Adding a Second NOVA-T 500 MCE Dual Digital Tuner
An Installation Guide by vbap
Contents
1 Existing Setup
1.1 Remove DVICO Lite (software)
1.2 Remove DVICO Lite (Hardware)
2 New Setup
2.1 Install NovaT 500 (Hardware)
2.2 Install NovaT 500 (Software)
2.3 Configure the new NovaT 500 in MCE2005
3 Testing
3.1 Confirm New Tuner Working
3.2 More than 2 Tuners Hack
3.3 Test 4 tuners in MCE
4 Post Implementation Review
1 Existing Setup
Existing setup was 1 x DVICO Lite and 1 x NovaT 500. The NovaT replaced a DVICO Dual. Although installed, the DVICO Lite was not setup as a third tuner, since I was intending to get a second NovaT 500 anyway.
Nonetheless, the antenna setup is a single outlet from wall to a Kingray amplified splitter (1 in, 2 out). 1 split goes to the NovaT 500, the other to the DVICO Lite. The passthrough on the DVICO Lite goes to the analogue tuner in the Dell W1900 LCD TV.
The dual NovaT 500 setup had been working well for a week since installing it. Fast channel changes are a huge plus. Occasionally, spouse reports that ABC comes up with "Digital Audio Service" blue screen, which is fixed by a channel-change-and-change-back workaround. I suspect it is a signal strength issue, since analogue reception takes a big hit in this setup (channel 10 is bad, and even no splits, there are subtle distortions in the analogue picture). The roof antenna is not located in optimal position, and there is a split of the cable inside the roof to another (unused) TV outlet in the study.
I will definitely have the reception & cabling attended to within the next few weeks.
1.1 Remove DVICO Lite (software)
First step was to run the DVICO driver uninstall utility to clean out Windows of all the DVICO stuff. I could have gone back to a clean image, but this one is very nearly clean anyway (based on a clean MCE2005 rollup 2 image taken 1 week ago, with the only difference being the installation & configuration of tuners). Reboot was suggested, so I obliged. To make sure it was gone, I deleted the Tuner from the MCE Tuners registry:
Figure 1: Delete the DVICO? Sure!
1.2 Remove DVICO Lite (Hardware)
It was then system shutdown time. The case was opened and the DVICO Lite removed.
Figure 2: The new card (apologies for poor photographic skills)
Figure 3: Same as my existing NovaT 500
2 New Setup
2.1 Install NovaT 500 (Hardware)
While the system was open, I put in the second NovaT 500 in the same slot previously occupied by the DVICO Lite. I had read about IRQ sharing issues, so hoped that using same slot as previous tuner would mitigate this. Here are some snaps of the NovaT 500 hardware.
Figure 4: I assume this is the VIA USB Controller chip
Figure 5: Twin "Silicon" DVB-T Tuners
Figure 6: Twins - congratulations!
In the photo above, the blue card is the AGP graphics ( a lowly FX5200, but gets the job done for SD channels!). The card at the front is an internal Parallel Port I/O card to feed the VFD. I ended up removing this card, since VFD is not very useful, and wanted to remove the PCI card to save some IRQs...
The motherboard is an Intel PERL865, with 5 PCI slots + 1 AGP slot:
PCI Slot 1: Empty (was Parallel Port I/O card)
PCI Slot 2: 2nd NovaT 500
PCI Slot 3: Empty
PCI Slot 4: 1st NovaT 500, installed a week ago
PCI Slot 5: Empty
AGP Slot: Gigabyte FX5200
2.2 Install NovaT 500 (Software)
After assembling the machine and switching it on, windows detected the new hardware. Since I already had a NovaT 500 installed, it used the same drivers and finished the installation without requiring any input from me. MUCH better than the DVICO install process....
Out of interest, I decided to check the MCE registry before configuring the new tuner.
Figure 7: Tuner "0" of 2nd NovaT 500
Notice that in the UserSettings for 7BF30..., there are no entries at all and there is no TuneRequest, indicating the tuner has not yet been configured for use with MCE.
Figure 8: 7BF30... is new Tuner, 8619D... is existing
2.3 Configure the new NovaT 500 in MCE2005
Enough poking in the registry for now - I wanted to test that the new tuner worked and could receive all channels before setting up all 4 tuners to work in unison. Easiest way to do this is run the MCE "Set Up Your TV Signal" wizard. From the MCE menu, go to Settings / TV / Set Up Your TV
Signal:
Figure 9: Set Up Your TV Signal
Figure 10: Aussie...Aussie...Aussie
Figure 11: Deselect the Existing Tuners
Figure 12: Select the new Tuners!
Figure 13: Finish at this point
Note, I did not have to "Set Up Guide Listings", since these are already working perfectly fine, thankyou very much (to Monster for BRP 3.0 and Impact for FreeXMLTV 4.0)
Figure 14: Apologies for the content...
3 Testing
3.1 Confirm New Tuner Working
At this point, I tested the new Tuner to make sure all channels could be received, and that could record one channel and watch another. And, indeed it could:
At this point, I did notice some stutter on SBS, and occasionally ABC2. I still believe this is reception related (more on this later!)
3.2 More than 2 Tuners Hack
OK, time to take the plunge and do one of the many hack options to get more than 2 tuners working in MCE2005. My favoured technique is "Method 1" from Peter Rosser's blog here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/peterrosser/ar...echTalk_1.aspx
This method uses the registry to enable all the tuners for MCE, then set the recording and watching preferences for each tuner, such that the preferred recording tuner is last in the watch order, and the preferred watching tuner is last in the record order. My set up is:
Figure 15: Firing on all 4 cylinders!
3.3 Test 4 tuners in MCE
OK, the moment of truth. Reboot and test that:
All channels can be viewed in LiveTV [Check!]
4 different channels can be recorded at once [Check!!]
Again, there was stuttering on SBS during this test, but all other channels were fine, including ABC2, which had the football on. After
rebooting again, then just watching SBS with nothing else on seemed to work fine. A lot of channel flicking, just to make sure.
4 Post Implementation Review
I started this installation at around 10:30pm, after the family had gone to bed. I finished at around 12:30am. 2 hours is not bad, considering the screen dumps and photos were done as well. (The creen dumps were done via UltraVNC from the study desktop PC over a wireless LAN, so apologies for quality!).
Out of interest, I quickly checked CPU usage during the 4 simultaneous recordings:
Figure 16: 4xSD Recordings with Pentium 1.8GHz CPU
Performance is not too bad, especially for a dedicated HTPC machine. Overall, there is nothing pressing for an upgrade in the short term (provided we're happy with SD channels only).
This morning, I decided to run ScanChannelsBDA to confirm my suspicion about reception quality. Results are as follows:
These numbers pretty much confirm a signal strength issue. Would be happier if they were all above 80... Still, it's not horrible and would probably be acceptable for the next few weeks until I get the antenna / cabling upgraded.
This guide is also available as a PDF download here
