Resolved TV Tuner

I recently tried a TV tuner in my Windows 7 Media Centre.I used my aerial that has been playing freeview on my TV for over a year.All the channels were detected but most of them say "no signal detected" when I try to play them.This is more of a rant,I was wondering if any of the many boffins on this forum can explain why the tuner does not find my wideband aerial that works perfectly with a freeview box strong enough?Would a signal booster be any good?

 

Could those signals be from distant transmitters? It will find a signal, but it is too weak to display?

Are they High Definition signals and are too distant/weak to display?

I am not sure what a "wideband" antenna is, although you could be on a different system to us, we are on PAL, yours might be NTSC (you don't have a location in your WindowsBBS User Profile). Is the antenna on par with your neighbours?

Try reading in the manual for your TV adapter. Check that the cable connections are good.

Do some websearches for the names of the channels. Here (Australia), we have some forums regarding our local TV reception/problems. See if there are similar forums for you.

Matt

 

My location is Glasgow ,Scotland. So it's PAL.
I have now re-attached the aerial to my Freeview TV and it's working perfectly as it always has.Are the PC TV tuners a lot more demanding or something?I have two aerials in my room and both run Freeview,one from a TV with inbuilt freeview and the other from a freview digital box.Both show perfect and also report excellent signal strength yet when attached to the PC I get about six channels working perfectly and that's it.

 

My guess is the card's tuner is just not as sensitive as your other devices, and requires a stronger signal.

Each channel is a different frequency and the frequency determines the wavelength. Tuners can only be optimized for one frequency, this means to accept a range (band) of frequencies, there will be compromises - the channels closest to the optimized will come in better than those to the extremes of the working range.

Antennas work on wavelength, which is a physical length as determined by the frequency, and the Laws of Physics. Antennas have a specific physical length. This means antennas can only be optimized for one frequency too, and for any frequency off that center, the signal strength strength will be compromised.

As noted, interference, reflections, and barriers can degrade the signal. The six you get perfectly are closest to the ideal of the tuner and antenna, and provide enough signal strength. Your only solution for the other channels is to reorient your antenna - move it higher, move it closer to a window on the side of the house closest to the transmitter, move it away from large metalic objects like file cabinets, eliminate walls (which are barriers in themselves, but also typically contain wiring and metal pipes that can cause interference).

 

Thanks for the replies.........I think it's quite an old card,I looked up the PEAK website and both it's PCI cards have been discontinued.
Do you think I'd get better results if I find a new usb tuner?

 

Just being old does not mean poor quality. I would expect Hauppauge's (for example) high-end card from a few years ago to have better sensitivity and S/N ratios than Hauppauge's entry level card from today. That's not to say old electronics don't degrade, they do, but even that process is affected by the initial quality of the parts, design, construction, and calibration/tuning/compromises.

 

I don't want to burst your bubble, but I was looking at the reviews about usb tuner (ADS) and they are not good, but I suppose if the store where you buy it has a good return policy like best buy or future shop, you can give it a try and see for yourself!

Are you sure the Media Center tuner settings are configured properly?

I use an Hauppauge Pci card and it works great (must admit I'm on cable)

 

I'll probably just give it a miss for a while,I have a Sky+ box in the same room as my PC anyway.I really just wanted to see if the recording would work good.For no other reason really than to see if it worked.

Thanks again for the replies,I'll probably get round to trying it again in the future.