This is a rant abo9ut a TV\Sat tuner card. A rather expensive and (on release) well recived and feature rich device. It wasn't until recently that I've started to look at why my media PC (I am a BIG media PC freak) has been misbehaving, booting up randomly from standby in the middle of the night\day.
The card in question is this: BlackGold BGT3540 6in1 Dual DVB-S, Dual DVB-T, Dual Analogue Terrestrial, PCI-E Tuner Card - Scan.co.uk
A Blackgold BGT3540 (I'd show you the Blackgold site but their ISP has taken it down in some kind of 'dispute'.
Looks nice doesn't it? It has dual satellite and terrestrial tuners and the drivers are MCE certified. But it has a dark side. A very dark side in fact.
To put it simply, it doesn't work, or does occasionally, if you're lucky. I've been browsing AVForums (where hardcore AV freaks hang out) for solutions to the problems I've faced and boy, am I not alone. This card has a list of problems longer then both my arms, legs, and girth :), so here is a little sample for you.
When the PC wakes up from S3 the card 'vanishes' from the device manager list
When the PC wakes up from S3 the card is visible in device manger but VMC (Vista Media Centre) reports that no tuner is available.
It may take several reboots to make it come back to life again (if you're lucky).
When I brought it, it had DVB-S2 (Sat HD) listed as a spec on their site. They have since removed this as they made a 'mistake'. The tuner on the card can detect S2 signals but the decoder can't convert them.
No support for systems running over 2GB RAM (WTF!!). I'm running Vista for flips sake!!
In short, I give up. I'm going to get a separate (recognised) digital tuner and S2 card.
The BlackGold BGT3540 is all fur coat and no knickers!
I really hope Google indexes this pretty quickly too!!
