Hauppauge Nova-T-500 not picking up channels - any ideas?

[MrWhippy]

I bought a Nova-T-500 dual freeview tuner card with the intention of building a HTPC. Thing is it wont pick up any channels. I have tried installing it under Win2k and WinXP. Both times, it appeared to install correctly, drivers and apps etc.

But when I scan for channels either using the Hauppauge software or GB-PVR it comes back with nothing.

Now I must admit that both external antenna I have tried are NOT high gain freeview types (I'll be upgrading my main antenna soon but haven't got round to it yet). But my Panasonic freeview set top box picks up channels (though some are missing and some of the found ones suffer corruption).

Is the Nova-T-500 known to require brilliant signal, I am at this stage only trying to establish that the card works and doesn't need RMAing?

Or is it known to be tricky to setup and get stable?

All ideas welcome, it's been a long while since I added hardware to a PC and it didn't just work. Kinda takes me back a few years, and not in a good way.

 

[Gopher_By_Fende]

I would suggest getting a decent aerial first, i've been looking into freeview signals and aerials recently as we're right on the edge of a signal and its currently impossible to get anything at all. Maybe it is that the card needs a better signal than the STB to get a lock.

I found a great site for info on freeview signals, stick in your post code, it'll tell you what are you nearest transmitters, how good the signal should be, and what type of aerial you should be using -

http://www.ukfree.tv/starthere.php

Hope this helps