Vista Media Center: "Tuner Unavailable" while Trying to Set Up New Satellite Box

I am running an HP Pavilion m9077c with a ViXS PureTV-U 48B0 tuner
(NTSC/ATSC) under Vista Home Premium. I just had my DirecTV service upgraded
from standard to HD and now cannot reconfigure Media Center for the new box.

Once I got the new satellite box installed, I reran the TV setup wizard,
which worked fine until I needed to input the code for my satellite remote,
when I ran up against the "you can't make more than 31 tries to get the
right code" feature. Since then, every time I rerun the wizard, it runs for
about 30 seconds then gives a "tuner unavailable" error when the it tries to
get the necessary information for the Program Guide.

I have tried everything I could think of--restarting the computer, resetting
my Internet connections, power-cycling the satellite box, etc. I also
followed every step HP recommended for "can't find tuner" on its help site,
without success (I could neither install updated drivers for the tuner nor
use System Restore). I've had no problems watching TV on Media Center until
now. Any ideas as to what could be wrong? Is this related to the
remote-code-tries limit?

 

You will not actually be able to watch the HD content from your box in true
HD, with Media Center. You might get them down converted if you're using
S-Video, component or composite, but they won't be in HD. Currently, the
only way to get HD programming, other than over-the-air, is via one or two
Digital Cable Tuners, from ATI. There are plans to launch DirecTV Support,
very similar to Digital Cable, but its not out yet, and as far as I'm aware,
there's no due date set.

As for the tuner, make sure you're installing the driver for the analog
portion of the card, as that's what MCE will use to interface to your
DirecTV box.

 

I don't know if this will help but from what I've read the ViXS Pure TV
tuners are made by Vista View. It might be best to consult their web site
for the latest drivers and include searches for the Vista View to find
answers to issues.

http://www.vistaview.tv/product-list.html

 

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, the problem is that I can't get MCE to
even begin to set up for the new box. The "tuner unavailable" error appears
during the "Download TV Setup Options" step of the wizard. As the message
indicates, I have repeatedly restarted my PC and still get this error. This
started after I tried the maximum 31 times to find the correct remote code,
leading me to think it may be a "lockout" of some kind. There is nothing
wrong with the DirecTV box--I was seeing a picture in the small screen
that's displayed during the "select remote code" step--and I've confirmed I
have the current drivers for the tuner, which Device Manager shows as
working properly.

 

Update: I believe I've confirmed that the problem is within MCE itself, not
with the tuner. I disabled the tuner in Device Manager and rebooted my PC,
then reran Set Up TV Signal and got a "no tuner installed" error. I then
re-enabled the tuner, rebooted, restarted MCE, and got "tuner unavailable."
If there's anyone who has an idea what's going on, I'd appreciate any advice
I can get before paying MS $59 to solve the problem.

 

Have you added any other DVD playing programs or Codecs to your system?
Using the following Utility does the MS MPEG2 decoder show up as the default
decoder?

 

Here is the link.

http://mediacenterexpert.blogspot.com/2006/07/vista-media-center-decoder-utility.html