to have a Media Center Certified IR Transceiver as holidayboy has mentioned. Just make sure you get one that has blasters output.

Well thanks guys for the resonses. I did go to frys yesterday and bought a windows certified remote and they only had 1: a SIIG Vista MCE remote.

This didn't do anything at all for me! The only cool thing I got out of it was that it also controls my xbox. Aside from that, nothing.

I made it a point to tell the stupid guy at frys that I needed one particularly WITH the remote, receiver, AND Blaster(s). He said that for sure this product has these items.Yeah right. In the box were only the remote and usb receiver, no blaster. The hunt goes on...

And yes, as holidayboy has asked, the tuner did come with it's own software called "WinTV", after extensive playing with different configurations and scanning for channels for hours, nothing.

I have ALSO just tried another freeware program called "Virtual VCR", but that doesn't even recognize the tuner. Could it just be my tuner? But still that makes no sense because when setting up WMC i can see the preview on the screen of my laptop! I can even see the guide pop up when I make it happen on my STB. 

Any more ideas, guys? The next step of course is to try and find a remote with blasters, but I still have seen forums posting the same problem even with more hardware than what I originally had.

chul:

Well thanks guys for the resonses. I did go to frys yesterday and bought a windows certified remote and they only had 1: a SIIG Vista MCE remote.

This didn't do anything at all for me! The only cool thing I got out of it was that it also controls my xbox. Aside from that, nothing.

I made it a point to tell the stupid guy at frys that I needed one particularly WITH the remote, receiver, AND Blaster(s). He said that for sure this product has these items.Yeah right. In the box were only the remote and usb receiver, no blaster. The hunt goes on...

And yes, as holidayboy has asked, the tuner did come with it's own software called "WinTV", after extensive playing with different configurations and scanning for channels for hours, nothing.

I have ALSO just tried another freeware program called "Virtual VCR", but that doesn't even recognize the tuner. Could it just be my tuner? But still that makes no sense because when setting up WMC i can see the preview on the screen of my laptop! I can even see the guide pop up when I make it happen on my STB. 

Any more ideas, guys? The next step of course is to try and find a remote with blasters, but I still have seen forums posting the same problem even with more hardware than what I originally had.

ok so get this! I simply bypassed my STB and unscrewed the coax from my STB and hooked it up to the Tuner. And it for some reason wanted to finally do stuff. Everything worked. Media Center, and the other 2 programs I got.

Super Cool: I can now just use the ir remote i got for my xbox and use the remote that comes with my HP to control Media Center!

The crappiest part is though that I have just unhooked my cable from my STB, but I can just get a splitter and deal with coax instead of SVideo. I don't get any of the regular "Digital" channels but I do get Comcast's basic 99 channels.

I hope this helps some of us who spent millions of hours trying to get this fixed. Media Center even has my Comcast guide!

In case you still want to use the stb with media center at any time there are some MS remotes on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-Window-Media-Center-2005-Remote-Control-Kit_W0QQitemZ360163682796QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item53db6da9ec&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12%7C66%3A2%7C39%3A1%7C72%3A1234%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

I did find this blog: http://medo64.blogspot.com/2009/06/windows-media-center-without-ir.html
It points to a virtual IR blaster driver. This will get you past the "IR hardware not detected" point. In my case I saw 2 additional eHome transceivers after installing (next to the 1 physical blaster I already had) and I succesfully entered the wizard. In the wizard I was able to configure my physical one.

Still have a small issue though, after configuring the first one it loops back to the start of the wizard. Maybe because I have 3 analogue tuners and the STB on s-video. Anybody have a clue why it stays in the loop?

EDIT: IT WORKS!
I selected all 3 analogue tuners when entering the wizard for the IR blaster which made mce think I had 3 boxes... (makes sense actually...)
After selecting only the tuner which had the STB connected I was able to configure my real blaster. The virtual blaster pulled me through the "IR Hardware not detected" check, after that I could configure my physical one.
When my STB was finished I could configure the other 2 analogue tuners.