WMC Alternative? Willing to pay for a good one!

[The Big Cheese]

Hi everyone

I'm using W10 now and since WMC has bit the dust I'm looking for an alternative.

I'm in the UK and have tried a couple of the alternatives, NextPVR and Kodi and they just don't seem to work well. They are fiddly to set up and when they are set up they don't seem to find everything. I have NextPVR installed now and it's not picking up channel 1 or 2 and there is no sound at all.

I have installed the latest drivers for my capture card which is a Blackgold dual digital TV tuner so I don't think it's that.

It was all so easy under WMC, everything just worked, and worked perfectly! The only problem was editing the .wtv HD files it produced, but at least it captured and recorded.


So I'm wondering oh-forum-of-all-knowledge...is there paid software that does the job of WMC, does it well and is compatible in the UK?

I've seen mentioned on here "Chris-TV", I can't really find any reviews of it online, but looking at their website I'm not fond of their pricing...buy the basics and then buy these addons for radio etc., seems a bit disingenuous.


I'd love to hear any suggestions you may have!


Thanks very much.

[usually_quiet]

Maybe DVBViewer Pro.

[The Big Cheese]

Thank you for your reply, that was very quick!

Initial impressions of DVBViewer are good, but unfortunately it doesn't state that it supports my Blackgold TV card.

[usually_quiet]

If your BlackGold card is WMC compatible, it has standard BDA drivers for its digital TV tuners. That is normally enough for compatibility with third-party software for viewing or recording DTV.

I am somewhat surprised that NextPVR did not work. The developer is in New Zealand, so he would be familiar with DVB tuners. I have set up (and used) NextPVR in the USA for ATSC TV tuners and CableCARD tuners with no difficulty.

[The Big Cheese]

Hi, thank you for your reply again!

Hmm, that's interesting if it should be compatible.

After your link to the software page I've been having a bit of a browse and have found SmartDVB which is free but has very good reviews.

I've managed to get it fired up and tuned with one of the two tuners on the card and have been rather surprised to find that, again, some of the channels are missing!

1 & 2 are missing (but their HD equivalents are there) and some other channels as well. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me...