Pinnacle PCTV 300i (aka Video Collector 2006) Problems

[mocelet]

I have a Pinnacle Video Collector 2006, which AFAIK is a PCTV 300i card, that is certainly what GB-PVR identifies it as.

Since the Pinnacle Media Centre software is XP only and I am using W2K I grabbed GB-PVR (v0.97.13), but I cannot get a good signal for the DVB-T. The scan only found a dozen channels, and on those I have had partial pictures (like the top 1/3 of the frame on every 10th frame) and occasional audio squeeks, but generally I get the "No Signal Detected. Please ensure that the antenna cable is connected or that the antenna signal is strong enough" error.

To check whether it was a signal strength/quality issue, I temporarily installed XP on a spare HD on my machine and installed the Pinnacle software. Perfect picture and sound on all DVB-T channels. But I did discover that the Pinnacle software is dire - no decent EPG options, channel order all over the place and more. I would much rather use GB-PVR, even on XP.

So then I installed GB-PVR on this XP installation to check whether it was a problem associated with W2K, but I get exactly the same symptoms/problems as in W2K, missing channels, no picture, occasional audio.

This appears to be a problem with how GB-PVR is configuring or using the card. I did notice a firmware file in the Pinnacle installation (PCTV100i300i-111.hex). Does this need to pushed onto the card to get it working?

Can anyone suggest what to try next to get a usable picture?

[stefan]

There is a setting in config.xml called "UseBDAScanType" or something like that. Some users have reported getting better results setting that to 2 (or 1, if it is already 2 )

[mocelet]

Thanks for the idea. Tried it but no change.

Do other values have any meaning?

[sub]

I have a Pinnacle Video Collector 2006, which AFAIK is a PCTV 300i card, that is certainly what GB-PVR identifies it as.

Since the Pinnacle Media Centre software is XP only and I am using W2K I grabbed GB-PVR (v0.97.13), but I cannot get a good signal for the DVB-T. The scan only found a dozen channels, and on those I have had partial pictures (like the top 1/3 of the frame on every 10th frame) and occasional audio squeeks, but generally I get the "No Signal Detected. Please ensure that the antenna cable is connected or that the antenna signal is strong enough" error.

To check whether it was a signal strength/quality issue, I temporarily installed XP on a spare HD on my machine and installed the Pinnacle software. Perfect picture and sound on all DVB-T channels. But I did discover that the Pinnacle software is dire - no decent EPG options, channel order all over the place and more. I would much rather use GB-PVR, even on XP.

So then I installed GB-PVR on this XP installation to check whether it was a problem associated with W2K, but I get exactly the same symptoms/problems as in W2K, missing channels, no picture, occasional audio.

This appears to be a problem with how GB-PVR is configuring or using the card. I did notice a firmware file in the Pinnacle installation (PCTV100i300i-111.hex). Does this need to pushed onto the card to get it working?

Can anyone suggest what to try next to get a usable picture?

Sorry, but there isnt really anything much you can change that will affect this. GB-PVR doesnt have to configure or initialize the devices or anything like that, it just starts using it. The BDA drivers should take card of all the initialization behind the scenes. It could be flakey BDA drivers that dont behave the way of those from other manufacturers.

[spitfire]

I have a Pinnacle 300i card in my GB-PVR box with XP Home SP2 . I have only installed the drivers from the original CD, the rest of the Pinnacle software is crap so it's not installed. After that all updates was applied and this card works OK, some OSD problems only.

I think that the PCTV100i300i-111.hex file is only used once by the firmware update tool, at least I only did this update once.

The driver I use is dated 2004-12-03 version 1.3.2.0.