I have a Silicondust HDhomerun networked tv tuner which I use with my Windows 7 Media Center. And I absolutely love it. I use it with the Clear QAM on Comcast to record all my network television in pristine HD. And it works great…provided the Media Center doesn’t lose it.

I noticed a curious and slightly frustrating issue with the tuner. About once a week, a show(s) doesn’t record (usually it’s something I really wanted to watch). The MCE says the tuner is busy and I need to stop a currently recording show to continue. Needless to say, nothing is recording. The only way I was able to get the tuner to work again was a reboot of the Media Center box. As I said, very frustrating.

After digging around on the forums I discovered a fix. Launch the HDHomeRun Setup app. Then click on the Advanced tab. About halfway down you will see an option in the Windows Media Center section titled “Windows Media Center background channel scan”. This option is checked by default. Apparently, this allows MCE to access the tuner when it’s not recording anything. Unfortunately, when it does, it can’t record any previously programmed shows — so you get an error instead of your TV show.

If you simply uncheck this option and click OK (you may want to reboot just for good measure) then Media Center won’t arbitrarily abscond with the tuner and you’ll get your shows as expected. It’s been 3 weeks since I’ve changed this setting and I haven’t had any issues since.

Hope that helps some fellow frustrated HDHomeRun owners out there.

Now go record something!