Over the last couple of days I have been experiencing Consumer Electronics Anachy where I can’t seem to get anything purchased to work properly. First there was a case of user error where I purchase the Belkin Universal Microphone Adapter for my iPod, only to discover the new video iPods are not supported. Thankfully Dick Smith Electronics here in NZ were very understanding and refunded the money with no questions asked – VERY IMPRESSED!!!
My next purchase was the LeadTek WinFast USB II Deluxe which I purchased online from Ascent. By the way, Ascent rock when it comes to purchasing electronics online. If you order before midday the goods normally arrive early the following day. All excited that I would be able to use this device to enable TV and Radio through Media Center I rushed home, pulled everything out of the box and put all the pieces together.
At this point I was running the Pre-RC1 version of Vista (Build 5536), which I had only installed last friday. Vista immediately noticed that a device had been plugged in and prompted to install drivers. Following the instructions (not wanting to be blamed for not RTFM) I installed the drivers and software that was packaged with the device. Everything seemed to be going as planned.
After the requested reboot at the end of the installation process (I thought that reboot were supposed to be a thing of the past since WinXP – why do we still need to do this in Vista??) I went to run the software. Again I followed the instructions to configure the device to lock to NZ channels. The channels came up clearly, but alas no sound. I tried a few things, but figured it was probably an incompatibility with Vista. I also ran up Media Center only to discover that it couldn’t see either the radio or tv tuner.
I decided that I wouldn’t reject the device as it might well have been an issue running on Vista. So, 2 hours later I had a fresh installation of WinXP Media Center (I had forgotten how painful that is to do). I again went through the installation process of the drivers and software. This time I had a clear picture AND sounds. Unfortunately that was the end of my luck – Media Center was still not able to see the radio or tv tuner.
A few hours later (midnight) I gave up, packed up the box and this morning sent it back to Ascent. Tomorrow I should get a Hauppauge WinTV-PCR tuner which will hopefully (given the “Plug and play TV tuner suppport for Windows XP Media Center Edition” they claim) work with Media Center.
Oh, and if you read my previous blog post you will realise I have no just installed the RC1 version of Vista – looking forward to tomorrow 😉