I have been really happy with my Freeview HD tuner card Blackgold’s BGT3620 (apart from the MCEBuddy issues). Having Freeview HD in Windows Media Center is great and so much better than the SD content. However I have had a couple of what seemed random issues recently, every so often one of the tuners on the dual tuner card seems to fail. I get the “No Tuner of Signal Error” message in Media Center when I try to record and I found that a reboot didn’t seem to fix it. The first time it happened I took the card out and re-seated it which seemed to fix it and since then I found turning the PC off and giving it a couple of minutes before rebooting also fixed it
It turns out what there is a thread going on about this on TGB and Mark Weston alerted me to the issue. Blackgold are investigating the problem but it looks like its a problem with Windows/Windows Media Center and Microsoft are aware of the issue. Whether it can be fixed by a workaround by Blackgold or we have to wait for Microsoft time will tell. I suspect Blackgold could get a fix out quicker than Microsoft so I hope they can get it sorted as its starting to drive down the WAF of my system.
No tuner or no signal error. This is a Windows/Media Center issue that was confirmed by Microsoft late last week. News on this issue is what BG have been holding out for. The resolution is not straight forward. BG are looking into the posibility of a work around that they could implement at the driver level. But it is not clear that there is a work around as the problem stems from a higher level in the OS. They will spend another week working on it – the feasibility of a driver level solution that is – then issue an email to all customers to explain the situation. If a driver update cannot fix this, we will have to wait for a Microsoft update :-(.
Lets hope we get a resolution soon as I think this is one of the best tuner cards available for Windows Media Center
9 thoughts on “Blackgold Investigating BGT3620/Windows Media Center Tuner Issue”
Ian, this could be an issue that DVB Logic could help with since using DVB Link would mean Media Center isn’t talking directly to the card. Could be something worth investigating.
Is this a BlackGold only problem – i am experiencing similar problems when placing 2 PCI dual tuners in the same system. It will start working great then lose tuners and no signal errors. I am interested that its an OS issue. but is it to do with HD and Blackgold or something that could be inheriant in other tuners?
just an update, following a re-test today my system had dropped one of the two tuners on the card as media centre complains with error -xxxxxxxxx? when you try and record 2 programs at the same time.
so much for the work round! Don’t like re-installing as you have to re-scan channels etc that a pain.
Anyone else got any ideas?
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I have been really happy with my Freeview HD tuner card Blackgold’s BGT3620 (apart from the MCEBuddy issues). Having Freeview HD in Windows Media Center is great and so much better than the SD content. However I have had a couple of what seemed random issues recently, every so often one of the tuners on the dual tuner card seems to fail. I get the “No Tuner of Signal Error” message in Media Center when I try to record and I found that a reboot didn’t seem to fix it. The first time it happened I took the card out and re-seated it which seemed to fix it and since then I found turning the PC off and giving it a couple of minutes before rebooting also fixed it
Ian, this could be an issue that DVB Logic could help with since using DVB Link would mean Media Center isn’t talking directly to the card. Could be something worth investigating.
Jason your right, I think it would.
I get the same on my BGT3595, so I think it’s not just isolated to the 3620.
When this happened twice over the weekend the wife was like ‘what now’, its issues like this that make me doubt Media Center!
TRY THIS!! it worked for me!
I had the same problem with my ixl, first I tried the latest driver (V8) from blackgold’s site but it was still the same. (not good for wife acceptant factor)
Then I found this http://tranquilpc-support.co.uk/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/240/111/ixl-media-centre-update-1
Here it describes the update and also a reg change to disable the media centre scan as below.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\BackgroundScanner]
“LastPeriodicScanHighDateTime”=dword:01c9ee86
“LastPeriodicScanLowDateTime”=dword:cd522408
“PeriodicScanIntervalSeconds”=dword:7fffffff
“PeriodicScanEnabled”=dword:0
As I said Worked for me!
Maybe a good work around for now until we get a proper fix.
thanks, i will give it a try. I also have a problem with BBC 1HD no longer working, it used to and the other channels still work
for me it was the system would drop 1 tuner (can’t record 2 channels) and then nothing. no tuner!
Is this a BlackGold only problem – i am experiencing similar problems when placing 2 PCI dual tuners in the same system. It will start working great then lose tuners and no signal errors. I am interested that its an OS issue. but is it to do with HD and Blackgold or something that could be inheriant in other tuners?
just an update, following a re-test today my system had dropped one of the two tuners on the card as media centre complains with error -xxxxxxxxx? when you try and record 2 programs at the same time.
so much for the work round! Don’t like re-installing as you have to re-scan channels etc that a pain.
Anyone else got any ideas?