Hello.

 A few months ago I bought this tuner from the retailer here in Bulgaria. After installing the software from the CD (Media Center 4.21) and losing 3 days setting up channels (I'm using analog cable tv) it worked for some time, then the problems started...

 First problem: Sometimes when I started the PMC, it just wouldn't display any TV channel, as if there's no tuner card installed. After 2-3 restarts of the PC it started normally. The PC configuration at the time was: EPoX MF4-Ultra3, Athlon64 X2 3800+ 35W, ASUS GeForce 6600GT 128MB/128bit (ForceWare 175.19 WHQL), Creative Audigy 1 (the driver from the original CD), 2x512MB DDR2-800 Apacer, 80GB SeaGate 7200.10, DVD, FDD, etc. All of this under Win XP SP2 with updates.

Today I've reinstalled my Windows XP SP3, because I've changed the whole PC system. I've decided to install the new version of the Pinnacle TV Center Pro 4.94a, after scanning for channels it is displaying everything in black and white, I've tried to manually set the system to pal/secam but nothing changes, later on with no apparent reason the whole picture turned grey and you can barely see anything on all of the channels. I've tryed to "restore defaults" - nothing happened, then I've deleted all channels manually from the list and scanned again - the problem (everything in gray) still exists. Now the PC configuration is: Gigabyte EP43-DS3L, E2180, Gigabyte GeForce 8500GT 256MB/128bit (ForceWare 175.19 WHQL), Creative Audigy 2 (the driver from the original CD), 2x1GB Corsair DDR2-800CL4, 80GB SeaGate 7200.10, DVD, FDD, etc.

Dear Pinnacle support and driver/software developers, how many versions of the software do you have to create to see that it does not work like it should and start writing it from scratch? You are on the level of Creative, that wants a bunch of money and for the last 10 years still does not have Dolby Digital Live support in their sound cards. Please, o, please, fix the DAMNED tuner software and drivers so you earn your money onestly. I remember a friend of mine has had a Pinnacle tuner back in the 1998, I don't remember the model, but I remember that then there were also very auful driver problems and incompatibilities, so to me it looks that after 10 years you've done NOTHING about it.

Have you tried using the different PAL standards in Settings > Hardware?

Start with PAL 60 and test each one.

Also, try connecting an analog device like a camcorder or VCR, or a setup box thru S-Video or Composite.

This is to test if TVCenter pro is having a display problem in general.

I sent my first post to the Pinnacle support. Now I'll post the responces of the Pinnacle support here, and my responces to them as well.

------------------------------------------------ Pinnacle support answer 1 (Claudiu Dumitra) --------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------ Pinnacle support answer 2 (Claudiu Dumitra) --------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------ My responce to Pinnacle support answer 2 --------------------------------------------

Now I'm waiting for an answer ...

About 24 hours have passed since my last response to the support, no answer. That might be because it's friday. Here in Bulgaria we have a saying, which can be translated in english like this: "Friday - day of the Master", where "the master" is someone who thinks he knows what he's doing, but most of the time he does it wrong.

If it was up to me, mr. Claudiu Dumitra would've already been fired from my support team. The thing is that the problem is not only the incompetency or laziness of the support team, but the poorly written software for the TV cards. I'm sure that from hardware point of view the tuner is almost perfect, but the driver and software developers are a bunch of blittering idiots that doesn't give a crap about the end user. The "we look for beta testers" thread supports it. A company with more than 10 years history should not need to look for beta testers in it's forum, that apparently people visit only for the soul purpose of submitting quieries of bugs and problems.

I pretty much was able to fix the problem (in version 4.21) for now, by changing the sound card driver, which apparently have an incompatibility issues with the PMC. But the 4.94a problem still exists, even with the new sound card driver. I suggest that the developers should beta test every new version of PMC on at least 5 different hardware configurations, before even think of releasing it to the general public. I feel like a beta tester already, and nobody pays me to do that. I hope that someone from public relations from the company staff sees this message and take the necessary steps to fix the bugs in the company by changing the developers/support teams.

Best regards, WYSIWYG, Bulgaria.

I will forward your concerns to the appropriate personnel in Pinnacle.

Say, is there any chacne you can test both software with Service Pack 2 only?

Okay. I'll create a Norton Ghost of the current working system and I'll format, than I'll install fresh XP SP2 with the original (bugged?) driver of the sound card, than I'll install PMC 4.94a. That shall be sufficient to see if the problem (everything in gray) exists. If it doesn't we'll know it's a bug from XP with SP3, which I suppose will be removed in the next version of PMC. If it does I'll try to update the sound card driver as I've done for the current (working) installation. After that if the problem is gone we'll know that's from the sound driver. But what if the problem still exists? I'll follow the same steps with PMC 4.21.

I'll write when I'm done testing.

Thanky you.

I'll keep an eye on this thread.

I've just finished testing 4.94a under XP SP2. I'll write step by step what I've done, so anyone should be able to recreate the steps on a PC with the same system configuration.

The configuration is: MB gigabyte EP43-DS3L; CPU intel Core2Duo E2180; RAM 2x1GB DDR2-800 CL4 Corsair XMS2 DHX; SB Creative Audigy 2; Graphics card Gigabyte GeForce 8500GT 256mb/128bit; DVD-ROM Pioneer DVR-120; FDD; PSU enermax liberty 500W

I put the XP SP2 CD in the DVD and restarted the PC. Booted from the CD and formatted partition C: when asked by the installation. So I have a clean XP SP2 now.

I've installed the mainboard driver (intel chipset device software version 9.0.0.1007), after that the system has been restarted by the Gigabyte eXpress Install. Then it installed the LAN driver and asked me to manually restart the system. After that I installed the graphics driver ForceWare 175.19 WHQL and restarted again. Then I installed AutoPatcher XP 5.1 (Lite) because I know that the PMC wants .NET 2.0, and AutoPatcher installs it, along with media player 10 and some security patches for XP. Then I updated the DirectX to version 9.0c from June 2008. At this point I created a ghost image.

After the ghost was created I installed the creative audigy 2 driver from the original CD (I am unable to determine it's version so here's a picture of the CD).

[click to view image]

Then I installed the PCM 4.94a (I've taken screenshots and pictures). New problem presented itself - it was unable to detect any TV channels automatically. (note: I always set the region in scan parameters to Netherlands, because every time I've selected Bulgarian (in the past) it always found only half of the channels (about 35 from 70 possible) that's on the cable.) I added manually BTV channel, which frequency I know. And the problem described in my previous posts presented itself (I've taken pictures).

[click to view image] [click to view image] [click to view image] [click to view image]

[click to view image] [click to view image] [click to view image] [click to view image]

After that I decided to update the sound driver to 2.09.0016. No change in the problem after restart.

I restored my XP SP3 configuration and took pictures of the working PMC 4.21, again on BTV and the same frequency, so you see that the problem is not in the windows's service pack, not in the sound driver, but in the PMC 4.94a.

[click to view image] [click to view image] [click to view image] [click to view image]

[click to view image] [click to view image] [click to view image] [click to view image]

And one bug, which does not affect workability of the PMC, but it's annoying - During the installation of 4.94a it asks what remote control do I have, I select NO REMOTE, but it automatically selects the one that came with the tuner. I don't want to use it, and it is not connected, so I should be able to choose NO REMOTE. That definately is a bug.

------------------ Yet another answer from mr. Dimitra (3rd)

As I review the responses from technical support group, I believe you can ask that this case be escalated to higher level support.

Send them another email and request for escalation.

You can reply to one of their emails and ask that your case be escalated to second level support.

Hi,

I got stuck in the same error (screen went grey), with the same 310i card.

(see http://forums.pinnaclesys.com/forums/thread/258686.aspx)

I'm using XP SP2 and TVCenter Pro 4.90.1501.

I suspect it is a bug in the TVCenterPro software (I can't adjust settings I need to cope with this problem)

You might try my solution in http://forums.pinnaclesys.com/forums/thread/145153.aspx  (first post)

And if you search some further you'll find my posts on how to get the remote working

I still wonder why pinnacle doesn't seem to be able to support its own systems in a decent way for years now.

Greetz