Simviation Forums

Hello all! I'm in need of some help here. My father has an HP m9150 pavilion elite w/ MS media center running on Vista Home. He had me switch the TV tuner from analog to digital last weekend. However, the tuner will not tune in the multi-cast channels like 20-1, 20-2, 20-3, etc. Instead it will only tune to 20, which is a real buggar if you want to watch the program on 20-2. Any ideas? The HP site was of no use at all.
It would also be nice to have some sort of guide explaining all the various functions for the remote control. There is nothing in the manuals or on the HP site.

Thanks and cheers

The Horror...

I had an HP Pavilion Desktop Media Center PC too and I can tell you that it is a pain. After a month of getting TV tuners and going to repairs i finally gave up on it as it didn't work. A year later i discovered a small piece of paper inside the manual that said NOTICE: NOT ALL TV TUNERS WILL WORK WITH THIS SYSTEM

I don't know if you had yours included or not but somehow I had the same problem. i could not tune.

With out knowing anything about the model tuner you're using, and just off the top of my head, did you rescan for new channels since you switched source modes?

The Horror...

I had an HP Pavilion Desktop Media Center PC too and I can tell you that it is a pain. After a month of getting TV tuners and going to repairs i finally gave up on it as it didn't work. A year later i discovered a small piece of paper inside the manual that said NOTICE: NOT ALL TV TUNERS WILL WORK WITH THIS SYSTEM

I don't know if you had yours included or not but somehow I had the same problem. i could not tune.

Yeah, it came with the card installed. It tunes just fine. I just can't get all the sub-channels in digital mode. Whatever channel (x)-1 is, that's what the tuner broadcasts.
I couldn't believe there wasn't even some sort of user guide for the remote. Everything I ever owned that came with a remote had a description and function of all the buttons.

With out knowing anything about the model tuner you're using, and just off the top of my head, did you rescan for new channels since you switched source modes?

Absolutely. It scanned in the channels and program info just fine. The problem is whe I go to channel 20 it shows whatever program on 20-1 but lists info for 20-2. (20.2 is the default anaolg channel here)
Without opening the thing up I have no idea of the tuner card either. I'm assuming HP installed the cheapest card they could get their hands on. I do know the video card is the NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT.

Okay here's what I learned: MS Media center receives all guide info from the analog NTSC signal. This explains why guide info is occasionally wrong when it comes to digital channels and subchannels.
This seems to only affect dual analog/digital TV cards, as I understand it. The guide data is based on what the the FCC sends MS. It's been that way since XP Media Center and they have no desire to fix it until the next OS comes out. MS sees it as a data issue and not a bug.
MS could get the digital data from the company that owns Zap2it, but there seems to be an issue over rights. Even then they would have to change how Media Center retrieves the data, which we already know they aren't going to do.
There is a way to add subchannels, but it's only temporary. As soon as the guide retrieves info those added channels will get deleted.
This info was provided by someone at Microsoft.