Windows – Media Center setup won’t complete for watching TV

remote controltuner-cardtvwindows xpwindows-media-center

I have a problem watching TV in Media Center. The TV constantly pauses
1/2 second then plays 1 second, pauses 1/2 second, plays 1 second – it is
constant and does not vary. This problem occurs on all channels, live or
recorded. The bottom 5th of the screen is solid green.
I know the problem is Media Center because I can use Pinnacle's
TVCenterPro and there is no skipping/pausing (and not green on bottom).

I was using cable, and switched to DirecTV (satellite). Trying to do
"Set up TV signal" in Media Center seems to be what broke it. I get an error
"IR Hardware not detected." I can use the remote to "try again" – so the IR
hardware works fine (Media Center's remote/sensor). I tried plugging the IR
Blaster into both ports, and I tried a different USB port for the IR
receiver. I can't complete the setup. Media Center was playing it okay
before I tried to run setup. (I ran setup to try to do recording with Media
Center.)

Pinnacle PCTV 800i HD PCI card (coax cable from DirecTV tuner), ATI Radeon
HD 3200 Graphics, Windows XP SP3 Media Center Edition, AMD Athlon Dual Core
2.5 GHz, 1.75 GB RAM.

Best Answer

I found the solution in a Newegg product review (see the third entry down by Brandon):

Add these lines to the most recent copy of irbus.inf:

[MicrosoftHw]
%USB\VID_045E&PID_006D.DeviceDesc%=IrBus_V2, USB\VID_2304&PID_0225

[ControlFlags]
ExcludeFromSelect=USB\VID_2304&PID_0225

I added those two entries to the irbus.inf file. This gets the Pinnacle Remote kit for Vista to work on XP MCE 2005. Then I checked for a new driver on the USB entry in the Device Manager (it didn't have the device name, something unusual - I forget), and POOF, it installed a new driver and gave the device the correct name (eHome Infrared Receiver).

Now it works correctly. I can change channels from Media Center's guide, and set up a recording from there in one step.

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