kaniada:

I also did not get a remote with my xps 420.  It clearly states on the website that the ati tv wonder card comes with a remote.  I have called tech support but they don't seem to have a clue as to what a remote is or why I did not get one.

Darren

See my comments in the Dell Community forum at http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=Tech_Talk_XPS&thread.id=27393

The missing remote issue has gone on long enough.  Close to a month by my count.

Well after getting everything all set up, I am kind of dissappointed.

The biggest issue is the tuning. When starting live tv I must tune to a non-hd channel first. This is a problem...when a recording is scheduled for a HD channel it doesn't record.

See when I tune to a HD channel first I get a no Signal error. But I can immediately tune to a non HD channel which will come in fine and then back to the HD channel which then works.

Next issue is I sometimes get a green screen on the HD channels.

And the final issue is that as time warner adds new HD channels They will not be available to me as the channels are broadcast in a new way that is not compatible with current cable cards.

Just a big dissapointment. It really seems as if Cable Card is not ready for the masses yet.

That sounds similar to the problems I was having and I resolved them by removing a splitter I had in line before the Cablecards (I had 2 splitters before and now I only have one).  It sure sounds like a signal strength issue to me.

Normally I would agree..but the splitter I have before it is a 8 way powered splitter. When I added it the picture quality actually improved.

But I will remove it to try and see what happens.

gstone:

And the final issue is that as time warner adds new HD channels They will not be available to me as the channels are broadcast in a new way that is not compatible with current cable cards.

That stinks...TWC in Raleigh just added 3 HD channels, HGTV-HD, NG-HD & another (cant remember off hand the third channel), and all work with the ATI OCUR. I guess I should feel fortunate that TWC Raleigh is not leading the way with new technologies...

gstone:

Well after getting everything all set up, I am kind of dissappointed.

The biggest issue is the tuning. When starting live tv I must tune to a non-hd channel first. This is a problem...when a recording is scheduled for a HD channel it doesn't record.

See when I tune to a HD channel first I get a no Signal error. But I can immediately tune to a non HD channel which will come in fine and then back to the HD channel which then works.

 

I'm seeing this issue also.  Any resolution to your issue yet?

>>gstone

You might want to try bypassing the amplified splitter, into a single tuner, as an experiment.

Improvement in Analog picture quality doesn't necessarily translate into better CableCARD functionality. The out-of-band (OOB) signaling used to provision the CableCARD is at a differrent frequency than NTSC (Analog) or QAM (digital) cable signals. In particular, the CableCARD is susceptible to something called "tilt", which can be induced by amplifiers introducing a phase shift at the frequencies used by OOB.

Was your amplifier supplied by your Cable MSO?

I will try to bypass the splitter when i get home.

It is a cablevision two-way powered splitter, and the cable guy tested the two splits with there meter and the signal was excellent for digital and hd cable.

So I am not expecting to see any change.

is there something to test the signal strength? Without having the cable company come back over?

    I had some luck running mce as administrator.  I was then able to start up an HD channel first instead of doing the hop back and forth I had to do previously.

Darren

Are either of you running 3rd party security software (firewall, anti-virus, etc.)?

AustinDeadhead:

Are either of you running 3rd party security software (firewall, anti-virus, etc.)?

 

I'm not.  This is the stock Dell image with the exception of running a nvidia 8600GT video card.

kaniada:

    I had some luck running mce as administrator.  I was then able to start up an HD channel first instead of doing the hop back and forth I had to do previously.

Darren

 

I'm running it with an account that had admin rights and UAC is off.  Do you think I need to run it as administrator?  Are you talking about the services or just starting the app up while logged in as administrator?

I saw a post at the avs forum revolving around some of the issues regarding the ati tv wonder so I started to experiment a bit.  All I needed to do was right click on mce and hit run as administrator.  I also have UAC turned off as I find it extremely annoying.  I have not had any channel changing issues at all since starting MCE running as administrator this evening so hopefully this fix will work until microsoft releases a patch for this behavior.  In one of the bug posts a MS rep acknowledges this bug and confirms they are working on a fix for it.

Post From AVS:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=964506&highlight=xps+420

Darren

I tried removing the splitter no difference. I will try the run as admin trick tonight...but this does not seem like it will help if you use an extender.