I have a Dell XPS420, Intel Duo 2 E6850 3.0MHz,500 GB Hard Drive, 3 GB RAM, ATI Pro 600 tv tuner, NVidia GeForce 8800 GT.

This computer is 10 days old. Okay..............

I recorded a tv show yesterday and while it was recording I played Sims 2. Later that night I sat down to watch the recorded program and it gave me this error "Video error. Files needed to display video are not installed or not working correctly. Please restart Media Center or restart the computer." I did both and nothing. I was told the file was corrupt and to wait for the Vista patch coming out in Feb or March. He/she said it was a bug in the software. Didn't make me a happy camper. (10 day old computer) So I went to Microsofts help page and typed in the error and wow found this happened in 2006 with XP Media Center 2005 due to using the fast switch on the remote (no idea what that is)

Wouldn't it be safe to say a computer can do more than one thing at a time? How would a new computer get software that is "buggy" (that was in 2006) to corrupt a tv recording?

Today, my programs recorded. Yeah. Then I watched them. When it first started everything was good then I fast forward some of it and then the voices were out of sync. I stopped it, got out of media center, went back in played the recording and everything was fine, that is until I fast forwarded. While watching the show there were small white and then another time black boxes and it went away. Sometimes the peoples faces look like there is a white hot spot on them and the color black looks really weird. Anyone know what would cause this problem? Is it the video card, computer, monitor or ATI tv tuner?

Thank you for any/all help

Hi inquiringminds...

I've tried running surveillance cameras on Vista using an ATI TV card (TV Wonder VE) and found it to be all but incompatible with Vista. It would give me most of the symptoms you describe and would unexpectedly start "dropping" cameras. I'm sorry to say that I've not found the solution to running the TV card under Vista, but it works perfectly under XP. The remote wouldn't work with Vista either and is only marginally better with XP.

My solution? Next time I'm not getting an ATI card if there is something else available.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help......

wannabe1

Thank you wannabe1 for taking the time to read my post and to at least give it a shot. What puzzles me at times - not to mention ticking me off a bit - is why do companies continue to use hardware, software that have had known problems and then to put it on a new os that is not quite stable yet? Then when you call them on it they just spin bs until you realize you can't fight city hall. Ooops, didn't mean to get on a soap box. Thank you again for at least trying.

This is part of the problem that is giving Vista a bad name if you do not do your research for hardware most of the time it is with issues with drivers etc. I just installed a HVR1600 and had to play with driver version for days before I got it right but now I love the tuner card. Even get the clear QAM channel in Win TV6 but not supported in Media Center. This sitehttp://www.team-mediaportal.com/ suppose has good features and is open source have yet to try but here is the link.