Guide to installing 3 or more tuners for MCE2005

[Kojak71]

This is a UK specific guide covering basic MCE setup issues. It also shows you how to get around MCE's 2 digital tuner limit, allowing you to record/watch 3 or more channels simultaneously, be it TV or Radio. Please note the following:

• Some tasks will require you to edit the registry, undertaken at your own risk.
  
• Do not assume that your graphic card and/or TV tuner(s) will work with the MCE application. Your hardware must have MCE drivers (also known as BDA drivers) installed.
• Do not forget to install an MCE compatible decoder (e.g. nVidia PureVideo decoder). Microsoft do not bundle a decoder with any of their OS's so you'll need to get one, otherwise you will not be able to view TV recordings, LiveTV or DVDs.
  
• The guide is based on my system comprising of 4 Nova-t PCI (90002) cards. Hauppauge have drivers which allow multiple instances of the same hardware to co-exist in a system. Some manufacturers do not have such drivers.
  
• Getting different make/model tuners to work together is possible, but it would depend on how the drivers interact with each other.
• There's no limit to the number of tuners you can have but there are some practical considerations. E.g. recording 4 channels simultaneously whilst watching a pre-recorded program and whilst burning a DVD in the background could prove too much for one or more of your PC's sub-systems (CPU/RAM/Hard-drive). A good tip is to have the OS on one hard-drive and have MCE save your TV recordings onto another hard-drive. This might have to be a RAID0 array if you intend on making simultaneous recordings with more than 2 tuners.
  
• Make sure that your pc is up to date with all of the critical & optional windows updates, particularly MCE rollup update 2 (aka Emerald) which upgrade MCE's features to include Digital Radio (released October 2005).
  

1. Limitations
DVB-t in the UK (i.e. Freeview) is made up of:

• TV channels
• Digital Radio (DVB-t radio, not DAB)
• Interactive services, teletext, subtitles and "Press the red button" events
• TopUpTV
  

Since most set-top boxes support the first three if not all four types of Freeview service, it can come as a dissappointment to newcomers to learn that MCE can only view/record TV & Digital Radio channels. This may change in the future.


2. Hauppauge driver installation
Refer to the sticky posts to guide you to the drivers you need for your card(s). It will also give you the correct procedure for uninstalling/upgrading the drivers (i.e. do not use the Windows "Update drivers" procedure!)


3. TweakMCE
A new version has been released by Microsoft that is now compatible with MCE Emerald. It's available from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en. With this you can change the default settings for many things, such as TV recording locations. It will also allow you to disable the automatic installation of software from "Enhanced DVDs".


4. BBC Parliament
Although BBC Parliament is a TV channel (albeit displayed in a reduced size screen) it's transmitted as a digital radio channel. MCE can only treat this hybrid channel as digital radio. To receive this channel open the registry and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Media Center\Service\GLID

Edit "ExclusionList" and remove "BBC Parliament". Close down the registry and reboot the PC. NOTE: The remaining entries on the ExclusionList list cannot be viewed by MCE as BBCi is an interactive channel, and Bloomberg is a TopUpTV channel.


5. Initial dual tuner setup
Use MCE tuner wizard to setup your PC to use dual tuners. Make sure everything works before continuing.


6. Setting up more than 2 tuners
Open up the registry and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners

There you will find at least one {x} key containing a further number of {y} keys (where x & y are random numbers generated by windows). Each of these {y} keys relates to a tuner in your system (henceforth referred to as a {tuner} key).

Note: If there are more {tuner} keys then there are tuners, please read the 1st point under section 9 before continuing.

Each {tuner} key will contain a further 2 keys called TuneRequest & UserSettings. You can ignore TuneRequest from now on as it's automatically populated. Click on the UserSettings key (under each of the {tuner} keys) until you find the value UserDefName that is labelled as either "Digital TV Antenna A" or "Digital TV Antenna B". If you carried out the instructions in section 5, the contents of these {tuner} keys will be identical (apart from a few values) and can be used to populate the other {tuner} key(s) you wish to activate. As there's quite a lot do to, I've listed below all the keys & values that need to be created and then populated. The values are mostly DWORD, but those preffixed with an * are STRINGS. Where entries do differ for each tuner, the values affected will have further instructions highlighted in red.

Note: The keys/values listed below are specific to MCE after "Emerald" is installed.

\UserSettings
(Default)
EnabledForMCE
RecordOrder see section 7
RecordPrefered see section 7
*UserDefName Digital TV Antenna C [NOTE: the 4th tuner will be Digital TV Antenna D, and so on]
UseSTB
WatchOrder see section 7
WatchPrefered see section 7

\UserSettings\TuneRequest
(Default)
Original Network ID
Service ID
Transport Stream ID

\UserSettings\TuneRequest\Components
(Default)
Collection Count

\UserSettings\TuneRequest\Locator
(Default)
Bandwidth
Frequency
GuardInterval
HierarchyAlpha
InnerFECMethod
InnerFECRate
LPInnerFECMethod
LPInnerFECRate
ModulationType
OtherFrequencyInUse
OuterFECMethod
OuterFECRate
SymbolRate
TransmissionMode

\UserSettings\TuneRequest\Tuning Space
(Default)
*Description
*Name
Network ID
*Network Type
System Type

\UserSettings\TuneRequest\Tuning Space\Default Locator
(Default)
Bandwidth
Frequency
GuardInterval
HierarchyAlpha
InnerFECMethod
InnerFECRate
LPInnerFECMethod
LPInnerFECRate
ModulationType
OtherFrequencyInUse
OuterFECMethod
OuterFECRate
SymbolRate
TransmissionMode


7. Setting up more than 2 tuners (contd.)
We need to enter/edit the entries for the DWORD values highlighted in section 6. As a tuner can only record/view 1 channel at a time, the registry setting tells MCE what to do if a tuner is already in use.

The values for RecordOrder / RecordPrefered / WatchOrder / WatchPrefered created during section 5 are:
Digital TV Antenna A 0 / ffffffff / 1 / 0
Digital TV Antenna B 1 / 0 / 0 / ffffffff

For 3 tuners enter/edit the values to the following:
Digital Antenna A 0 / ffffffff / 2 / 0
Digital Antenna B 1 / 0 / 1 / 0
Digital Antenna C 2 / 0 / 0 / ffffffff

For 4 tuners enter/edit the values to the following:
Digital TV Antenna A 0 / ffffffff / 3 / 0
Digital TV Antenna B 1 / 0 / 2 / 0
Digital TV Antenna C 2 / 0 / 1 / 0
Digital TV Antenna D 3 / 0 / 0 / ffffffff

For 5 tuners enter/edit the values to the following:
Digital TV Antenna A 0 / ffffffff / 4 / 0
Digital TV Antenna B 1 / 0 / 3 / 0
Digital TV Antenna C 2 / 0 / 2 / 0
Digital TV Antenna D 3 / 0 / 1 / 0
Digital TV Antenna E 4 / 0 / 0 / ffffffff


8. Finally
Close regedit, and reboot the PC. Test MCE by recording z simultaneous channels (z = the number of tuners you have). I've been happily using my system for the past several months without any issues.


9. Known Problems

• If you need to install newer drivers for the tuner(s) steps 5-8 of this guide will have to be carried out again. The registry will create new {tuner} key entries in addition to the ones already there which can make editing a bit tricky. My advice would be to:
  1. Remove the old drivers as per Chris Day's instructions & reboot.
  2. The system will automatically detect the hardware and will kick off the driver installation wizard which you must cancel.
  3. Remove the old {tuner} keys from the registry and then reboot.
  4. Install the new drivers when prompted, and then go through steps 5-8 of this guide.
     
• When MCE reports a recording conflict, the "resolve conflict" button does not work (neither does it work on the XBox360). However you can still manually resolve conflicts by examining your list of scheduled recordings and taking the appropriate action.
  
• Since "Emerald" was released, there have been some playback issues with nVidia PureVideo Decoder. This can apparently be fixed by upgrading to the latest version of the decoder.

[Chris]

Discussion thread for this guide can be found here:
Re: Guide to installing 3 or more tuners for MCE2005
As per Kojak71's request, please post any queries in there.

[Kojak71]

I can't imagine why MS chose to impose a 2 tuner limit on MCE, but that limit can be bypassed. Once activated the additional tuner(s) will work seamlessy within the GUI, behaving exactly it/they should whether it's watching LiveTV, recording or using a Media Centre Extender (such as the XBox360). I suppose that MS thought the majority of people would only ever require 2 tuners. They probably think that having more is the preserve of the TV junky which constitute a minority. They probably have a point.

Since the TV Tuner setup wizard can't handle more than 2 tuners, we will need to use the manual method which involves making some changes to the the registry. Looking at it simply, we are going to take the data of the tuners that are activated in MCE, and copy them over to the tuners which aren't enabled. In essence it's a sort of copy/paste. My old method involved a lot of typing which will took ages to do, prone to typographic errors and migraine inducing. Recently I stumbled upon a new technique which will get the whole job more accurately and in about 5-10.


1. The Registry
Open up the registry and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners

Beneath that they may be several strings, which are made up what seem like as random sequence numbers/letter (get used to this, as these are generated by Windows). One of these keys will contain several further random keys which should relate to the number of tuners installed on the system.

[NOTE: If you've already used your system before or had trouble during the installation or upgraded the drivers of an already existing card this area will contain orphaned entries which need to be removed (it will make navigating the registry that much easier). Delete all of the keys, close the registry and reboot the system. When windows reloads, it will rescan the system, and populate that part of the registry properly.]

Anyway back to what I was saying before, which is the keys for each tuner. Clicking into each of these will reveal several entries in the right pane. One of the entries on the right will be called DevInstance, and the value increases from 0 upwards (in the registry 0 comes before 1). There's no point editing this, as this is automatically generated by MCE, and it uses this to order the tuners during the TV Tuner setup, and I'll be using that label for the purposes of this guide. Within in each tuner key are a further 2 keys TuneRequest & UserSettings. We can ignore TuneRequest as it's automatically populated by windows whether or not the tuner is used. As none of the tuners are currently activated in MCE, the UserSettings key will not be populated with further entries/keys. Close the registry and go into MCE, and then:

2. Copy

1. Use the TV Tuner wizard and when prompted choose the first 2 available tuners (DevInstance 0 & 1) and set them up. If not done already set up the guide data, otherwise finish the process.
2. Go into the guide and record 2 concurrent programs for a minute or so. Stop the recordings, and the view them to ensure they work properly. If they check out then you can delete the recordings.
3. Go back to the registry you'll see that the tuners (DevInstance 0 & 1) will have entries in the UserSettings key (as well assubsequent keys being populated). Select the UserSettings key for tuner DevInstance 0, right click and export it as registry to the desktop (call it 0), do the same for tuner DevInstance 1 (call that 1).
4. Close the registry
5. Go back into MCE, repeating steps 1 to 4 for the next 2 tuners (i.e. DevInstance tuners 2 & 3), and so on until you have done this for all the tuners in your system.

3. Paste
You may have noticed that the tuners which had been previously populated with information, will now be empty, that's because MCE rewrites the registry when the TV Tuner setup wizard is used. That's why we exported the the registry at each stage, we can use the information contained within them to paste back the information into the Window registry. This couldn't be simpler. All you need to do is double click on each of them on term, and allow windows to merge (i.e. paste) the information to the registry. Once you have done that for all the saved registry files, open the registry and you should see that all your tuners wil have their respective UserSettings keys populated.

4. Edit
We now have to edit some of the entries in the UserSettings key for each of the tuners. First off let's change the description of each tuner, which is held within TunerDescription. No real reason for any particular order, but to keep things simple I label them so that they run as the same order of DevInstance. So DevInstance tuner 0 is Digital Antenna A, DevInstance 1 is Digital Antenna B, and so on). The entry for enabledforMCE is set to fffffffffff for each tuner. Next we need edit the entries RecordOrder / RecordPrefered / WatchOrder / WatchPrefered for each tuner. These settings instruct MCE what to do when a tuner is already in use.

2 tuners:
Digital TV Antenna A 0 / ffffffff / 1 / 0
Digital TV Antenna B 1 / 0 / 0 / ffffffff

This is what you get if you used the wizard to populate the registry for just 2 tuners. The next scenario will make it easier to explain the entries.

For 3 tuners enter/edit the values to the following:
Digital Antenna A 0 / ffffffff / 2 / 0
Digital Antenna B 1 / 0 / 1 / 0
Digital Antenna C 2 / 0 / 0 / ffffffff

First off, the flag setting for the Record/Watch prefered just tells MCE which tuner it wants it to use for recording/watching as long as that particular tuner is free. The Record/Watchorder tells MCE which tuner to user if the preferred tuner is already in use. So let's say that A is used for a recording, and another recording is about to start, MCE should choose tuner B. Now let's say that the 1st recording has finished with another about to begin. It should use tuner A again, as that is the tuner with the highest recording priority. It doesn't always work out like that, but it gives MCE a guideline. Here are some other scenarios.

For 4 tuners enter/edit the values to the following:
Digital TV Antenna A 0 / ffffffff / 3 / 0
Digital TV Antenna B 1 / 0 / 2 / 0
Digital TV Antenna C 2 / 0 / 1 / 0
Digital TV Antenna D 3 / 0 / 0 / ffffffff

For 5 tuners enter/edit the values to the following:
Digital TV Antenna A 0 / ffffffff / 4 / 0
Digital TV Antenna B 1 / 0 / 3 / 0
Digital TV Antenna C 2 / 0 / 2 / 0
Digital TV Antenna D 3 / 0 / 1 / 0
Digital TV Antenna E 4 / 0 / 0 / ffffffff

Hopefully you should see the pattern, so you can generate the right values if you are using more tuners then the scenarios listed above. Once that is done, close the registry, and reboot Windows. Once it's loaded, go back into MCE, and test all the tuners by recording as many channels as you have tuners.
If you ever decide to install a new set of drivers, you will have to go through the whole process again. With the export/import registry method, this is not such a pain. Just remember to clear the existing orphaned tuner keys as described before.

[Kojak71]

I've since found a quicker way of populating the registry (1-2 minutes instead of 1-2 hours), and I've updated the guide. But in the interests of history, and those with a curious disposition here are the list of keys used in the registry. They are mostly DWORD, those preffixed with an * are STRINGS.

Note: The keys/values listed below are specific to MCE after "Emerald" is installed.


\UserSettings
(Default)
EnabledForMCE
RecordOrder
RecordPrefered
*UserDefName
UseSTB
WatchOrder
WatchPrefered

\UserSettings\TuneRequest
(Default)
Original Network ID
Service ID
Transport Stream ID

\UserSettings\TuneRequest\Components
(Default)
Collection Count

\UserSettings\TuneRequest\Locator
(Default)
Bandwidth
Frequency
GuardInterval
HierarchyAlpha
InnerFECMethod
InnerFECRate
LPInnerFECMethod
LPInnerFECRate
ModulationType
OtherFrequencyInUse
OuterFECMethod
OuterFECRate
SymbolRate
TransmissionMode

\UserSettings\TuneRequest\Tuning Space
(Default)
*Description
*Name
Network ID
*Network Type
System Type

\UserSettings\TuneRequest\Tuning Space\Default Locator
(Default)
Bandwidth
Frequency
GuardInterval
HierarchyAlpha
InnerFECMethod
InnerFECRate
LPInnerFECMethod
LPInnerFECRate
ModulationType
OtherFrequencyInUse
OuterFECMethod
OuterFECRate
SymbolRate
TransmissionMode

I have not yet acheived the stage of getting 2 tuners working! Can you please advise?
I have made exaustive searches through forums to find a solution for my problem, without success!!
My system comprises the following:
I have a Packard Bell imedia running:
Windows xp media centre edition version 2002 service pack 2
Mce version 4.0 (mce 2005 roll up 2) as confirmed by your 'ident software'
Radeon 9550 graphics card
2 x Hauppauge Nova-T stick DVB-T usb tuner devices
Please be kind enough to advise, how I can record one freeview channel whilst watching another freeview channel.
Each time I try to select a different channel to the one that I am recording, the screen freezes and I get the message:
'No TV signal'
Both tuners have their own digital arial and both work independantly.
In fact i arial is sufficient to supply a good signal to the 2 tuners if they are in different pc's!!
I have downloaded and used both the mce tuner priority and mce configuration reset.
The former confirms that both my tuners are configured and in the registry, I have tried the different combinations of settings with no luck.
I can confirm that both tuners are working by checking or unchecing the 'enabled for mce' check boxes in the 'mce tuner priority' application.

I really would appreciate a solution to this problem.

Thanks in anticipation!!

Geoff Cooper
United Kingdom

[aliburns]

A bit more info and a useful link here :

http://jtsang.blogspot.com/2006/11/m...tv-tuners.html

[Kojak71]

That will prove useful to those less inclined to edit the registry directly. Certainly having to manually type in the registry was a major PITA. However the newer method I've noted is incredibly quick, takes less than a couple of minutes.

[Kojak71]

You served me well, but the temperatures were a little on the high side, and you won't be able to cut it for high-def. For the interests of prosterity HTPC1 was:

7 Tuners: 2 x Nova-T-500 (24118 drivers) + 2 x Nova-T PCI (24167 drivers) + AverMedia USB2 A800
Accent HT-400 Case + Seasonic S12-500 PSU
Asus P4C800e-Deluxe + 2 x 512Mb Corsair RAM
P4 2.8GHz (Northwood) + Thermalright XP-120
nVidia 6600GT (fanless) + nVidia Decoder
1 x Samsung 40Gb Notebook drive (OS - MCE2005)
2 x Western Digital 500Gb in RAID 0 array (TV recordings)


HTPC2 is:

4 Tuners: 2 x Nova-T-500 (24118 drivers)
Accent HT-400 Case + Seasonic S12-500 PSU
Asus PW5-DH Deluxe + 2 x 1Gb Corsair DDR2 RAM
Intel E6600 + Thermalright XP-120
nVidia 7600GT + nVidia Decoder
1 x Samsung 40Gb Notebook drive (OS - MCE2005)
2 x Western Digital 500Gb in RAID 0 array (TV recordings)


Still need to tweak it for noise, before I look at adding another Nova-T-500. Might even add a PCIe twin tuner card is I can find one.

Hi, this post is very informative; however I would like some specific information. If someone can help me then please send me a private message. Best Regards,

[Kojak71]

This guide will also work with Vista Media Centre. Just tried it on Vista Ultimate 64-bit and it works fine so all Vista versions that have media centre technology should also work.

The only issue I have is with the Terratec dual tuner, there's a known issue which is preventing me from using it (something about offsets), so I have it disable. The remaining 3 Hauppauge dual tuners work a treat.