Has anyone managed to set up a UPC TV signal on a Windows Media Center PC equipped with a TV Tuner card? I been trying in vain to get this to work.

This has nothing to do with the UPC Media Box. I can plug a coaxial cable into a normal TV (or DVR), bypassing the Media Box, and receive some channels with no problems (Veronica, Netherlands 1,2,3, RTL 5,7, etc.). When I try a similar approach with a PC TV Tuner I receive no channels at all. I know the PC Tuner works, as when I use a small external antenna I can receive some channels, although poorly. I've also tested the coaxial cable I'm using for the PC connection, and it works fine.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Did you ever solve this? I am moving next week between apartments in AMS and one of things I want set up in the new place is a Windows Media Center PC. I have used them before when I was living in San Francisco and Redmond, WA, but got rid of it before I moved here.

Also, today are you using only the HD box or the standard UPC box? I am curious what the outputs are on the standard with DVR. Until I get around to building that MCE, I thought I would use their DVR.

Aha. I can finally reply to this post. For some reason I did not have permissions to post in the technology forum. I manage to hoover up my IR blaster last week so I am no longer able to satisfactoriily record from my set top box so I have now moved over to the analogue and plug the coax cable into my tuner card. Don't use the antenna option ie there is no need to let the tuner scan for channels. I chose cable as my signal source and said no when it asked me if I had a set top box and I downloaded the program details for the Haarlem analogue. I was then able to get all the channels that I am supposed to get in Haarlem.

I've had limited success with it. I can now receive all the channels that you typically would, when bypassing the Media Box and plugging the coax cable directly into a normal TV.

However, the picture quality is pretty bad - very grainy. As I said in the first post, it's not the coax cable, as the picture is clear when plugged into a normal TV. I just don't think the PC Tuner I got is up to the job - It's a Pinnacle device, by the way, if you feel like avoiding it when shopping for one yourself. To their credit, though, I did chat online with one of their techs, and the guy was as helpful as he could be. Unfortunately it doesn't really matter much if their products suck.

To answer Etherm's question, I have the UPC HD Media Box, without DVR. It has all the standard interfaces, including HDMI. However, I would recommend going for an External DVR along with the Media Box, and not the UPC one, if you can afford it - if you set it up (i.e. cable it) properly, you'll have more choices for recording one programme while watching another. And of course, recording directly to DVD, editing recordings, etc. I have a Pioneer 630H, which is a couple of years old now, but I think it's one of the best AV components I've ever bought! If\when recordable Blu Ray devices are available (waiting 'patiently') I'll upgrade, but until then the one I have now still has plenty of life in it.

I have connected UPC analog cable to MCE 2005, Vista MCE and Mediaportal. Its pretty straight forward. Connect the antenna from your wall to the analog tuner card. Don't scan for channels. In all three systems, you should select analog cable and specify your city and it will give you a drop down list of providers. Select your provider and it does everything automatically. Oh YOU MUST make sure you have a working internet connection on the MCE box so it can download all the provider info. It then uses the internet connection to maintain its EPG data. Scanning for channels manually results in poor picture quality and poor channel identification with no benefits. If the cable company changes the channels on you, just go through the setup again and the programs will download the latest frequencies automatically.

I record all analog content within MCE and then use TMPGENC to convert to m4v h264 and remove ads. its a manual process but I get small nice quality files. HD on UPC is just not worth it yet. There isnt enough content.

That said, we pretty much don't watch cable TV anymore.

I would say you should contact UPC. we have a pinnacle device and it works great! PCTV330E ProStick. Working in conjunction with windows media centre. But you must download the laterst drivers for Windows Vista. the existing ones on the CD rom of the device dont do it....
Hope this helps.
Freddie

Hi, Got a bit of a problem with VISTA ULTIMATE SP1 Media Center. I ran setup but I can only select KPN digital signals. The problem is that I have UPC ANALOG. No matter what I select, I cannot select a different TV signal so I am stck to KPN but since I do not have it, I have no TV signals.

My wife has the same PC (Vista home editiion SP1) and she can select UPS from the list and therfore watch TV on her machine. I tried updating drivers, copying registry keys, exchanging TV cards since they are the same but the problem remains.

So my question is... where are the signal settings /TV card settings kept on the PC??

any suggestions?

Thanks!