TV Tuner Card not showing all channels

odd thing is happening - i have recently installed a new ATI All in Wonder HD TV Tuner card into my 64 bit vista box, and moved it down to the living room with 50' of coax and cat 5 for internet connection.

Using the Terk HDTVa indoor directional amplified antenna plugged directly into the flatscreen tv (which has a built in tuner already) i get over 20 channels. When i plug the antenna into the ATI card, i get about 4.

In perusing the boards, i have noticed that the primary channels that i do not get and want to get (the abc and nbc affiliates here in Fort Collins, CO) are both VHF channels. seems to odd to be a coincidence.

Does anyone know any rules of thumb regarding signal requirements for tv tuner cards? Or could this be a software problem? We plunked down the cash to be able to get rid of the DirecTv dish, and at the moment it is just not cooperating. Thanks in advance for the help.

bumpy bump

yea, the channels are true digital channels, 4-1, 20-1, etc, and coming in in HD. It's really just strange to me that the tuner that is installed in the television itself has no problem at all with getting all of the possible channels, but the new tuner card can't seem to see all of them.

And i didn't mention it, but i was originally testing this with an old, RCA small omni directional pair of bunny ears, and found the same thing. i was hoping that the solution was going to be in getting the better, amplified antenna to make the tuner card happy, but no such luck.

I will look to see if there are any updates to media center - any other advice still very much appreciated.

I have only had limited success in getting some channels through windows media center. I should also mention that the guide works, in that the guide does show me what is on which channels, and even when I select 7-1 (a non-working channel), the dialouge box shows up along the bottom with the correct station name and program name, but the screen stays black and eventually just goes to blue with the message "this station has no signal, either it is off the air or you need to adjust your antenna etc."

I have attempted in vain two other softwares for live tv viewing, the amd-live that came with the card that failed upon installation (once installed, you click on 'tv' and the program just said that it could not find a guide, and to check my internet connection... even though the internet connection was fine.), and I also attempted multiple times to get MediaPortal to work, but ran into a wall each time with multiple ports being blocked when trying to use the 'my tv' function. (but those are both problems that are worth their own posts elsewhere, that I'm too tired to think about.)

I'm about to download the free trial version of Beyond TV, because I would hope that that software would be an easier install to doublecheck against Windows Media Center.

From your suggestion, I will attempt to perform the WMC setup without using the guide, and see if that makes a difference.

antennaweb recommends either medium directional antennas, or a small directional with amplification. (which i am currently using.) the two channels are about 30 miles away, and from what i can tell from the government's dtv website, they have completely transferred to digital already.

But i think the fact is simply that the pc tuner card needs a stronger signal, and that means a meaner antenna. so i suppose the next question is a recommendation for a decent directional amplified antenna that has more hutzpah than the terk HDTVa.

**Update - i installed a trial version of Beyond TV, and it seems to detect the channels where windows media center can't. They are a little choppy, but, it sees them. So, this problem is most likely a wmc issue. in looking around for wmc updates, i've noticed something called the TV Pack 2008 - but i can't see anything that says that patch would help what i need. Anyone use that and notice a signal difference?

Just to put a nice bow on this guy...

turns out that the problem was indeed a software issue, and not a hardware issue. Using the listings of physical channels (frequencies) that someone had posted on the Northern Colorado forum, I then peaked into the atscchannelprefs.xml file that WMC had created for itself upon setting up the guide. Turns out that it had designated the incorrect physical channels for 7 & 9. So, you simply delete their entries from the file, and then add them manually through the WMC settings menu. Wa-la!

I now don't even need to use the amplified directional antenna, but can get everything fine with a little omni-directional RCA set that I bought years ago for analog signal catching.

The two articles I used are here: http://thegreenbutton.net/blogs/pnea...12/202708.aspx

and to add the channels back:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...e_dec2004.mspx

Thanks to everyone who posted a suggestion! I'm just glad to be rid of DirecTv!

-db-