Media Centre Displaying "No TV Signal received"

[richtee]

Hello,
I have a problem with my installation of TBS 6980 DVB S2 dual card. Works fine most of the time, but occassionally it does not record a program, saying there was no TV signal, or a signal loss occured during recording. I have checked everything I can think off- installed a bigger Sat Dish (excellent signal strength and quality) , a new expensive power supply, made sure the PCie power connection is on the board, new LNB, (quad) checked all the signal cables. The PC is a new one, with ample processing power and memory, and is not used for anything except TV recording. It is not used for watching through the TBS card- we use a sky box for that-recording only. I have 1.0.0.13 driver installed, all Windows updates etc. It is tuned to the Astra 28.2 degrees satellite.
It is running Windows 7 It does suffer the wont record on resume from standby, but I am not worried about that- left on all the time!!.
Any help would be appreciated
Many thanks in advance!

[cody]

hello,

frankly this is new problem to me - no other complains of such problem. does the problem happen in Windows 7 Media Center only, which will suggest software problem or in other DVB players like DVBDream, ProgDVB and DVBViewer, which will suggest some hardware fault in your board that is causing signal instability from time time? please, test in the other DVB players i mentioned and tell me your test results. there is no problem to replace the card if it's indeed some hardware fault.

[richtee]

Hi Cody,
Thanks for your reply. This card is used in Windows 7 Media Centre only. I have not installed any other software -ULive, Dream etc to keep everything simple- no software conflicts. I will try another program with this card- might have resistance from the wife- she hates any other programs except Media Centre!! and will let you know how I get on.

Thanks again
Richtee.

[cody]

might have resistance from the wife- she hates any other programs except Media Centre!! and will let you know how I get on.

this is only for testing purposes and to rule out if it's software or hardware problem:

- if it happens for example with other software like for example DVBDream then it's hardware fault and we will replace the card with new one, which will resolve the problem, because no one have it

- if it doesn't happens with other software like for example DVBDream then it's some rare software issue with Windows 7 Media Center that we need to find a way to reproduce in our lab and subsequently fix it

thank you for doing the tests that will help to pin-point the exact cause.

[barkai]

Hi,

I have the exact problem here...

My HTPC is brand new and based on WMC 7 64bit.
Notice that using a standalone satellite receiver (Topfield TF6500) I get all stations just fine, so the sat. equipment is working perfectly.

From time to time and not consistently, the signal of all stations is suddenly lost and I get the above mentioned message.
The only solution to get the signal back is by restarting the HTPC.
There are no conflicts between any satellite tuners, as the only application installed is the Windows Media Center 7 64bit.

The relevant hardware is as follows:

Motherboard: Gigabyte ga-m85m-us2h
CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition
RAM: 4GB 1066Mhz
Video card: ATI Radeon 5450 1GB
Power Supply: 500W

All drivers are up to date.

Jacob.

[cody]

@ Richtee and Jacob

please, give more details here or contact us on euro_support@tbsdtv.com about:

- does the problem happen with Tuner A (LNB1 input) or Tuner B (LNB2 input) or both?

- what is batch the number of your boards - it's four digit number written on the board above tuner metal can?

it's really the first time we've heart about such issue.

where are you located? if someone is in Europe - are you willing to send your board(s) back for investigation since i suspect it could be some hardware issue causing some instability of the reception? we will send you brand new board as replacement immediately and thus lower the time that you won't have TBS 6980 and not able to watch and record your favorite channels on your computer.

[richtee]

Hi again Cody- richtee here.
I have not tried other sofrware yet -Dream etc. as I was hoping to buy a TBS 6981 card and try that. If it worked ok, I was going to send the 6980 card back to you for exchange, and use the exchanged card in a new system- a back up machine if you like!!
Unfortunately, all TBS 6981 cards are sold out at the moment, so can't do that. I will wait a bit longer for the TBS6981 to become available. If its not available soon, I will install DVB Dream or other software, and see if the problem persists.
Here is the spec for my machine- might be helpful.

Motherboard Gigabyte GA MA770 UD3
Processor AMD Athlon 11x2 240 2.80Ghz Dual Core AM2 socket
Ram 2.0 Gigabyte
Graphics Card ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 series.
Power Supply 450 Watts Corsair

The problem happens with both tuners--it nearly always starts to record the scheduled program, and then part way through watching it, the error message appears-" recording was stopped due to loss of signal" or very similar words., and the rest of the program is not recorded.

Hope some of this helps
I am in the UK
Thanks again
Richtee.

[cody]

Richtee, thank you for giving more details. also, i saw your e-mail and i will reply you there.

[pietvg]

Hi

I was having a similar problem and it was related to the card functioning when activating from standby. You will see in this post:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2 instructions for doing a workaround. In order to use these instructions you need to download the MCE Standby Tool (Just google it - it is a very handy freeware tool). Once installed just make the amendments to the registry (type regedit in the box in the start menu and use notepad to create mcerestart.bat.

Followed these instructions and problem is now solved.

Hope that helps

Piet

[richtee]

Hi Piet,

sorry for not replying before- I have not been to the forum for some time. I know about the standby problem( I never turned the computer off to overcome it)
but thanks for your link and suggestion- I will have a look into it and give it a try.

Many thanks
richtee.