United Kingdom
Hi
I just wanted to give everyone here the benefit of my experience I had with getting my tunercard to work.
I originally decided to built my HTPC back in February, after getting tired of a unstable Medion PVR I used, and started to order all the parts needed, I aimed to built my HTPC based on a Asus Pundit P1-AH2. I ended up with a AMD Athlon 3500+ EE, 1gb of ram, and a 250gb HD. I also ordered the aforementioned tuner card. Together with a DVD burner, and a MCE remote, it all came to roughly 250£, which I though was a pretty good deal.
How dissappointed was I that it didnt work at all, it would scan and find some channels, but then none of the channels would work. After a week of messing around, changing drivers and reinstalling windows, I reluctantly send back the card to get a replacement. Sadly, the online shop (Aria-PC) took almost two months to send me a replacement, and that replacement didnt work again!! Same issues all over.
Pinnacle customer support is also a bit useless, no telephone support, only email, and the only advice they gave me was to install latest drivers which I had already done.
Growing really frustrated at the issue, I suddenly discovered that the TunerCard was sharing a IRQ with the integrated Graphics Card!!! I couldnt believe it, might this have been the problem all along? The last time I had heard of IRQ issues was back 12 years ago on my first PC's Soundblaster PRO!! You cant change IRQ assignments in windows though anymore, the only thing one can do is try another PCI slot that doesnt share a IRQ. As the Asus motherboard only has two PCI slots, I swapped the card over, resolving the IRQ conflict, et voila, suddenly it worked perfectly!
So I just write this post here to warn everyone that even in this modern times where IRQ conflicts should be a thing of the past, they can still creep up on you and make you waste over two months and countless hours of hairpulling!
I just wanted to give everyone here the benefit of my experience I had with getting my tunercard to work.
I originally decided to built my HTPC back in February, after getting tired of a unstable Medion PVR I used, and started to order all the parts needed, I aimed to built my HTPC based on a Asus Pundit P1-AH2. I ended up with a AMD Athlon 3500+ EE, 1gb of ram, and a 250gb HD. I also ordered the aforementioned tuner card. Together with a DVD burner, and a MCE remote, it all came to roughly 250£, which I though was a pretty good deal.
How dissappointed was I that it didnt work at all, it would scan and find some channels, but then none of the channels would work. After a week of messing around, changing drivers and reinstalling windows, I reluctantly send back the card to get a replacement. Sadly, the online shop (Aria-PC) took almost two months to send me a replacement, and that replacement didnt work again!! Same issues all over.
Pinnacle customer support is also a bit useless, no telephone support, only email, and the only advice they gave me was to install latest drivers which I had already done.
Growing really frustrated at the issue, I suddenly discovered that the TunerCard was sharing a IRQ with the integrated Graphics Card!!! I couldnt believe it, might this have been the problem all along? The last time I had heard of IRQ issues was back 12 years ago on my first PC's Soundblaster PRO!! You cant change IRQ assignments in windows though anymore, the only thing one can do is try another PCI slot that doesnt share a IRQ. As the Asus motherboard only has two PCI slots, I swapped the card over, resolving the IRQ conflict, et voila, suddenly it worked perfectly!
So I just write this post here to warn everyone that even in this modern times where IRQ conflicts should be a thing of the past, they can still creep up on you and make you waste over two months and countless hours of hairpulling!