Kworld PCI Hybrid TV card woes.

Just bought a KWorld TV / Radio card for the PC

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?KW-DVBT210

Despite six good reviews (all Vista or Win7) it is the worst piece of
junk I've used in quite a while. Never had anything remotely like
this before.

The opening screen which offers you "Videos, Pictures, or MUSICS"
doesn't instill confidence.

Another review I found suggested the software was written by a Down
syndrome Chimpanzee. I think they were being unkind to chimps. Took
me eight hours to get the thing to find digital channels. Reinstalled
the drivers and the application dozens of times, numerous BSODs.

It should work with XP SP2 - I run SP3, and was forced to restore my C
drive twice as on 'auto setup' it tried to install both the
application programme and the drivers at the same time, resulting in
spectacular crashes with hundreds of .chk files being generated on
reboot Fortunately I use Acronis and can recover the C partition in
under ten minutes.

Updated DirectX from the supplied CD - no change. Updated DirectX from
the web, things started to work.

Live update failed - I needed to put an updated file (Country.txt)
in the correct folder as the upgrade didn't! Had to manually extract
drivers from Driver.cab as the installation prog failed. It kept
failing to find particular driver files - when I located one for it,
it hit me with 'This file is older than the one I already have!'

Plenty of stuff on the web - but no answers, and most of the links end
in a '404'. LOts of complaints from users who have failed to receive
answers from the Kworld site.

However (end of main moan), it now sort of works in a clunky fashion,
but a number of channels are missing:

BBC3 missing from MUX1; BBC4 from MUXB; CNN, Teachers', and few
others from MUXA, Smile from MUXC, and a large number from MUXD.

To be honest the only ones I want are BBC3 and 4. Think something
like this may have been covered before (when I wasn't interested !)

Any ideas ?

TIA

GrahamC

In message , Graham C
writes
Just bought a KWorld TV / Radio card for the PC

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?KW-DVBT210

Despite six good reviews (all Vista or Win7) it is the worst piece of
junk I've used in quite a while. Never had anything remotely like
this before.

The opening screen which offers you "Videos, Pictures, or MUSICS"
doesn't instill confidence.

Neither does the title on that web page:
"KWorld DVB-T 210SE Hybrid TV Tunner Card"
--
Ian

"Graham C" wrote in message
news
Just bought a KWorld TV / Radio card for the PC

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?KW-DVBT210

Despite six good reviews (all Vista or Win7) it is the worst piece of
junk I've used in quite a while. Never had anything remotely like
this before.


Is that because you don't know how to use it?
People who don't know much about computers will often say "it's broken"
when it doesn't do something they think it should.

The opening screen which offers you "Videos, Pictures, or MUSICS"
doesn't instill confidence.


Why not? Did you select English?

Another review I found suggested the software was written by a Down
syndrome Chimpanzee. I think they were being unkind to chimps.

Do tell us which magazine would allow such a stupid statement to be
issued. Or was that something you made up, lied about and tried to
make it sound real by stating it was a review. I suspect you will
suddenly "forget" where you saw it. Most people that lie do that.

Took
me eight hours to get the thing to find digital channels.

Your aerial must be faulty, or you didn't follow the instructions.

Reinstalled
the drivers and the application dozens of times, numerous BSODs.


Why would you want to create errors on your computer in that way?

It should work with XP SP2 - I run SP3,

Yes, so it will work with that.

and was forced to restore my C
drive twice as on 'auto setup' it tried to install both the
application programme and the drivers at the same time,

Most programs do, you need to learn a bit more about computers.


resulting in
spectacular crashes with hundreds of .chk files being generated on
reboot

That is as a result of your hard drive being broken or about to fail.
So it is a good job you noticed the files now.
Nothing to do with the software you are trying out.

Fortunately I use Acronis and can recover the C partition in
under ten minutes.


Oh dear, that says it all really. It sounds like you just mess with the
computer and have ruined it now.

Updated DirectX from the supplied CD - no change. Updated DirectX from
the web, things started to work.


Use your common sense then idiot! Different files are released on different
days of each month. If your PC had really old drivers then you must either
not have SP3 installed, have switched of auto-updates or keep tampering
with files without knowing what they do. Running a pirated version of
windows can cause a similar problem.

Live update failed - I needed to put an updated file (Country.txt)
in the correct folder as the upgrade didn't!

No doubt you have your firewall preventing the program from connecting
to the site to get the update.

Had to manually extract
drivers from Driver.cab as the installation prog failed.

It sounds like your messing with files has caused the problem. READ
the instructions, follow the prompts and stop messing about.

It kept
failing to find particular driver files - when I located one for it,
it hit me with 'This file is older than the one I already have!'


That is because you don't know what you are doing and fail to
understand how programs install in windows.

Plenty of stuff on the web - but no answers, and most of the links end
in a '404'. LOts of complaints from users who have failed to receive
answers from the Kworld site.


So why did you buy a roduct you claim doesn't work and is no longer
supported? That shows you must be genuinely thick!

However (end of main moan), it now sort of works in a clunky fashion,
but a number of channels are missing:


So you followed the instructions at last!

BBC3 missing from MUX1; BBC4 from MUXB; CNN, Teachers', and few
others from MUXA, Smile from MUXC, and a large number from MUXD.

To be honest the only ones I want are BBC3 and 4. Think something
like this may have been covered before (when I wasn't interested !)


Do your own research, learn to use a computer. No one is interested in
your continual moaning at your own failures although it is entertaining
during
the adverts on TV.

Any ideas ?


Yes, get a life, learn to research, learn to use Google, use your brain and
ask
an adult for help if you can't follow onscreen prompts and instructions.
Just
copying files to a hard drive will not do any good.

TIA

GrahamC

In message , Graham C
wrote

To be honest the only ones I want are BBC3 and 4. Think something
like this may have been covered before (when I wasn't interested !)

Part time channels with the bandwidth being shared with the BBC
childrens channels.

Do you get the 2 off BBC children's channels?
Will you get BB3/4 if you scan when they are active - after 7pm?

--

Alan
news2009 {at} admac {dot} myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

"Graham C" wrote in message
news
Just bought a KWorld TV / Radio card for the PC

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?KW-DVBT210

Despite six good reviews (all Vista or Win7) it is the worst piece of
junk I've used in quite a while. Never had anything remotely like
this before.

The opening screen which offers you "Videos, Pictures, or MUSICS"
doesn't instill confidence.

Another review I found suggested the software was written by a Down
syndrome Chimpanzee. I think they were being unkind to chimps. Took
me eight hours to get the thing to find digital channels. Reinstalled
the drivers and the application dozens of times, numerous BSODs.

It should work with XP SP2 - I run SP3, and was forced to restore my C
drive twice as on 'auto setup' it tried to install both the
application programme and the drivers at the same time, resulting in
spectacular crashes with hundreds of .chk files being generated on
reboot Fortunately I use Acronis and can recover the C partition in
under ten minutes.

Updated DirectX from the supplied CD - no change. Updated DirectX from
the web, things started to work.

Live update failed - I needed to put an updated file (Country.txt)
in the correct folder as the upgrade didn't! Had to manually extract
drivers from Driver.cab as the installation prog failed. It kept
failing to find particular driver files - when I located one for it,
it hit me with 'This file is older than the one I already have!'

Plenty of stuff on the web - but no answers, and most of the links end
in a '404'. LOts of complaints from users who have failed to receive
answers from the Kworld site.

However (end of main moan), it now sort of works in a clunky fashion,
but a number of channels are missing:

BBC3 missing from MUX1; BBC4 from MUXB; CNN, Teachers', and few
others from MUXA, Smile from MUXC, and a large number from MUXD.

To be honest the only ones I want are BBC3 and 4. Think something
like this may have been covered before (when I wasn't interested !)

Any ideas?

TIA


I've got both the KWorld DVB-T and DVB-S cards installed in my computer, as
you say the software was absolute junk, a total waste of time, in fact I
eventually removed them and was actually going to bin them, that was until I
upgraded to Windows Seven and almost out of curiosity reinstalled them into
Windows Media Center.. 'absolutely brilliant' I can now use my PC to record
digital OTA and Satellite TV and radio programmes, just like a PVR, which
displays a 14 day EPG.. as a bonus I can even get BBC chan 108 and Luxe TV
HD, which looks pretty good on a HDMI 1080p WS monitor.. the only drawback
being that it records the SDtv/radio programmes as .wtv, files, however even
that's fairly straightforward to overcome with the aid of a couple of free
file converters, although I haven't yet found anything that will convert the
HD .wtv recordings to any kind of standard file such as MPEG2/Divx.

On 13/03/2010 19:47, TJ wrote:

Yes, get a life, learn to research, learn to use Google, use your brain and
ask
an adult for help if you can't follow onscreen prompts and instructions.
Just
copying files to a hard drive will not do any good.

Once upon a time, your poor mother was sweating, pushing, panting,
screaming and cursing - and out you came.

What a disappointment to her you must have been ...

--
Adrian C

The message
from Graham C contains these words:

Just bought a KWorld TV / Radio card for the PC

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?KW-DVBT210

Despite six good reviews (all Vista or Win7) it is the worst piece of
junk I've used in quite a while. Never had anything remotely like
this before.

Welcome to "The Wonderful World of DVB-T on your PC"

The opening screen which offers you "Videos, Pictures, or MUSICS"
doesn't instill confidence.

I suspect the 'front end' software is most likely the crapware that
seems to be based on some sort of 'Media Centre' styled offering
designed to be remote controlled from a distance rather than from a
keyboard. IME, it absolutely sucks.

Another review I found suggested the software was written by a Down
syndrome Chimpanzee. I think they were being unkind to chimps. Took
me eight hours to get the thing to find digital channels. Reinstalled
the drivers and the application dozens of times, numerous BSODs.

I've not had that problem so much as the fact that the installer on the
later cards would sometimes take their own sweet time.

It should work with XP SP2 - I run SP3, and was forced to restore my C
drive twice as on 'auto setup' it tried to install both the
application programme and the drivers at the same time, resulting in
spectacular crashes with hundreds of .chk files being generated on
reboot Fortunately I use Acronis and can recover the C partition in
under ten minutes.

That's rather extreme. The install exercise might have just simply
uncovered an otherwise hidden bad sector or two. I'd run HDD and memory
diagnostics just to make sure that the BSODs are actually due to the
installation routine.

Updated DirectX from the supplied CD - no change. Updated DirectX from
the web, things started to work.

Yes, with the DSO changeover late last year, you needed to have a
DirectX9 related hotfix applied if you were only up to SP2 (SP3 was
already fixed). I use win2k which, unfortunately missed out on this
essential fix to its version of DirectX9 drivers (MS neglect again).

However, after about three weeks of _not_ being able to use DTVR to
record (or even watch) TV programs, I eventually stumbled upon the
solution which, essentially, involved replacing the "PsisDecd.dll" in my
win2k setup with a copy of "PsisDecd.dll" taken from a winXP SP3 system
(it's slightly more complicated than that but anyone running win2k can
google for the rest of the procedure if they're interested).

Live update failed - I needed to put an updated file (Country.txt)
in the correct folder as the upgrade didn't! Had to manually extract
drivers from Driver.cab as the installation prog failed. It kept
failing to find particular driver files - when I located one for it,
it hit me with 'This file is older than the one I already have!'

Plenty of stuff on the web - but no answers, and most of the links end
in a '404'. LOts of complaints from users who have failed to receive
answers from the Kworld site.

However (end of main moan), it now sort of works in a clunky fashion,
but a number of channels are missing:

BBC3 missing from MUX1; BBC4 from MUXB; CNN, Teachers', and few
others from MUXA, Smile from MUXC, and a large number from MUXD.

As I mentioned above ( Welcome to "The Wonderful World of DVB-T on your
PC"), this is standard behaviour with the part time channels. I know of
no DVB-T related software that can do what a freeview STB seems able to
do with utter ease, namely, being able to assign LCNs to the part time
channels when they're not active. It sucks big time if you need to have
both the BBC children's
channels _and_ BBC's part time channels Three and Four in the list.

To be honest the only ones I want are BBC3 and 4. Think something
like this may have been covered before (when I wasn't interested !)

You can either wait for 1900 hours and rescan or else rename the CBBC
to BBC Four (or is it Three?) and vice versa the other one if the other
part timers you need aren't there during Three and Four's broadcasting
schedule. You could even name them as BBC3/CBBC (assuming it's that way
round) if necessary and ditto for any other part timers that time share
a channel.

Any ideas ?

You could try alternative front end software (no guarantee it will work
though[1]) such as that supplied with a Jetway rebranded KWorld card I
bought a few years back. This installed something called DVB-Plus which
was a front end menu linking to a "Watch and Record DTV program" (DTVR
the only useful item), a basic video format converter (which simply
sucks and is totally useless), a basic mpg editing program (which also
sucks bigtime) and a "Burn Your Own DVD" utility (which I've never tried
on account it just looks too 'sucky').

I've still got the DVB-Plus shortcut on my desktop, but TBH, I never
use it since I've created a shortcut direct to the DTVR program itself
which neatly speeds up access to the only item that's actually useful.

Even so, it has many annoying features such as being unable to resize
the scheduling window and not being capable of remembering column width
adjustments from the current session (I want to see the day of the week
column _without_ having to scroll sideways.

I can reduce the width of the superfluous columns such as the one that
tells me the source is DVB-T (_I_already_know_that!_) and reduce the
width of the starting date/time column and the duration time column
which allows the day of the week to show without sideways scrolling. A
perfect solution if only the programmer had thought to allow it to
remember these changes between sessions.

However, after experiencing the even crappier 'Mediacentric' style of
front end software that seems to be commonly supplied with later cards,
these irritating deficiencies seem a _very_ tiny price to pay for
something that that is considerably less 'sucky' in the more important
aspect of 'ease of use' when scheduling recordings.

When I bought and tried out later DVB-T adapters (PCI and USB), I had
hoped the supplied software would be an improvement over the DVB-Plus
software (and the software that came with an even earlier Artec T1 usb
box). I was simply horrified at the abominable and barely usable
software that had been shipped with these adapters.

I'm still using that Jetway PCI card in my desktop along with DTVR but
the Acer Notebook has a Peak Hardware badged USB DVB-T stick plugged in
but I'm also using DTVR here instead of the original crapware that Peak
Hardware supplied. It works perfectly except for one tiny peculiarity.
Sheduled recordings record fine but 'drop in' recordings lose the sound
track for some inexplicable reason even though watch while recording has
sound present.

Luckily, the notebook is used to resolve scheduling conflicts so this
isn't a problem. Also, the issue of having to resize columns in the
scheduling window is not a major one either since a typical session is
usually several weeks at a time.

[1] In theory, if the driver software is of the BDA type (and most is),
any front end software should work. BTW, if you're thinking of trying
the much vaunted GBPVR, you might be in for a disappointment since this
is also afflicted by the 'Media Centre' styling induced crappiness (IMHO
anyway).

HTH

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

Sounds like a send it back and make sure everyone you know knows its crap.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Graham C" wrote in message
news
Just bought a KWorld TV / Radio card for the PC

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?KW-DVBT210

Despite six good reviews (all Vista or Win7) it is the worst piece of
junk I've used in quite a while. Never had anything remotely like
this before.

The opening screen which offers you "Videos, Pictures, or MUSICS"
doesn't instill confidence.

Another review I found suggested the software was written by a Down
syndrome Chimpanzee. I think they were being unkind to chimps. Took
me eight hours to get the thing to find digital channels. Reinstalled
the drivers and the application dozens of times, numerous BSODs.

It should work with XP SP2 - I run SP3, and was forced to restore my C
drive twice as on 'auto setup' it tried to install both the
application programme and the drivers at the same time, resulting in
spectacular crashes with hundreds of .chk files being generated on
reboot Fortunately I use Acronis and can recover the C partition in
under ten minutes.

Updated DirectX from the supplied CD - no change. Updated DirectX from
the web, things started to work.

Live update failed - I needed to put an updated file (Country.txt)
in the correct folder as the upgrade didn't! Had to manually extract
drivers from Driver.cab as the installation prog failed. It kept
failing to find particular driver files - when I located one for it,
it hit me with 'This file is older than the one I already have!'

Plenty of stuff on the web - but no answers, and most of the links end
in a '404'. LOts of complaints from users who have failed to receive
answers from the Kworld site.

However (end of main moan), it now sort of works in a clunky fashion,
but a number of channels are missing:

BBC3 missing from MUX1; BBC4 from MUXB; CNN, Teachers', and few
others from MUXA, Smile from MUXC, and a large number from MUXD.

To be honest the only ones I want are BBC3 and 4. Think something
like this may have been covered before (when I wasn't interested !)

Any ideas ?

TIA

GrahamC

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "TJ" saying
something like:

Is that because you don't know how to use it?
People who don't know much about computers will often say "it's broken"
when it doesn't do something they think it should.

Is it the Tiscali ****** again?

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:47:14 +0000, Adrian C
wrote:

On 13/03/2010 19:47, TJ wrote:

Yes, get a life, learn to research, learn to use Google, use your brain and
ask
an adult for help if you can't follow onscreen prompts and instructions.
Just
copying files to a hard drive will not do any good.

Once upon a time, your poor mother was sweating, pushing, panting,
screaming and cursing - and out you came.

What a disappointment to her you must have been ...

"The best part of you ran down your mother's leg" comes to mind