had WinMCE and TV tuner, but decided to rebuild the OS using WinXP Pro -- now I'd like to have an op

[albert]

I have a Gateway machine that had MCE, but I use it primarily for business
and decided to rebuild/reinstall using WinXP Pro. I really had no use for
all the media bells and whistles that MCE offered me. However, although
not of great practical importance to my needs, I would like to have the
tuner operational on the machine [and the FM radio would be nice also]. [If
the Mets get further along into the baseball playoffs next year, I will most
definitely want a TV tuner........ then again, the Mets have been breaking
my heart forever, <sigh>so maybe it won't be that important to me next
October</sigh>]

Back in the days of Win95, I had an ATI AIW card [ironically, with much less
memory than my present card and machine, that AIW software could do more of
the TV functions I wanted than the MCE software that came on this
machine --- like monitoring multiple TV channels, ].

The machine has a Powercolor tuner
http://support.gateway.com/s/vidcard/TVTuner/104185/104185nv.shtml

Win Win XP Pro, I have everything I want, except that the Tuner no longer
works -- no software to run it. I have installed the ATI driver for the
card --
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?st=pn&param=104185
-- but presently, according to the Device Manager, the OS doesn't even know
the card is in the machine.

I'd like go, at least initially, as cheap as possible [it ain't baseball
season]. Is there a way to pull the [just barely] adequate Tuner software
off my Gateway WinMCE disk ? If so, how do I identify what executable
constitute that functionality?

If there isn't a practical use for my MCE OEM disk, then I am guessing I
should get an aftermarket program.

I was hoping to find, at ATI support pages, or on the Powercolor support
pages, freely downloadable tuner software for the Powercolor -- but I was
unable to find anything at either site that I could download. It may be
there, but I could not find it.

So, if there is nothing I can use on the MCE disk, or download from
Powercolor's or ATI sites, then what would you recommend for my Powercolor
card?

These are the aftermarket programs I am considering. If I read their
support info correctly, both would work with my card

[less expensive]
http://www.ctpvr.com/
[more expensive]
http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/default.asp

Your comment and suggestions as to what I might do/try are much appreciated.

TIA
albert

 

[T Shadow]

I have a Gateway machine that had MCE, but I use it primarily for business
and decided to rebuild/reinstall using WinXP Pro. I really had no use for
all the media bells and whistles that MCE offered me. However, although
not of great practical importance to my needs, I would like to have the
tuner operational on the machine [and the FM radio would be nice also]. [If
the Mets get further along into the baseball playoffs next year, I will most
definitely want a TV tuner........ then again, the Mets have been breaking
my heart forever, <sigh>so maybe it won't be that important to me next
October</sigh>]

Back in the days of Win95, I had an ATI AIW card [ironically, with much less
memory than my present card and machine, that AIW software could do more of
the TV functions I wanted than the MCE software that came on this
machine --- like monitoring multiple TV channels, ].

The machine has a Powercolor tuner
http://support.gateway.com/s/vidcard/TVTuner/104185/104185nv.shtml

Win Win XP Pro, I have everything I want, except that the Tuner no longer
works -- no software to run it. I have installed the ATI driver for the
card --
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?st=pn&param=104185
-- but presently, according to the Device Manager, the OS doesn't even know
the card is in the machine.

I'd like go, at least initially, as cheap as possible [it ain't baseball
season]. Is there a way to pull the [just barely] adequate Tuner software
off my Gateway WinMCE disk ? If so, how do I identify what executable
constitute that functionality?

If there isn't a practical use for my MCE OEM disk, then I am guessing I
should get an aftermarket program.

I was hoping to find, at ATI support pages, or on the Powercolor support
pages, freely downloadable tuner software for the Powercolor -- but I was
unable to find anything at either site that I could download. It may be
there, but I could not find it.

So, if there is nothing I can use on the MCE disk, or download from
Powercolor's or ATI sites, then what would you recommend for my Powercolor
card?

These are the aftermarket programs I am considering. If I read their
support info correctly, both would work with my card

[less expensive]
http://www.ctpvr.com/
[more expensive]
http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/default.asp

Your comment and suggestions as to what I might do/try are much appreciated.

TIA
albert

http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html
XP>TV Tuner>550PRO

Good Luck

 

[David Lee]

I have a Gateway machine that had MCE, but I use it primarily for
business and decided to rebuild/reinstall using WinXP Pro. I really
had no use for all the media bells and whistles that MCE offered me.
However, although not of great practical importance to my needs, I
would like to have the tuner operational on the machine [and the FM
radio would be nice also]. [If the Mets get further along into the
baseball playoffs next year, I will most definitely want a TV
tuner........ then again, the Mets have been breaking my heart
forever, <sigh>so maybe it won't be that important to me next
October</sigh>]

Back in the days of Win95, I had an ATI AIW card [ironically, with
much less memory than my present card and machine, that AIW software
could do more of the TV functions I wanted than the MCE software that
came on this machine --- like monitoring multiple TV channels, ].

The machine has a Powercolor tuner
http://support.gateway.com/s/vidcard/TVTuner/104185/104185nv.shtml

Win Win XP Pro, I have everything I want, except that the Tuner no
longer works -- no software to run it. I have installed the ATI
driver for the card --
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?st=pn&param=10418
5 -- but presently, according to the Device Manager, the OS doesn't
even know the card is in the machine.

I'd like go, at least initially, as cheap as possible [it ain't
baseball season]. Is there a way to pull the [just barely] adequate
Tuner software off my Gateway WinMCE disk ? If so, how do I identify
what executable constitute that functionality?

If there isn't a practical use for my MCE OEM disk, then I am guessing
I should get an aftermarket program.

I was hoping to find, at ATI support pages, or on the Powercolor
support pages, freely downloadable tuner software for the Powercolor
-- but I was unable to find anything at either site that I could
download. It may be there, but I could not find it.

So, if there is nothing I can use on the MCE disk, or download from
Powercolor's or ATI sites, then what would you recommend for my
Powercolor card?

These are the aftermarket programs I am considering. If I read their
support info correctly, both would work with my card

[less expensive]
http://www.ctpvr.com/
[more expensive]
http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/default.asp

Your comment and suggestions as to what I might do/try are much
appreciated.

TIA
albert

If you have Winamp, there's a tv plugin available at:

www.tv-plugin.com

It's free and there are 2 flavors depending on whether you want to
record or not. I definitely prefer it to the ATI program.

Dave

 

[albert]

I have a Gateway machine that had MCE, but I use it primarily for
business and decided to rebuild/reinstall using WinXP Pro. I really
had no use for all the media bells

[less expensive]
http://www.ctpvr.com/
[more expensive]
http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/default.asp

Your comment and suggestions as to what I might do/try are much
appreciated.

TIA
albert

If you have Winamp, there's a tv plugin available at:

www.tv-plugin.com

It's free and there are 2 flavors depending on whether you want to
record or not. I definitely prefer it to the ATI program.

Dave

Dave,

I do have Winamp. I went to your link, downloaded the plugin, and it does
work. Excellent. It is not superglitzy, but it serves my present needs
just fine. Now I have a bunch of settings to learn about and play around
with. Since I use an indoor rabbit-ears antenna as my source, I need to
learn what frequencies the local NYC TV stations broadcast on [the automatic
scan does not pick them all up, the "full scan" gathers so many settings as
to be very impractical].

Thanks for the link and advice. Now I have the basic tuner I wanted, and
need to learn a few new things to better understand it, the
broadcast/receive process, etc. So, theoretically, I'll get a little bit
smarter. Excellent.

a

 

[albert]

http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html
XP>TV Tuner>550PRO

Good Luck

Thank you T Shadow. This got real close. Downloaded and installed
everything -- but there's a glitch -- the tuner program upgrade wants to see
its previous version install -- otherwise it refuses to install. So I'll
have to find another alternative to make my TV tuner card operational.

a

 

[Barry Watzman]

I'm still not entirely clear on why you pulled MCE. MCE ***IS*** XP
Pro, with one missing item (domain networking) and the Media Center.
But the standard, garden variety Windows XP desktop is still present,
and with a mouse click in a check box, you can make the standard Windows
desktop the default user interface, so that "Media Center" never even
comes up, at all, unless you start it manually. And in any case you can
switch back and forth between Media Center and the Windows desktop with
just a mouse click. Some people don't know this, they think that Media
Center only has the Media Center interface, and they pull when there
really was no reason to do so. If you select the Windows desktop as the
default interface and don't start media center, the Media Center stuff
does not run in the background and has no negative impact on the
performance of the system.

I have a Gateway machine that had MCE, but I use it primarily for
business and decided to rebuild/reinstall using WinXP Pro. I really
had no use for all the media bells

[less expensive]
http://www.ctpvr.com/
[more expensive]
http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/default.asp

Your comment and suggestions as to what I might do/try are much
appreciated.

TIA
albert

If you have Winamp, there's a tv plugin available at:

www.tv-plugin.com

It's free and there are 2 flavors depending on whether you want to
record or not. I definitely prefer it to the ATI program.

Dave

Dave,

I do have Winamp. I went to your link, downloaded the plugin, and it does
work. Excellent. It is not superglitzy, but it serves my present needs
just fine. Now I have a bunch of settings to learn about and play around
with. Since I use an indoor rabbit-ears antenna as my source, I need to
learn what frequencies the local NYC TV stations broadcast on [the automatic
scan does not pick them all up, the "full scan" gathers so many settings as
to be very impractical].

Thanks for the link and advice. Now I have the basic tuner I wanted, and
need to learn a few new things to better understand it, the
broadcast/receive process, etc. So, theoretically, I'll get a little bit
smarter. Excellent.

a

 

[albert]

Good question --

Well, I am not much of a TV watcher, and I have a stereo and tv in the same
room. I have no need for a PVR system.

I'd originally intended to build an XP Pro system, and used the MCE only as
an experiment. I was curious about MCE, I like trying out new toys, and I
got a great deal on a machine that came preloaded with MCE.

I did learn alot about MCE. I now understand how it would make a decent,
not great, front end for some aspects of a home theatre setup. I think it
was designed with maximum idiot-proof-ability in mind [of course, life has
taught me that there is no such thing as idiot-proofing]. I am more of a
"get under the hood and tweak it" person. Yes, I did have all the MCE
features turned off - so that I had a conventional desktop, etc. I did
experiment, using msconfig, with turning off everything under the startup
tab.

Because the MCE was a preload deal, with a Gateway MCE disk -- I discovered,
to my disappointment, that some repair options [e.g., CD-ROM disk access to
the repair console, ability to do a repair installation] were crippled. It
might be possible for me to learn how to get around those limitations [the
console is on the disk] -- but it seemed a waste of time to do the searching
and learning, when I could go back to my unused Pro version where I knew how
and what to do if and when problems arise.

My expectations for the tuner software were skewed by earlier experience I
have with a Win95 ATI AIW card -- which was far more TV tweakable to my
taste -- and which I liked much more than what I learned the MCE offered.
[I'd assumed, erroneously I learned, that TV tuner software on an ATI
chipped card would be, a priori, even better than what I'd experienced 8+
years ago with my Win95 AIW]
..
I found that I did not like the MCE tuner/pvr software itself - e.g., its
clunky tweaking interface, its limited tweak-ability [even with the MS tweak
mce tool], its lousy-to-my-taste help files. I found the delay that the
tuner/pvr software introduces in watching broadcast tv to be annoying. As
I understand it, the delay is introduced by the PVR feature - the broadcast
is received, goes to the hard drive, then is output to the display and
audio, so that the pvr feature can work. But I have my office set up so
that I can actually use a regular TV and stereo -- so if I switched back and
forth between the MCE and the TV, the delay was glaring to me.

So, that's about it. The Winamp plug in will do the trick, for now. If
at a later time I come across tuner software that operates more like my old
AIW stuff, maybe I'll spring for it.

a

I'm still not entirely clear on why you pulled MCE. MCE ***IS*** XP Pro,
with one missing item (domain networking) and the Media Center. But the
standard, garden variety Windows XP desktop is still present, and with a
mouse click in a check box, you can make the standard Windows desktop the
default user interface, so that "Media Center" never even comes up, at
all, unless you start it manually. And in any case you can switch back
and forth between Media Center and the Windows desktop with just a mouse
click. Some people don't know this, they think that Media Center only has
the Media Center interface, and they pull when there really was no reason
to do so. If you select the Windows desktop as the default interface and
don't start media center, the Media Center stuff does not run in the
background and has no negative impact on the performance of the system.

I have a Gateway machine that had MCE, but I use it primarily for
business and decided to rebuild/reinstall using WinXP Pro. I really
had no use for all the media bells

[less expensive]
http://www.ctpvr.com/
[more expensive]
http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/default.asp

Your comment and suggestions as to what I might do/try are much
appreciated.

TIA
albert









If you have Winamp, there's a tv plugin available at:

www.tv-plugin.com

It's free and there are 2 flavors depending on whether you want to
record or not. I definitely prefer it to the ATI program.

Dave

Dave,

I do have Winamp. I went to your link, downloaded the plugin, and it
does work. Excellent. It is not superglitzy, but it serves my present
needs just fine. Now I have a bunch of settings to learn about and play
around with. Since I use an indoor rabbit-ears antenna as my source, I
need to learn what frequencies the local NYC TV stations broadcast on
[the automatic scan does not pick them all up, the "full scan" gathers so
many settings as to be very impractical].

Thanks for the link and advice. Now I have the basic tuner I wanted,
and need to learn a few new things to better understand it, the
broadcast/receive process, etc. So, theoretically, I'll get a little bit
smarter. Excellent.

a