[cygnusx04]

recently got a TBS 6920 (PCI-E single DVB-S2 tuner).

My previous card was only DVB-S but worked fine in media center (the card needed an external power feed to pick up channels).

The TBS has no ability to plugin external power. If I scan for TV channels in Media center It finds the card but says it won't be configured as no signal detected. Running the TBS DVB Dream software it finds all channels and reports strong signal and quality.

In media center if I do a manual configuration and add the transponders myself manually then I can get the channels including HD ones.

Total pain in the ass (I don't understand why MCE can't find channels automatically with this card). Is this normal with TBS cards?

[nick8571]

I don't think it's normal, no... I have a TBS 6981 (dual DVB-S2), and W7MC had no trouble configuring it automatically, although as expected I had to do a couple of manual transponder scans to pick up all the available HD channels. It has the option to plug in extra power from the PSU, but I've never needed to use it, and I'd have thought a single tuner would use even less power.

I doubt if there's anything wrong with the card itself if it works OK with other applications (have you also tried MediaPortal?), so perhaps it's just a WMC-specific issue with this particular card...

[Stiggy]

Originally Posted by cygnusx04

Total pain in the ass (I don't understand why MCE can't find channels automatically with this card). Is this normal with TBS cards?

Changing tuner cards does seem to confuse Media Center. You are using Windows 7?

If you can bear it. I'd do a reset of Media Center and allow the initial setup process to begin completely from scratch.

http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/09/clear...ia-center.html

[cygnusx04]

thanks Stiggy - will give it a go, although will probs be after Olympics. Now that I've got all the extra channels added for the Olympics coverage, I don't want to repeat it right now

[cygnusx04]

as is usual – nothing is ever straight forward. This new card is causing me more problems.

It’s the 6920 which is quite old (only one I could get hold of in the UK). My problems are as follows:

1) rerunning the TV signal setup in MC detects the 2 DVB-T tuners and a signal. It detects the DVB-S2 card but says wont be configured as no signal detected. I have to select the “Let me configure my TV signal manually” option. I’ve cleared out the database as per “http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/09/clear...ia-center.html “ but still no change.

I can find the channels manually but for some reason the auto scan thinks there is no signal ? My old DVB-S card worked fine on the scan.

I notice with this new card when I get the satellite summary screen in media center TV setup. It shows ASTRA 2A-B-D (28.2E) EUROBIRD 1 (28.5E) signal quality : only 3 yellow bars. Wondering whether this card is not as sensitve as my previous one as I used to get full 6 green bars. Still odd that I can get the HD channels with no picture break up though.


2) A couple of times whilst watching HD channels or changing channels, my media center has kinda shut down. I lose video and the front panel reports “XC REC” which is normally what it does just before It shuts down (it never actually properly shuts down though). I thought maybe it’s overheating......... but the fan never ramps up during this time.

Pain in the ass – wondering whether this card is not compat with my system or some other strange problem. I’ve tried the latest driver from the TBS site but no change.

[cygnusx04]

made a little bit of progress

issue (1), looks like TBS card has lower sensitivity compared to old card. What ever transponder it scans during the detection phase must have weak signal. I can live with this issue as not having any reception issues.

issue (2), this might be a disk space issue. I've had some odd behavior.

once the machine just shut down completely.
twice the machine hung whilst trying to shut down
once I got a message saying disk space full within MCE - then the machine shutdown.
once i got slightly different message about disk space - then machine hung.

Initially I had 56GB free, I've since cleared out and now have 150GB free. I only have one partition (C drive). If I try and record a HD channel after a few minutes I get the disk space message? Yet I seem to have loads of stick space. (only get this when using the new tuner and watching HD channels).

Is this a red herring? bit confused.

[cygnusx04]

also noticed ehrec.exe is starting to consume lots of CPU (entire core). *shrugs* Perhaps I should have changed the tuner a few weeks prior to the Olympics not during it!

[WheresMyArtisan]

Is it overheating? Mine got hot before, but I never had an issue with it until I went HD (DVB-T2 in my case). These HD cards seem to put out quite some heat - they have to do a lot of processing on-board to achieve the decompression.

[cygnusx04]

It's defo working harder with HD and I will add a fan as per our discussions but this isn't the cause of this problem.

I deleted the recorded TV directory including the temp (live buffer area) and recreated. Still no change.

I then added a USB external harddrive and set the recorded TV location to this new drive.

Problem fixed - works perfect. So I must either have some kinda corruption on the original drive or a bad sector. Will do a fresh install on new drive post Olympics. (current drive is on the small side for HD content).

phew........

[WheresMyArtisan]

If you install Speedfan then it also includes some in-depth SMART testing for SATA drives.