ati tv tuner

[John]

DAK why sometimes when I try and open the TV tuner on my desk top it
just brings up the small screen where I can select either composite or
s-video, but the tv tuner seems to be missing?

It's happened quite a lot this. I often have to reboot before the tv
tuner will be there and working. Then every months or two the tv tuner
stops working completely, so I have to reload absolutely everything.

I have the ATI multimedia centre 8.6. Sapphire Radeon AIW 9600 card. I
have tried other versions of the mmc but 8.6 is the only one to work
(with these issues).

Anyone had similar problems?

Would also be interested to know what other ppl with the AIW product
will do in the future as a solution? Will you go with a seperate tv
tuner card and then just a main more powerful graphics card?

Cheers

John

 

[T Shadow]

DAK why sometimes when I try and open the TV tuner on my desk top it
just brings up the small screen where I can select either composite or
s-video, but the tv tuner seems to be missing?

It's happened quite a lot this. I often have to reboot before the tv
tuner will be there and working. Then every months or two the tv tuner
stops working completely, so I have to reload absolutely everything.

I have the ATI multimedia centre 8.6. Sapphire Radeon AIW 9600 card. I
have tried other versions of the mmc but 8.6 is the only one to work
(with these issues).

Anyone had similar problems?

Would also be interested to know what other ppl with the AIW product
will do in the future as a solution? Will you go with a seperate tv
tuner card and then just a main more powerful graphics card?

Cheers

John

Just some thoughts. Maybe your not getting a good install. Make sure you're
getting a proper cleaning and install, do the manual cleaning per
ati.com/install.

MMC saves it's settings when it closes. TV/DTV takes around 6 seconds to
close on my P4 system. If I run something else that accesses the multimedia
hardware before MMC closes it can cause corruption. When I close MMC I wait
for my HDD light to go out then wait a few more seconds until another blip
as it finally closes for real.

It's probably software but you might try cleaning the contacts on the card
and slot.

Been using an HDTV Wonder along with the AIW for ~3years. Naturally the
digital gets a lot more use. The AIW has slightly better analog video so use
it for capture and with the cable box through S-Video. IOW not really using
the analog tuners now. Certainly wouldn't buy anything now because it had an
NTSC tuner.

In general keeping the tuner card separate from graphics is a good idea. I
Bought the AIW because I wanted to use a MATX motherboard in MATX case.
Guess the answer is: it depends. Especially since eventually we'll go to
PCI Express. I'm looking at the HD Home Run, for digital tuners, which is a
network device and doesn't go into the computer at all. Doesn't do analog
though. Digital TV is much closer to being a download than a capture. The
AIW9600XT is up to displaying HDTV and I watch most TV on an HDTV via
network media player so don't really need to upgrade video but would like to
get a faster CPU.