avermedia a180 atsc black screen no record

[phoenixweasel]

I'm running 2 avermedia a180 cards under Vista Ultimate. Been using vista media center for a while (xp mce 2005 before that), but I've recently bought a NMT and decided it was time to explore gbpvr because of its NMT extensions.

To the best of my knowledge, I got all the MCE services/programs stopped before launching gbpvr. Several services and some local running "eh*" apps killed off.

I followed the tuner setup instructions and channel remapping stuff from the installation notes (ie: T:36,3,1).

If I try to watch LiveTV, I just get a black screen and it eventually dumps back into the menu.

If I try to record a show, it writes a 6k file to disk twice then nothing more.

At first I suspected drivers. Mine were the original vista release for the cards. I updated to the latest version (which was several revs newer) to no avail.

I thought maybe I had the channel mappings wrong, but here is what's interesting: I had a show scheduled to record last night in MCE, so I fired it back up... and the tuner was set to the channel I tried from gbpvr. I'd specifically picked that channel because I never watch it and never record from it, so it'd have no reason to be on it except if it was tuned specifically. So its like gbpvr tuned the card, but didn't/couldn't display the video.

I didn't see anything "wrong" in the logs except the comments from the recorder about the file being too small and trying again.

Any ideas? I'm sure I probably need to list more information, so let me know whats relevant and I'll update.

I'm only interested in OTA ATSC recording. In fact, I don't even have a VHF antenna. I don't care about the analog inputs on the card and nothing is plugged into them.

[sub]

I followed the tuner setup instructions and channel remapping stuff from the installation notes (ie: T:36,3,1).

Those notes are old and no longer correct. Instead you need to click the 'map digital channels to epg channels' button fto for ce it to do a channel scan, then click the drop down next to each EPG channel to perform the mapping.

[phoenixweasel]

I tried that and no channels come up when I do the scan.

[sub]

Do it again, then zip and attach the config.exe.log and config.exe-native.log and I'll take a look.

[phoenixweasel]

logs attached...
additionally, since this is vista, i ran the config program as administrator too just in case. didn't make any difference.

thanks for the help!

[sub]

2008-05-07 16:38:57.309 ERROR Failed to start BDA Graph
2008-05-07 16:38:57.309 VERBOSE ERROR_DEVICE_NOT_CONNECTED

It never managed to start the device, so no data was ever delivered to GB-PVR.

You can get this error when the device is already in use elsewhere in the system.

[phoenixweasel]

Hmmm... maybe I'm missing one of the Vista MCE processes? I can't think of anything else that would use the cards. Theres not much installed on the machine.

I've disabled all the services that start "Windows Media ..." and manually killed off anything beginning "eh*".

Any ideas what I might be missing? Or maybe I'm missing starting up a gbpvr process with high enough privs?

[sub]

Sorry, I'm not sure.

Or maybe I'm missing starting up a gbpvr process with high enough privs?

No, it shouldnt be that.

[phoenixweasel]

I'm at a loss. I've disabled everything I can find that is media related, except the soundcard prog. Only stuff I see running are AVG and "normal" windows files. Nothing "Windows Media" related anywhere. Yes, I've click "show processes from all users."

I've also turned off all the "multimedia class" services and such.

Does MCE somehow retain control of the card even when the services aren't running? that seems odd, but being MS, surprised there aren't little hands physically choking the capture cards.

I must be missing something since others in these forums have had no issues w/ this card. Anyone? Anyone?

[sub]

Can you repost the logs so I can take one more look just in case anything else stands out?