recommended TV tuner board for Vista 64

[John H]

My ATI 600 PCIE TVW card is a failed installation on Vista 64, as discussed in some detail in a thread below. Okay, I will use it on a different (XP) computer.

What tuner card should I buy to replace it on the Vista machine?

Perhaps someone could suggest one that is known to work under Vista 64 Ultimate.

Thank you for your insights.

 

[John H]

Let me ask this question in another way. Has anyone ever gotten a TV tuner to work under Visa Ultimate x64?

If so, please let me know which tuner worked.

Many thanks for your counsel on this.

John

 

[RichFrogg]

Let me ask this question in another way. Has anyone ever gotten a TV tuner to work under Visa Ultimate x64?

If so, please let me know which tuner worked.

Many thanks for your counsel on this.

John

Hi John,

I got this HP Tuner (USB) with my compuer. I have all the Drivers installed and everything is working fine. I haven't been able to connect with my TV yet but I think that it has something to do with Verizon. I have to give them a call. I'll keep you posted.

HP® Official Store — Buy an HP USB TV Tuner (KS523AA#ABA) from HP

 

[scrooge]

before you go out and spend money on a new card did you download the 64 bit drivers for your card? i'm only asking cause i have a old ati 650 pci card that i'm
using with vista and windows 7 and it works fine . i'm guessing my card is alot
older then yours . also did you try installing the drivers in xp
compatibility ? that may also help.
scrooge

 

[John H]

Thank you for your ideas on this. The curious failure of the ATI 600 PCIE is recounted here:

http://www.vistax64.com/media-center/195669-tv-wonder-long-hello.html

The tuner works when it is first installed, but on reboot (which takes about 15 minutes for some reason) the installation is lost. I suspect Vista is swallowing the drivers.

I do have the 64 bit driver, which ATI designates as a 64/32 bit driver.

I don't know a procedure for installing drivers in XP compatibility. Is there a site where I could learn about this?

Thank you for your insights.

John

 

[scrooge]

right click on the downloaded software (drivers) then click properties and you will see compatibility mode . it looks like this .



under the ( run this program in compatibility mode for) use xp sp2

 

[John H]

Thank you for this help. I will try it and see what happens.
Best, John

 

[dskater411]

if it doesn't work for you I use this one with a 64bit vista driver

AVerMedia - AVerTV Combo PCIe (White Box), Internal PCIe HD and standard TV Tuner Product, Vista TV Tuner, Combo TV Tuner, HD TV Tuner, PCI TV Tuners, PCI TV Tuner, TV Tuner, TV Tuners, Media Center, Media Center Edition, MCE 2005

works great and has 2 tuners, 1 for cable and 1 for hdtv broadcast

 

[John H]

Thank you for this recommendation.

In the end I experimented with several legacy 32-bit XP programs to see if I could bring them back to life. For my Canon Lide scanner for example, which will not run under Vista 64, the scanning software did come back up. I was surprised and pleased to see it again. However, the driver could not be made to work with this technique.

What I need is a 64 bit driver for the TV tuner.

Today, without expecting much, I visited the ati site and, lo, they have posted a new driver for the ati 600 pcie TV Tuner. They posted the new driver on December 10.

I made a fresh installation with this new driver, and it certainly
improved the set of problems I am seeing.

Vista will now re-boot normally, instead of stalling for 15-20 minutes and then, somehow, obliterating all memory of the TV tuner installation.

The TV installation still will not "stick" in Vista Media center, for some reason. On reboot it is gone -- no signal. But the TV will run in ATI's catalyst media center. It is available there no matter how many times the system is rebooted.

The ATI TV viewing software is less desirable, perhaps because it tries to emulate a TIVO and this makes for a herky jerky presentation. Vista's media center does not have this problem. However, on reboot after installation of the tuner, the Vista Media Center can no longer find the TV signal.

I will keep tinkering with this thing, and if no progress follows I will try your card. Thank you both for your helpful suggestion.

Best, John

 

[John H]

As an addendum, in case anyone with similar x64 issues should follow this thread in future: After I downloaded and installed the new driver, Vista popped up a window saying something to the effect that the installation might not have succeeded. It then offered to rejigger the installation according to some scheme -- steps not specified.

In the first few attempted installations, which failed, I said okay, and let it do its thing.

This time I guessed what was going on. Vista saw a 32 bit install program, and wanted to pull it in under a 32-bit compatibility umbrella. This would not have helped the 64 bit drivers I am trying to install. So this time I declined Vista's kind offer to reconfigure the software. And ultimately, the installation of the TV tuner worked.

You have to wonder, after the fact, if maybe some of the earlier, bizarre, failed installations went straight off the track at this very point.

On another thread in this forum, folks are discussing the benefits of 64 bit vs 32 bit operating systems.

I am speechless on this topic.

 

[johngalt]

It is entirely possible that that may have been the case. If I don't get an obvious *error* dialog or message when installing something, I then ignore that subsequent 'assistant" that pops up trying to 'help' me - No OS is as smart as I am....

At any rate, glad most of it got working for you. If you were able to do it easily, I'd recommend formatting and installing Vista again - this time installing all the things that never worked before - and seeing how many *more* of them all of a sudden 'work.'

Also, as an aside: I am using the following card *beautifully in XP x64, Vista x64, and Windows 7 x64 - WinTV-HVR-1800 Product description

 

[Bellerophon]

Cinergy 2400i DT

Hi I have 2 Terrtec Cinergy 2400i DT cards in two of my machines and can confirm that they work with Vista and Windows Se7en in both x86 and x64 formats. They are great little cards and integrate well into MCE in all formats.

I would also highly recommend installing the MCE TV Pack 2008, which greatly improves viewing pleasure in Vista (Se7en has it inbuilt)

You also don't need to bother investing in an MCE remote and receiver as the remote and receiver provided operate MCE.

You can find out in more detail here but a brief blurb is here:-

PCI Express card with the power of two tuners

• Internal DVB-T card with tuners
• Future-proof thanks to PCI Express
• Electronic program guide (EPG), teletext and time shifting
• Digital video recorder
• Supports Windows Media Center Edition
• Remote control included

 

[Sl1v3r]

Hi John,

I have to agree that a fresh install of Vista that has never seen your old drivers would probably be best.

But first, you could try removing the card, then going back into Vista, and removing the old hidden hardware (Google removing hidden devices as there is a SET command to do before running Device Manager). Then rerun your Media Center setup to remove all your preferences. You might want to search for the drivers on your hard drive and rename or delete them, so it doesn't load them when you put the card back in.

You could then put the card back in, install the latest drivers and cross your fingers.

If you do end up looking for a new card, avoid the PCI cards (I see you already have PCIe so I doubt you would anyway), but the problem I had with my Hauppauge PVR-500 PCI tuner card was it went all choppy and useless when I went to 4GB of RAM on my Ultimate x64, even though there are x64 drivers. This is not a Hauppauge problem, but an architecture problem with PCI, 4GB+ RAM and 64-bit OS. Anyway, Hauppauge would graciously allow me to upgrade my card to a PCIe card for a small discount, if I lived in the US.

Good Luck!

 

[John H]

Thank you for these product ideas, and for the detailed suggestions on re-installation.

The ati 600 pcie tuner worked for a whole day a couple of days ago -- new record -- and then dropped out again. It is interesting that it tended to work under one media program or the other -- Vista Media Center or ATI's Catalyst Media center. But if the tuner happens to produce television in one program, and you switch to the other program, it won't be there. Sometimes the programs report there is no signal. Sometimes they report there is no TV Tuner. The device manager, of course, shows the Tuner installed.

Following these useful instructions, I set up the device manager to reveal any hidden or ghosted installations:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/163016-ghost-devices-drivers.html

Nothing there. Just the overt installation.

I have found that I can make the tuner work, for a while, by following this procedure.

1) open up the computer and extract the card
2) boot with the card missing. At this point the device manager will not show the tuner (although I have not tried it with the newly modified Device Manager -- maybe there is a ghost in there.
3) Power down. Reinstall the card. Boot up.
4) The TV tuner will work. Device manager shows an installation.

I did this yesterday. The card work worked for an hour or so. This morning on power up the installation was lost.

There is in fact some sort of Vista shell game going on with the driver. The driver shown in the Device Manager is dated last September. The new driver I have been trying to make work was only posted on the ati site on December 10. So there is some backsliding here on the part of la Vista.

Probably I can get a TV to work by buying a new card. The Hauppage has 84 reviews on newegg, most of them positive. And after all, it is just TV. But it is irksome. I have used ati cards for years on several XP installations, dead reliable, no problems.

The new 600 pcie card works so well on those rare occasions when it is actually working, that I am inclined to suspect it is something going on with Vista and not the card circuitry.

Another possibility is some sort of conflict with the graphics card, an ati 5700 (wonderful!) card specialized for CAD work.

Regards, John

 

[John H]

I pulled the card and checked the device manager. Yes, the hidden files view shows a ghost installation. From within the driver tab, I found and attach herewith a screen shot showing "driver details." What is this?

It appears to be a list of 9 directory locations where the old driver is stored. Are these multiple copies? Different components? If I simply uninstall this (old) driver, will it be erased from all these different locations?

Or should I go in after them one by one?

An UPDATE. I looked through these files. The are variously dated. One is from last September, but a couple are from early this month. It appears the whole collection was installed from the most current (Dec 10) download.

I ran the driver uninstall, and then went in an systematically deleted all the installation and other files. As I was doing this, I noticed the computer was becoming happier and faster.

This is the end of the road. I am going to put the card away until February. By then there might be a new driver to try. If not I will probably buy a purely digital TV box, or maybe just a TV. Keep the heat out of my computer, and avoid the OS and driver hassles.

The TV Tuner cards of a prior generation were simple and easy to use. You never had to think about those cards -- kind of like an old two-knob radio. The current cards are more complicated and less successful. If you study the reviews on Newegg, you can get a sense of where the problems are, and there are a lot of problems with this technology, not just with my Diamond ati 600. Thank you all for your ideas and help. If I should get a sudden inspiration or fresh result, I will report it here.

Regards, John.