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Got my TV tuner installed, media center picked it up. All is going well, but…
A should fill in a little history first…
I have my new PC (Dual core 2.8ghz bla bla bla…), installed Vista Ultimate. Everything installed fine, Vista liked all my hardware and started updating itself straight away. I got Media Center working straight away, again all was going well! My Xbox 360 was detected as soon as I turned it on, installing was very simple. I even found a way of getting my DivX movies decoded on the fly when streaming to the XBox. My pictures and music also sharing nicely and I was happy!
This was all a few weeks ago. This week I decided to treat myself to a TV Tuner for my PC. I picked up a WinTV NOVA T 500 card. I choose this mainly becuase it has two Freeview tuners on one card. This allows you to record one channel whist watching another, and pause rewind features.
I brought the card home, installed the hardware and started Vista. The card was recognised and installed within 3 minutes. When I started Media Center it detected the new tuners straight away, and asked me if I wanted to use them? I choose yes, and the ‘wizard’ walked me through scanning for channels and setting up the TV guide.
Everything worked fine, and for a few days we have been watching live and recorded TV through my XBox in the living room. The only problem was the Media Center was displaying “no data available” when you check the listings for ITV1 or 2. I gave it a few days to see if maybe there was a problem with ITV’s data or something. It wasn’t! So this morning after waking up at 8.00am and not being able to get back to sleep! I thought I’d try and sort it. It didn’t take long, mainly becuase I’m a believer in the ’simply’ things first.
If your getting the same problem, here is what worked for me.
1. Go to your Media Center
2. Go to Tasks - Settings
3. Choose TV then Guide
4. Add listings to Channel
5. Go to the channel causing a problem (in my case it was 3 ITV) and select it
6. A list of replacements are shown, simply select the same channel again (in my case it was 3 ITV Meridian)
The above is simply  the ‘take it out and put it back in’  but it works!
If anyone knows a better way or a reason for the problem please leave a comment and let me know!

Sorry it’s a few days late, I did promise someone in a training course I would put this up last week but it’s just been a bit hectic.

Windows Vista, some people want it, some people don’t, some people just aren’t sure. For those who do and those who need some encouragement, there’s a tool that will tell you what hardware and software you need to upgrade 1st or if you need to upgrade at all.I don’t want to go on about this tool because it is pretty self explanatory, but I will say one thing. It’s not perfect, it is to be used as a guide. The software side of things are not always correct. Or sometimes just a little unnecessary , like telling you that windows messenger will need to be upgraded. The Vista upgrade should handle that!

The tool is obviously from Microsoft, and you can get it from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx

If you’re thinking of upgrading it’s worth having a quick look through the rest of that page 1st.

… Also if you do upgrade an XP machine to vista (which I haven’t done yet) I’d love to hear how you got on! just drop a comment to the end of this.

So Vista was released recently. Looking very different from XP, lots of new features, more bundled software and considered by most to be a ‘major’ update to the Windows OS. Then there is Windows Mobile 6, not quite major improvement I was hoping for.

I recently started to see some of the ‘hype’ about WM6 (Previously Crossbow). So I started to dig around trying to find out some more. I should explain, I have an O2 XDA Exec running WM5, which I do like! It practically runs my life (The Battery died on it the other day and I can’t remember the number of things I forgot whilst I didn’t have my XDA). So when I saw there may be a chance to ‘improve’ what I’ve got, I got excited. As much as I love my XDA there are areas that could do with being improved!
Unfortunately I must say I was quickly disappointed with what I read about the ‘new’ version.  To me it looks more like WM5.1 then 6, as Mobile-review.com said “Nevertheless, the brand-new operating system could be called “Windows Mobile 5.0 Second Edition” read the review here. I found this to be quite a good in-depth review of the OS.
I then had a look at the videos of someone demonstrating the new features of WM6, again I was disappointed :-(  They start by showing new programs and settings, although this is finished within about 40seconds, the next 3 minutes was spent playing every tone that comes with the OS. Maybe I’m missing something but to me it is more important to show the new settings and programs than the tunes? Unless the OS really doesn’t have much else to show!?!!
WM6 does have some updates that I do like the look of like integration of VOIP, True HTML email, embedded Live, improved messenger…
Unfortunately it’s just not enough to warrant spending money on upgrades. That is if the upgrades are available! Personally I think unless O2 make WM6 a free upgrade I’ll wait for Photon (WM7) which is planned to be the mobile equivalent of Vista!