Blackgold DVB-T cards - tuning problems - EMI in LC10M case?

[irrotational]

apologies if this is in the wrong place - its only partly to do with media portal and partly to do with my htpc computer so in balance i stuck it here. In the hope that someone may have had a similar experience.

I have just built an htpc - windows is installed and everything seems fine.

I have installed two of the above cards and MP is having real trouble picking up channels from the autotune. As it scans frequencies it says "signal found scanning for channels" but then does not find any.

The proprietary software that came with the cards also has the same problem - in fact it did manage to find a few channels and display BBC4 for about 5 mins before it dissapeared again. HOWEVER i have installed one of the cards in my main computer and it works fine! all channels are found with good signal quality - i am literally swapping the cable between the two machines so its not a signal issue.

In the HTPC windows is reporting that the tuner cards are working fine, and there are no conflicts.

The only thing i can think at the moment is EMI in the case is interfering with the cards? I have a silverstone 10m case with vfd unit, and i didnt fit the metal ring around the front IO cables as it suggests in the instructions - could this be it? I also have the usb cable from the vfd unit passing under the card?

Could it be a MOBO/driver issue given that the card has partialy worked?

I am stumped and any help/pointers will be gratefully recieved :-(

[CodeMonkey]

Originally Posted by irrotational

apologies if this is in the wrong place - its only partly to do with media portal and partly to do with my htpc computer so in balance i stuck it here. In the hope that someone may have had a similar experience.

I have just built an htpc - windows is installed and everything seems fine.

I have installed two of the above cards and MP is having real trouble picking up channels from the autotune. As it scans frequencies it says "signal found scanning for channels" but then does not find any.

The proprietary software that came with the cards also has the same problem - in fact it did manage to find a few channels and display BBC4 for about 5 mins before it dissapeared again. HOWEVER i have installed one of the cards in my main computer and it works fine! all channels are found with good signal quality - i am literally swapping the cable between the two machines so its not a signal issue.

In the HTPC windows is reporting that the tuner cards are working fine, and there are no conflicts.

The only thing i can think at the moment is EMI in the case is interfering with the cards? I have a silverstone 10m case with vfd unit, and i didnt fit the metal ring around the front IO cables as it suggests in the instructions - could this be it? I also have the usb cable from the vfd unit passing under the card?

Could it be a MOBO/driver issue given that the card has partialy worked?

I am stumped and any help/pointers will be gratefully recieved :-(

When I have weird things like that happen I usually:

1) Make sure the driver versions are identical on the two machines.
2) Make sure I test apples to apples, so in this case try using only 1 card in the HTPC machine (and make sure its the same card that works in your main machine).
3) Try different slots in the HTPC machine.

If that doesn't make it work, I usually find that gasoline and a match works pretty well

[irrotational]

lol! thanks for the advice about the match :-)

I have tried only 1 card in the htpc and that doesn't make any difference. When i had two cards in together they both had the same problem (i.e. put the aerial in card 1 - try tuning and no joy, put aerial in card two - try tuning and no joy) so I'm assuming that they both work - I will swap them to double check.

I also have the same drivers in both machines, although one has xp home and one is xp corporate....

The main reason i think its interference is that the card has worked a little bit and only intermittently so it shouldnt be a duff card or resource conflict?