Windows Media Centre, Freeview, 18th April Switchover,

If you have the most up to date version of Windows Media Centre, in Windows 7, and use it to watch Freeview with whatever DVB hardware you may have inside your computer, and find that following retuning on or after 18th April, you no longer have any channels at all, please post here. Of particurlar interest is if you are inside the Crystal Palace transmitter region.

Note that the hardware you use must be solely using the Windows Media Centre and not the manufacturers own software.

Edited by RiffRaff (Fri 20-Apr-12 12:12:58)

I could never get WMC to work with my built-in TV tuner in my MCPC so I installed some free tuner packages, AVS TV Box & MediaPortal.

I don't use it often but 2 years ago I could tune OK to Hannington (South area). More recently I cannot get any digital stations; I guess since South area went digital. Though I could get the London area analogue stations which disappeared completely on April 18th.

Now I cannot tune to neither Hannington nor Crystal Palace transmitters using an indoor aerial (my house TVs are tuned to Crystal Palace using an outdoor aerial). So I've given up using the PC's TV tuner and just use the online TV Catch-up services.

I have three Win7 Media Centre PCs, and live a couple of miles from the Crystal Palace transmitter. All PCs retuned fine on 4th. April, but none have functioned since 18th. April. When attempting to find channels, I just get the spinning "busy" circle, and Media Center hangs, and can only be stopped with the Task Manager. I have reported this to Microsoft at https://connect.microsoft.com/site1145/feedback/deta... and would strongly urge anyone else with this problem also to record it at the Microsoft Connect website. kleh.

Edited by kleh (Mon 23-Apr-12 22:41:48)

Doubt it is WMC software. Am getting same issues with other tuner software. More likely it's the TV tuners themselves.

Some old FreeView boxes don't work with the new channels because they can't receive the frequencies used. It's quite possible that the same is true for older computer cards.

I have tuners from four different manufacturers,. I think it is too much of a coincidence that they are all having an identical problem.

One of my tuners is in a PC which is less than one month old, so age is very unlikely to be the problem. I have submitted a support call to the manufacturer.

In reply to a post by kleh:

I think it is too much of a coincidence that they are all having an identical problem.

Not necessarily.

How many different chipsets are in there?

You've given me an idea

Just notice that the muliplexes' channels have changed pre- & post- switch-over:

• Crystal Palace: From 22, 25, 28, 29, 32, 34 to 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30
• Hannington: From 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 50 to 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 47

and I think some the frequencies within them may have changed slightly.

So I now think that the problem is with the pre-set data held within these software packages that define the channels. I know where this is with my installed tuner packages so I'm going to play with those. I don't know where this is held for WMC.

At least two different chipsets.
One of the tuners is for DVB-T2.