Last week we covered tracking down tuner problems using recording history, this week lets go over a possible fix to the problem. Let’s take a look at changing the tuner priority for specific channels. If you are having trouble with a specific tuner creating bad recordings on a certain channel you may want to try using a different tuner by default.

To get started open up the TV Guide and navigate to the station you’d like to change the tuner priority for. Select the channel from the guide and bring up the menu by pressing the i button on your Media Center remote or right-clicking with your mouse. Select Edit Channel from the menu to bring up the channel menu.

From the channel menu view on the left hand side find the option to Edit Sources.

Once inside the Sources menu you’ll see the tuners available for this channel listed on the right hand side. Each tuner will list the name, an set of arrows to move the tuner up or down and a Split button. Once a tuner is selected you’ll also get information about that tuner including what channel that tuner is set to for this channel, the modulation if applicable and a quality reading.

Now to adjust the tuner priority for this station use the Up and Down arrows to rearrange the order in which Media Center will attempt to utilize each tuner. As each tuner is in use Media Center will move down the list attempting to initialize each tuner until it reaches the end of the list.

If you notice that one of the tuners listed is actually receiving the incorrect channel use the Split button to create a separate channel using that tuner and the current channel settings. If you’d like to preview the output of each tuner in the background select the Show Preview button from the left and then hover over each tuner.

Once you’ve finished adjusting the tuner priority for this channel press the Save button on the left to confirm the changes.

That’s all there is to adjusting the tuner priority for each channel. The most common reason to use this feature is if you notice quality differences between tuners for the same channel. For instance, if you are experiencing blocking, signal dropping or other disruptions you may want to assign a different tuner priority and see if the problem clears up.

Hopefully, if you did find a tuner problem with your recordings or TV viewing this helps to clear up the problem. Unfortunately at this point Windows 7 Media Center doesn’t contain a feature to adjust the overall tuner priority for all channels.

Need to find out which tuner is giving you trouble? Check out this guide to tracking down tuner trouble!