HELP!
I just received the brand-spanking new Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H ATX socket AM2 motherboard with onboard HDMI, the AMD 690G integrated graphics (ATI Radeon X1250) chipset, the Realtec ALC889A sound codec with DTS Connect and Dolby Digital Live encoder, 3 PCIe X1, 1 PCIe x4, 1 PCIe x16, 3 firewire, 10 USB, GB LAN, 2 PCI, toslink (fiber optic digital sound) out... It even has Crossfire GPU upgrade capabilities!
Sorry, I just had to brag how perfect this board is for Media Center and HTPC's! Now that I've finished bragging and before I start the bad news and help seeking, I have to brag about another new toy I got...
The Avermedia PCIe Combo: Great, inexpensive, dual tuner PCIe x1 television tuner/capture card featuring ATSC digital HD/SD reception, "in the clear" (unscrambled) QAM for digital cable HD/SD reception, MCE-certified NTSC analog with hardware MPEG encoder, 3D comb filter, noise reduction, ghost elimination, etc. Great card! Perfect for Media Center HTPC's (I have 2 installed for 4 total tuners)!
Now the bad news. I can't get the cards to work! After hours on hours of trying to get the drivers installed (yes, it would take a half hour to try to install drivers only to have error coded messages returned each time!), somehow by some miracle I get the device drivers installed free of Device Manager yellow exclamation marks and a warm, comfortable Device Manager "Your device is working correctly" message in the now seemingly installed properly driver properties window...
(By the way, the OS is Vista Home Premium x64)
Next came the horror of Media Center telling me no tuner card was installed and a similiar error message appeared when I tried to run AverTV. So, Windows Device Manager is trying to me that it's all good in the hood, while Media software isn't recognizing! So, I kept trying and kept trying. A few hours later, another miracle (ah... a Vista Miracle... Just wanted to say 'Vista Miracle' ... no real reason) occured. Media software started recognizing the cards!
But, when I would try to tune to live TV....
CRASH ! ! ! !
And its been doing that for the past 12 hours. Insisting that there will be a third miracle... A VISTA MIRACLE (sorry!), I have keep trying. Unfortunately, there has not been a Vista Miracle and I have not been able to watch TV (poor me). But, late last night, the Avermedia people followed up with my tech support inquiry... THE man himself... The PM or PMs... The Head Honcho on top of Avermedia Engineering World Headquarters... The top Engineering Project Manager telephoned me.
To paraphrase what he said basically is that this card is an engineering masterpeice, perfect in every regard that can do no wrong. He said there has been NO problems or complaints concerning this product and he took it a bit of a shocker that I may actually be experiencing a problem (I must have totally ruined his day!). He explained: We ran tests in our laboratory equipment and we never had a problem.
Not to be a smart-ass, but I asked him (in a very serious tone) if any of their test systems were AMD 690G chipset based. Believe it or not, they had not tested it - their product - (which is obviously designed to attract Media Center system builders) with the 690G chipset (which is quickly becoming the most popular chipset amoung Media Center system builders). Dumbfounded, I asked "Why?"
His answer was something to the efffect of "We had an ATI chipset test system, and we had no problems". By the end of the call, nothing had been resolved. I still have no TV on my PC. And I have no clue what I should do. I did order a Sapphire ATI 650 Pro-based tuner out of curiosity as to how it will behave on my system. It arrives in two days. If this ATI-AMD TV tuner card works with no problem on my ATI-AMD chipset motherboard that is running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor and the Avermedia card still doesn't work.....
I NEED TO KNOW IF ANYONE BESIDES ME HAS AN AVERMEDIA PCIe COMBO CARD INSTALLED IN AN AMD-ATI 690G CHIPSET MOTHERBOARD; IF SO, DOES IT WORK!?!
ANYONE WITH ANY ADVISE OR COMMENTARY TO OFFER WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!
Thanks for reading,
Peter
UPDATE: The installed XP MCE 2005 on a separate partition and everything works. So, I guess the problems lies with the Vista x64 drivers.
I just received the brand-spanking new Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H ATX socket AM2 motherboard with onboard HDMI, the AMD 690G integrated graphics (ATI Radeon X1250) chipset, the Realtec ALC889A sound codec with DTS Connect and Dolby Digital Live encoder, 3 PCIe X1, 1 PCIe x4, 1 PCIe x16, 3 firewire, 10 USB, GB LAN, 2 PCI, toslink (fiber optic digital sound) out... It even has Crossfire GPU upgrade capabilities!
Sorry, I just had to brag how perfect this board is for Media Center and HTPC's! Now that I've finished bragging and before I start the bad news and help seeking, I have to brag about another new toy I got...
The Avermedia PCIe Combo: Great, inexpensive, dual tuner PCIe x1 television tuner/capture card featuring ATSC digital HD/SD reception, "in the clear" (unscrambled) QAM for digital cable HD/SD reception, MCE-certified NTSC analog with hardware MPEG encoder, 3D comb filter, noise reduction, ghost elimination, etc. Great card! Perfect for Media Center HTPC's (I have 2 installed for 4 total tuners)!
Now the bad news. I can't get the cards to work! After hours on hours of trying to get the drivers installed (yes, it would take a half hour to try to install drivers only to have error coded messages returned each time!), somehow by some miracle I get the device drivers installed free of Device Manager yellow exclamation marks and a warm, comfortable Device Manager "Your device is working correctly" message in the now seemingly installed properly driver properties window...
(By the way, the OS is Vista Home Premium x64)
Next came the horror of Media Center telling me no tuner card was installed and a similiar error message appeared when I tried to run AverTV. So, Windows Device Manager is trying to me that it's all good in the hood, while Media software isn't recognizing! So, I kept trying and kept trying. A few hours later, another miracle (ah... a Vista Miracle... Just wanted to say 'Vista Miracle' ... no real reason) occured. Media software started recognizing the cards!
But, when I would try to tune to live TV....
CRASH ! ! ! !
And its been doing that for the past 12 hours. Insisting that there will be a third miracle... A VISTA MIRACLE (sorry!), I have keep trying. Unfortunately, there has not been a Vista Miracle and I have not been able to watch TV (poor me). But, late last night, the Avermedia people followed up with my tech support inquiry... THE man himself... The PM or PMs... The Head Honcho on top of Avermedia Engineering World Headquarters... The top Engineering Project Manager telephoned me.
To paraphrase what he said basically is that this card is an engineering masterpeice, perfect in every regard that can do no wrong. He said there has been NO problems or complaints concerning this product and he took it a bit of a shocker that I may actually be experiencing a problem (I must have totally ruined his day!). He explained: We ran tests in our laboratory equipment and we never had a problem.
Not to be a smart-ass, but I asked him (in a very serious tone) if any of their test systems were AMD 690G chipset based. Believe it or not, they had not tested it - their product - (which is obviously designed to attract Media Center system builders) with the 690G chipset (which is quickly becoming the most popular chipset amoung Media Center system builders). Dumbfounded, I asked "Why?"
His answer was something to the efffect of "We had an ATI chipset test system, and we had no problems". By the end of the call, nothing had been resolved. I still have no TV on my PC. And I have no clue what I should do. I did order a Sapphire ATI 650 Pro-based tuner out of curiosity as to how it will behave on my system. It arrives in two days. If this ATI-AMD TV tuner card works with no problem on my ATI-AMD chipset motherboard that is running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor and the Avermedia card still doesn't work.....
I NEED TO KNOW IF ANYONE BESIDES ME HAS AN AVERMEDIA PCIe COMBO CARD INSTALLED IN AN AMD-ATI 690G CHIPSET MOTHERBOARD; IF SO, DOES IT WORK!?!
ANYONE WITH ANY ADVISE OR COMMENTARY TO OFFER WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!
Thanks for reading,
Peter
UPDATE: The installed XP MCE 2005 on a separate partition and everything works. So, I guess the problems lies with the Vista x64 drivers.
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