pinnacle pctv problems....

[banter]

i have just bought and plugged in the pinnacle systems pctv card. Everything went fine until i tried to actually get some channels! i used the program i got with it (pctv vison) and clicked yes when it asked me if i wanted to use auto-scan setup. For the settings it put "United Kingdom", "PAL" and for the signal type i tried both cable and antenna. I live in the uk and have ntl cable (not digital-just the cheap stuff)- but no channels were found!! i have done it at least 10 times now changing the settings as i go- what is the problem?? Can anyone please help!!

 

[shiatsu]

You will need a good signal input otherwise your TV tuner card will not be able to recognise anything. I would try a signal booster. This takes a UHF input from the co-axial lead off the aerial and boosts it so that it can then be "split" to feed 2 or 3 TV devices. They cost about £20 for a decent unit.

The next thing is to use good quality cabling. Some of these extension kits use very poor cable (stranded wires) and you will lose too much signal if it travels any distance. Use satellite-grade co-axial cable from a specialist cable shop/supplier.

You could then try tuning in manually rather than automatically.
I live in the UK (Midlands) and these are the UHF frequencies for analog TV stations :

BBC1 46
BBC2 40
ITV 43
CH4 50
CH5 37

I used to have the NTL analog cable system and their black box sent it's output signal out on UHF 57.

Hope all this helps!

Good luck, Alan