Problem with Media Centre TV

[Mark]

Hello

I have Windows XP Media Centre Edition with a TV tuner.
I've set up the TV through Media Centre to take a signal
from the main arial. As far as I can tell (and I've
checked several times) all the right wires are in the
right places. The TV has only tuned three of the available
5 terrestrial channels, and only in black and white, and
without sound. I can't find any information about retuning
in any of the guides online, so I'm stumped.

The hardware was bought in the US but I live in the UK.
Could the hardware be incompatible with the UK signal, or
is there a way for me to tune the TV correctly? The signal
is not particularly strong in my area, but I've hooked it
up through a booster to no effect.

Thanks for your advice.

Mark
email: markjefferson_uk(remove this bit)@yahoo.co.uk

 

[Graham Hughes, MVP Digital Media]

You may be better posing this in the media centre newsgroup. I'd add more
info on the products you have as well. I'm not sure if hardware is region
specific on these items, but a ntsc signal tried to be played back on a
older pal tv often comes out in B/W. Then again, so does a composite signal
via a s-video cable. I wouldn't have thought either of these would make a
difference on a pc set up though.

 

[Mark Salloway]

Hi Mark
The hardware could be the black and white problem. Certainly with the common
Hauppauge WinTV PVR tuners that are often used in Media Center PC's there is
a separate NTSC and PAL/SECAM version with minor hardware changes. Very few
cards support all standards.

If you know the model number of the card in your system it might be worth
checking with the manufacture that it supports PAL. If you've switched the
system location to United Kingdom in Control Panel > Regional and Language
Options that I think that should be enough to tell Media Center 2004 its
running in a PAL country.

If your using the recommended line-up the first 5 channels may not be
correct, have you tried any of the channel variations which could be in
channels 6 to 12?
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=555161

Mark