EASY Instructions for Adding Extra Tuners to VMC Update

[Strada916]

hey guys

after a whole day of mucking around I finially got four tuners to work. lets just say there was a lot of regedit hacks and lots for reading and re-reading in here. Well it will record four channels simultaniously no problems, however I found early in the days that IRQ16 sharing of x16 and x1 PCIe prevents the cards from working once the PC is waken after being put to bed. I found this out when I had a X16 PCIe video with hvr-2200.(and now with two hvr-2200 installed same) PC will wake up and record fine with nothing plugged into either x16 or x1, but not with two cards whether they be video and hvr-2200 or two hvr-2200. I just thought there might be a easy fix if someone could help. Remember this is just a test bed until my CPU and the rest of my HTPC commponets arrive.

The reason why I am running a test bed is I wanted to find out how EIT guide works and to see how my Silverstone GD01MX display works. (this is my first HTPC)

test rig is mobo Asus P5N-MX cpu intel pentium d 940 ram 1536 tuner hvr-2200 (using on borad graphics) Any help would be great otherwise not to worry

Thank you
Nick

[Strada916]

some how MCE standby tool has fixed my problem so far! happy chappy is me

[Tak]

Originally Posted by GlenR

Just had an intersting conflict and don't know why it happened.

The wife likes to record Trinny and Susannah (yes, I know, but what can you do?) and the one this Thursday didn't schedule itself as MC believes that the episode was already recorded. A check showed that this is because IceTV gave this week's episode and last week's episode the same title, so MC was doing the logical thing and saying "not recording thsi because you already have it". Fair enough - IceTV mistake I'll just record this episode as a one-off.

When I tried to manually record it I got recording conflict as "you can only record two shows at a time" - considering I have three tuners this was an odd thing. But, as I hadn't put this hack in place yet (yes, I've been lazy) I figured I was just bumping into this problem. So I put the reg changes in and guess what? Same problem when I tried to record this episode - only two shows at once.

I then picked another show starting at the same time and this was accepted.

So, I set the show via manual record - set start time, finish time, channel, etc - for the exact same time and channel that recording from the guide would have been, and it was accepted without conflict.

So, if I picked the show from the guide it conflicted because I was recording more than two things, but if I added a manual recording for the exact same time and channel it was OK. Weird!

Finally catching up with you guys and am about to go for 4 tuners - never seemed to need them before, but all of a sudden there was shows on back to back on a Thursday and Wednesday and you know how often programs overrun.

Anyhow, thought I'd mention to Glen and those interested, that the above issue occured with my standard, vanilla, two tuner install and isn't a result of changing priorities and the like. Guess VMC doesn't like having a show re-instated if it decides it shouldn't be recorded and comes up with a conflict to say "you can't record two shows"

The funny thing then is that in the usual conflict window it was showing 2 shows, one with a red dot indicating a recording and one without a red dot, you could actually select the second show to record with a red dot and it didn't change the other recording to show as not recording i.e. the conflict screen now showed two recordings both selected as recording (geez, does any of what I've just types make sense)

So next time, don't be put off by the conflict just select the show to record and all should proceed as normal.

Cheers,

Tak

[menzy]

Hi Guys

I have a slight problem even though i have followed the instructions to the letter......

I have a Hauppauge Nova t 500 and a Dvico Dual digital but when more than 2 shows record i still get the signal not available on the 3rd recording......

Any help would be great im stuck.....

[beefeater]

Originally Posted by beefeater

CAUTION to all

When you restart I have noted the settings sometimes get changed
1. The record prefered setting is rest from fffffff back to 0
2. The record prefered and watch prefered seting equal the same number i.e 1 or 2

Lastly I am attaching an image of the error that occurs about once a week where either 3 of 1 only of the tuners will record.

Seems some tuner rescan kicks in and causes the tunerequest registry to appear.

Does anyone know how to stop this?

OK lots of history since I last responded.
Some basics I have 2x dual tuner nova t500's
The registry always throws up 6 registry entrys.
2 Path0's and 4 Path1's.

The problem.
Monday always seems to stuff up 4 tuner record capability.
After 20 rescans and registry setups this is what i have discovered.

1. Scan Dev0Path0 and Dev0Path1 first and save the registry entries
2. Scan Dev1Path0 and 1

Note if you scan both Path1s at the same time the 2 dumby registries actually get used.
So depending on how you scan you will enable different registries.
I have had many problems using thse registry entry with failure to record 4 channels.

The Scan Request folder under Usersettings is added when a scan is complete so I add it to all 4 tuners by importing the registry entries.

Ill let you know how I go this week.

Really anoyed as both my mates have 0 problems with 4 tuners.

[splotto]

Hello guys I am trying to follow the instructions to have 3 tuners visible to VMC but the refered screenshots are just red crosses to me!

can some who has them pls email the to me scott.lacey@gmail.com

[philzgr8]

Originally Posted by splotto

Hello guys I am trying to follow the instructions to have 3 tuners visible to VMC but the refered screenshots are just red crosses to me!

can some who has them pls email the to me scott.lacey@gmail.com

Not sure what is happening there but I've messaged the site admin. Seems some graphics are dropping off the map!

[Mike]

Geez - and I thought I'd covered everything!

When I removed the old (bug ridden) gallery, I figured it wouldn't be missed. Never considered the graphics embedded in posts which were called from those old directories.

Thankfully 'cos I'm a hoarder, I didn't delete them, so after a little sleight of hand - voila! - they're back and in full view.

Thanks splotto (and Phil for the PM) for bringing this to my attention, hopefully the instructions will be a little easier to follow now.

Mike

[logifuse]

Originally Posted by Mike

Never considered the graphics embedded in posts which were called from those old directories.

My bad.

[davomate]

I had some difficulties adding a second HVR-2200, possibly because the 1st one had once been in the slot that the 2nd one now occupies, so I had 6 tuners in the registry. Media Center would only use the original (twin) tuner, even though it recognised that the new one had been added, and offered to configure the services, it did not enable it.

I found a very useful MSDN blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/peterrosser/ar...echTalk_1.aspx

This explains how everything works, and told me that I could delete tuner entries, and they would be recreated if the hardware was still present. Also that there is no need to do anything in Media Center itself - it is all done by the Receiver Service and the settings in the Registry. Scanning for channels, setting up the Guide etc, make no difference (and I tested this myself). Once I deleted the extra entries, and restarted the service to ensure there were now 4 digital tuners in the registry, I edited them as suggested and everything worked perfectly - four tuners recording simultaneously. The settings are the same as the first post, but it also explains how to enable each extra tuner and add in the tuner name (UserDefName).

[Neilwa]

Well done davomate - spot on. However, until Microsoft make multiple tuners greater than 2 a native part of their platform, you may still experience some rare moments when the system alerts you to not having enough tuners (e.g. when your guide is showing 3 or more programs to be recorded and it says you have to choose only 2). In this case, it could be due to Vista deciding to update (affecting the receiver service) and you haven't restarted. There may also be times when Vista wants more tuner registery values than physical tuners, besides the ones you have configured, but for some reason is quite content to utilize the 4 main configured registry keys but won't restart after an update without wanting 6 keys there hehe!

Gee - we're a few years on and still Microsoft haven't made a better effort with multipule tuners.

[logifuse]

Gee - we're a few years on and still Microsoft haven't made a better effort with multipule tuners.

Wanna see what the registry entries look like after the TV Pack Update? The first tuner (main tuner.jpg) is set as highest priority for everything, & the others all have the other tuners.jpg entries.

Justin