Need al little help getting my new ati hdtv pci card to sense HDTV channels

[MidnightMike]

I bought this about 4 days ago brand new, I had installed it with the drivers waiting for it to initilize in my pc.
I have comcast digital cable with HDTV support even 9 local channels have gone hdtv compatible and my ati hdtv card cannot pick up anything....
Is their a picture guide or video on how to hook up my digital box to my tv tuner card ? also before that I am having very bad problems with 80% of most ati mmc versions all of them say it can't detect the tv application in mmc and crashes afterwords, last I can't get any audio from the tv tuner card and this pci card does not have aux cable or someway of telling you how to get sound even from my old tv3xp card that has the aux cable and gets sound just fine.

Please help me out if you can, I don't want to feel like I wasted 30.00 bucks on this blasted thing...

P.S.

whats a good tv capturing suite I can use besides chris tv and windvr 3.7 ?

[yoda313]

Try using a standard antenna first. A powered one is best, doesn't have to be a "hdtv" antenna - just any run of the mill powered antenna.

Make sure you can get it going with a normal antenna - you have to select antenna in the settup menu instead of cable for this test.

If this does work than your card is in good shape.

There is a chance your cable company is doing something with the locals that isn't letting you get it clearly on your card. But do the plain antenna first to make sure the card is working properly.

[MidnightMike]

Yeah it's working but there is NO sound if I can get this problem fixed before we try the HDTV and digital cable box with HDTV then will finally be going somewhere.
I'll ask comcast about my HDTV channels and see what they say, but feel free to reply.

Which ati mmc version is stable enough to run both antenna and digital anntena along with having the option to choose from composite ouput ?

Also if I choose ati composite switch and hook up the digital cable box to it via through rca cables can tv tuner card then automatically detect all digital channels on its own or will that not be a option ?

[edDV]

Which ATI card, the older HDTV Wonder?

It won't work at all with cable* (has no QAM tuner), only for over the air ATSC. It wasn't that good a card. Read the user reviews.

To find probable OTA channels,put your address into
http://antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx to find distance and direction to local TV stations.


*except baseband SD S-video and RCA following the cable box tuner.

[MidnightMike]

http://cgi.ebay.com/BRAND-NEW-ATI-HDTV-WONDER-NTSC-PCI-TV-CARD-R-10827_W0QQitemZ200240...742.m153.l1262

This is what I have inside my pc.

[edDV]

Get your local DTV stations off antenaweb.org and note direction and distance.

I the stations are close (less than 25 miles),an indoor antenna may work. If distant, you will need a roof top antenna just like normal TV.

Point antenna in the direction of the TV towers and scan.

[MidnightMike]

Well I have real good news and a little bad news.
The good news, I turned on my computer this morning and my ati tv tuner card opened automatically and started blasting sound from my sound blaster card and it had scanned 97 channels total including my premium channels that I have with my digital cable subscription.
The bad news comcast cannot figure out if they offer digital cable without digital box for digital tv tuner cards he laughed about it for 3 minutes straight and then he stopped and said ask technical support they would be able to better serve me for that option I slammed the phone down because I wasn't in the mood to be on the phone for the next 3 hours plus I have other work related things to take care of later on at home...

My final 2 questions.

What ATI multimedia center version should I try ? 9.08 does not offer the ability to use my S Video composite cable and the video is very jumpy and will lock up if I switch to another program on my computer.

edv, the antenna is gonna be out of the question I can't afford to mess around with that stuff plus I don't want to go back to stone age days again trying to get a decent display without me smacking my pc and the antenna every 10 minutes if the signal goes out...

[DarrellS]

Where you screwed up was buying this card on ebay without all the accessories. This card comes with a TV software from Cyberlink (Power Cinema). It is not compatible with the old MMC software from ATI.

As for not wanting to buy an antenna, that is the only way that you will be able to pick up over the air digital channels. You don't have to buy an outdoor antenna if you live close enough to the towers. I bought an amplified indoor from Walmart for $30 to use with my Hauppauge HVR1800.

The ATI card does not totally support QAM tuning. All you can get off of cable with XP are analog channels. You need Vista and the catalyst media center. That's why I took mine back and got the Hauppauge card.

[edDV]

As DarrellS said, you can only scan SD analog cable channels with this card. It can't tune "digital" SD or HD cable.

It can tune ATSC over the air broadcasts. For that you need to use an antenna. The size of the antenna depends on distance to the TV towers and line of sight. The antennaweb site will give you this infromation.

Bottom line,
Return or resell the card on ebay. It is useless to you except as an analog SD tuner.