Dave Henshall

just been reading up on myth, and its for linux, not windows - doh! that all the drivers for the motherboard out the window

unix is good and doent crash, BUT its downside is the availability of drivers

i'm amazed there isnt another windows based PVR type setup that can do it, then i can reload REAL XP pro back on a get around all the networking issues

Turbocabbie

You did follow the instructions right and you are not the only one that experienced that message..

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/faq/s..._wintvnt4.html

Hauppage claim it is a mis-match in the driver files however it only happens with products shipped with software between specific dates downloading the latest applications for your card from the site resolves this issue most times.... the problem is a common one

Dave Henshall

no it all works - no error messages - but it looks like its MCE, it wont allow you to set up 2 different dources on the same card

Hobomassiv

There are at least 2 windows based TV frontends i can recall, i think one is called BeyondTV, have a look through some forums like the dedicated HTPC section on hardforums.com or bit-tech.net , maybe give overclockers.co.uk a try.

Jim Galbally

the limitation is not with MCE, it's with the hardware, it can only tune into one suource at the time.

if you want to watch and record at the same time you need 2 cards.

i know this is supported in vista MC, and i'm pretty sure it's supported in MCE2005 aswell.


on another note, does anyone know what the minimum spec you could get away with on a MCE box is? i'm thinking of running one in the new flat, but dont wanna splash out much.

Dave Henshall

mine isnt a high specm its an old p4 2ghz machine..

but with 2 tuner cards - will it allow you to use 2 EPG's ..? NO that is a definate no no acording to microsoft

Turbocabbie

I run Myth myself and its pretty good with low resources, when im forced to run a Windows PVR I generall use one of the following rather than Windows Media Centre

http://www.gbpvr.com/index.html
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/
http://www.sagetv.com/

These I run on top of XPro and find them to be pretty reasonable, but not a touch on Myth on Ubuntu

Turbocabbie

Im running a ITX platform which is suitable for as its exceptionall small at 170mm x 170mm motherboard size..these motherboards also have low power requirements and as such you do not have a large fan screaming along with your media experience.... The ITX 'M' series motherboards have a hardware mpeg codec which ensures that even though the system is low powered it is capable of smooth playback... they also feature TV out, spdif out and 6.1 sound
On these I install Ubuntu Linux a Free Open Source Operating System which has 'ALL' the drivers and support for these motherboards, then I run mythTV as a front end.... its cheap and works exceptionally well.

This is the motherboard generally I use, price includes embeded processor, heatsink = Ł138.30

I generall throw them in cases such as this, price incudes PSU there are cheaper ones about = Ł62.28

throw in a DVD-RW, a hard disk and some memory say none of which are expensive these days and you have yourself a nice little PVR.. the most expensive thing is the tuner of choice.

I can do very good specification systems which are very quiet for a touch under 400 quid.. These also run MCE exceptionally well as its the hardware codec that take away the demands placed normally on the processor... Given the choice out of a 2.0ghz Intel P4 or 1.2ghz Via ITX 'M' Series to run MCE on, I would personally take the ITX as the playback would be smoother

Turbocabbie

heres how to get the most out of a Windows MCE machine

1. Start with a clean Windows installation.
2. If you're not starting with a clean installation, but purchased a machine preloaded with bloatware, uninstall absolutely everything except device drivers, a DVD decoder, Java 2 Runtime and a couple of other crucial programs. If your machine doesn't have the latest drivers installed, download them now.
3. Consider using a router with antivirus protection so you don't have to install antivirus software on the PC.
4. Make sure to run Windows Update.
5. Setting up a solid home network of Media Centers is key to expanding and enhancing the system. All Media Centers in the home should have the same username and password and that they automatically log into that account using the "control userpasswords2" run command. You should also set up a common workgroup name for the network. The last thing is network a common photo printer that is set to default on all media centers.
6. Make sure to adjust the power settings so your PC never goes into standby or hibernate modes.
7. Select the Away Mode tab and check the box to have your remote control put the Media Center into Away Mode when the home owner hits power off. This will shut off the video and audio outputs, allowing a TV with intelligent power settings to shut down automatically when the Media Center is "turned off."
8. Set your Sound Scheme to none so that Windows doesn't announce itself to the world every time it reboots after an automatic update in the middle of the night
9) change the Media Player Rip Music settings to MP3 at 320 Mbps. You can then add a 3rd-party application like Xpod to have their iPod synchronize to the Media Center's music content for a great on-the-go experience

For the best possible video experience, don't skimp on the software you use to decode DVD, HDTV, and SDTV. Most Media Centers ship with "lite" or older versions of a DVD Decoder.

foreigneRS

i shall be following your advice in the future UnseenMenace thanks for sharing

what dvd decoder do you recommend?

Turbocabbie

ohh no I never do advice only opinions, im not suggesting that mine are any more or less valid

I personally like Cyberlink PowerDVD as it has a reasonably small footprint and the interface looks as I would expect a DVD player to be, and the decoder is reasonably fast although I often combine this with VLC which is a player designed to stream media across a network however this ensures that it is very effective and uses few resources, because of this you find it pauses and stutters not a great deal on a stand alone system when media player does VLC is fantastic expecially when streaming across the internet. (not all media centres like VLC )

If you are playing a wide range of media here are some sites which have the codecs available to do such

http://www.codec-download.com/module...name=Downloads
http://www.moviecodec.com/
http://www.free-codecs.com/

Dave Henshall

well got my media centre talking over my home wireless netowrk last night to my main pc , i can now browse pics and music on that one - it was the mcafee firewall stopping all incomnig trafic on my main pc allowed my MCE ip address in and away it went,

i updated my HVR-1300 drivers to the latest 3.3c from hauppauge and gues what.... MCE MT TV doesnt work anymore FFS, gonna have to give it another coat of looking at,,, it really dowes your eyes in looking at a tv trying to trawl though settings...

foreigneRS

Dave Henshall sorry to hear you're still having troubles, and sorry for kinda hijacking your thread

UnseenMenace thanks for that. what software and format in your opinion is best to rip dvd's to hard drive to then watch over a network?

Turbocabbie

My old favorite dvd ripper is DVDecrypter however that does not support all formats such as the latest protection, it still does the majority of disks however.
My latest tool of choice is MediaCoder which is a good allrounder and ripps audio as well as video

http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/index.htm

Im currently playing with handbrake which is pretty good but is in experimental stages so is a little problematic

http://handbrake.m0k.org/?page_id=24

For playing across a network a player with good performance with minimal resource use is desirable and as such you can not get better than Video Lan Player which was designed for playing media over a network.. it also has wide support of streaming formats

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Dave Henshall

no worries,

im sure any usefull info inhere will help all who read it

Turbocabbie

It does indeed, for this reason I generally either set up remote desktop or a VNC and configure the system using another PC with a monitor on the network

http://www.realvnc.com/

Dave Henshall

might install that,

cant get remote desktop sharing to work on it either... could try netmeeting i suppose, but it means another program running that doesnt have to be...

Hobomassiv

go to start>run and type mstsc

thats remote desktop,

VNC or Radmin is easy to set up un a home network

Dave Henshall

cheers bud