Freeview on your laptop

Sobraon

I can see Belmont tv transmitter tower from my front room but still freeview needs a big external wide band aerial to work. My USB dongle antenna didn't pick anything up at all.

Some older aerials are 'banded' and can only pick up specific sets of channels. Digital (freeview) requires a wideband 'new' digital antenna. My laptop dongle will pick up some freeview channels with a Tesco internal set top antenna but not nearly as well as my Panaonic TV with the same antenna

Smickan

Chris - No, as our roof ariels were taken down [but we saved one and we have an ariel socket on it, and trying that didn't work either, and it was resting on the windowsill]

Hoping to buy a proper digital ariel soon, thank you guys

Ronaldinho

Question:- Is your laptop powerfull enough to run the TV Dongle? I know that mine is VERY slow, this may be a problem (Where as it isn't with my Desktop).

I have the Haupage (sp) one, and it works no problem at all on my desktop. Have you tried uninstalling then re-installing the drivers etc you got with the device? I used that instead of the MS media one, and as I say, works no problem.

wombleboy

I've had a couple of problems with a wireless DTV dongle. In fairness it turned out to be the ariel. The ariel that was shiped with the dongal was pritty poor. I eventually pluged it into an areil which i new could recive freeview from a set top box.

The other problem you might have, especially if you are using windows media edition, is having the right codac (Special bit of software that decodes digital image!) Make sure you've installed the software that came with the dongal. But failing that you could buy one of the net for about $15 from nivada. I found the card picked up the channels but didn't display images untill i installed this codac.

If that made no sence, sorry

Ashok_2

wombleboy wrote:

I've had a couple of problems with a wireless DTV dongle. In fairness it turned out to be the ariel. The ariel that was shiped with the dongal was pritty poor. I eventually pluged it into an areil which i new could recive freeview from a set top box.

The other problem you might have, especially if you are using windows media edition, is having the right codac (Special bit of software that decodes digital image!) Make sure you've installed the software that came with the dongal. But failing that you could buy one of the net for about $15 from nivada. I found the card picked up the channels but didn't display images untill i installed this codac.

If that made no sence, sorry

I didn't know you need a special codec to play freeview on Media Center, anyone got more info on this?

Also, if I switch my laptop from Media Center to another OS XP/Vista would it still count as MCE on freeview sticks?

Willxx

I have one also it worked fine on my desktop (although bbc 3 & 4 didn't pick up and bbc 1 & 2 were rubbish, I know they are anyway but this is just reception not content ) on my laptop though I can only pick up BBC1 2 3 parliament channel and cbeebies