Crosspost from my blog, hope this information is useful!
http://www.thenears.com/archives/148
During my testing of Windows Vista Media Center, it appeared that the off-the-air registry hack to get your ATSC tuners working in Canada was now defunct. I’ve been doing some playing in the registry and have come up with a new method that does seem to work well in Canada. I’d appreciate it if someone can test this out and confirm it in the comments. If it is proven to work for others as well, I’ll publish this with screenshots as a more official looking FAQ.
Assumptions:
1. You have a working analog tuner, with MCE drivers installed
2. You have a working ATSC tuner, with MCE drivers installed
Steps to enable the ATSC tuner in Canada
1. Configure your Media Center as if you lived in the US, preferably using a zip code somewhere near your location. I used Buffalo ZIP 14201. Let Media Center auto-configure your tuners.
2. Confirm that it’s all working properly (obviously the guide data will be wrong at this point).
3. Open up the registry editor by typing regedit [enter] into the start search box. Note that you can really mess things up in the registry, so be careful and if you’re not comfortable in the registry then you might want to stop here.
4. Locate the following key in the registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners\{71985F48-1CA1-11D3-9CC8-00C04F7971E0}. This is the tuning space for the digital tuner(s) and at this point it should be properly set up for ATSC tuning.
5. Right-click on the above branch and select “Export…”, save it with a filename like “ATSC_Tuners_Working.reg”.
6. Navigate in Media Center back to the TV Settings menu and set up your TV signal. This time make sure that you select Canada and get everything set up properly for your provider. Note that when you run through the setup this time MCE will not detect the ATSC tuner, which is normal.
7. Verify that everything is working as you would expect, albeit with no high-definition content yet.
8. Close media center
9. Find the registry file that you saved earlier in USA mode, double-click to import it back into the registry.
10. Locate the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \Media Center\Service\EPG\ATSC and modify its value from “0″ to “1″.
11. Reboot the computer *or* simply restart the Microsoft Media Center Receiver service using the services control panel.
12. Start up MCE, navigate to the TV Settings Guide Setup and manually add the channels you would like to receive. This page is a good resource for the Toronto area. The format you want to enter, using the Fox Network on the RemoteCentral page as a reference, is 29-1 for the channel designation (page one of the add missing DTV channel wizard) and 14 for the frequency (page two).
13. For any channels that don’t automatically get guide information (most likely Canadian channels like CTV) you can associate them with another channel in your guide using the edit guide setup tools.
Works well for me, please point out any inconsistencies or errors for me before I publish this more official-like. This guide was done primarily by memory so I’m sure I’ve messed up a few references.