TV Tuner Card Not Getting Signal

[puss-in-boots]

The TV tuner in my PC will only get a signal strength of 2%. I know this is not just living in a bad signal area (though I do), because the signal strength should change a lot, depending on where I move the aerial. When I first installed it, it took much faffing in order to get the aerial set up because of having to place it *just so* to get the best signal ("Oooh! 50%! No wait, gone down to 43% - wait hold it there we've got 80%! Fuck gone again. Try turning it this way...").

Then my hard drive borked up, required everything to be installed on the new one. I reinstalled the software & drivers but didn't bother trying to watch the thing. Right after that I moved in with family temporarily, & as I'd moved decided to see what kind of signal I could get. But I could only get a signal strength of 2% no matter what I did. This puzzled me but I decided to wait until I moved properly before faffing around tuning it properly.

Well I moved, & tried it again, & yet again only got a signal strength of 2%. But was busy with uni stuff & decided to wait to fix it. The one thing I did do was buy a better aerial - an amplified one that was set up for freeview. I also bought a signal booster (which I can't use because it requires a cable I don't have to connect to my computer). But tonight I decided to get it sorted. But I've gotten nowhere. I did the obvious thing & went to the website & downloaded the driver for the card model I had. I noticed it was an older driver, but shrugged & figured maybe there was some reason for that, & installed them. Only they made the TV software NOT WORK. So I had to use driver rollback. So now I'm back where I started & pissed off at missing Torchwood.

Anyone out there who knows WTF is wrong? The card is a TwinHan card, model no 3020C, if that helps.

BTW, yes, the aerial is plugged in to both the computer & the electrical socket, & is turned on.

[Makoto]

Sounds like you have electromagnetic interference and your computer or other things around your PC maybe generating frequencies to close to the Digital TV multiplexes which is causing low signal &/or quality loss etc.

Try moving your TV card to the PCI slot furthest away from your processor and graphics card. Also try moving any cables that belong to any type of fans you have away from the TV card.

Also if you have any mobile phones, cables, lamps, etc. near your PC then move them away from it and turn off anything electric you do not need on and see if it makes any difference.

If the worst comes to the worst then you could try tailoring an anti-static bag to fit around your TV card while earthing with a retaining screw.. hopefully you won't need to do that though!

[puss-in-boots]

Sounds like you have electromagnetic interference and your computer or other things around your PC maybe generating frequencies to close to the Digital TV multiplexes which is causing low signal &/or quality loss etc.

Try moving your TV card to the PCI slot furthest away from your processor and graphics card. Also try moving any cables that belong to any type of fans you have away from the TV card.
I don't think that's it though - I've had it in the same slot since I got it, & it's pretty far away from anything, & it worked before. There's no electrical equipment near my PC tower. The closest thing is the printer & that's on the other side of the desk.

[Makoto]

Well I'm 99% sure it's electromagnetic interference which is causing the problem. It doesn't matter if your card has been working fine up until now, EMI can happen out of the blue & I get it a lot with my card so I just keep the side panel off the PC. You need to try and narrow down the problem so just try moving the TV card to another PCI slot and clear any wires away from it. IF that makes no difference try taking your side panel off your PC and move it away from your computing area, you may find any electromagnetic resonance is killed there an then.
You should also try moving your PC around as well as these low budget and somewhat unknown TV cards can be highly sensitive.

Hopefully you will notice possibly a 50% or more shift in signal with your side panel off, if it not then reply back or try another TV card.

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Use a metal coat-hanger as an aerial. See if the signal strength changes.