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solarjetman posted:This is a bit tangential to the thread, but this seems like the least inappropriate megathread and it seems like a fairly basic question so here goes. This is a good post/review and has sample movies. It's only going to be component in, but should be better than anything else available in a decent price range (which there really isn't anything in this price range). If you don't have component out, there are adapters you can play with (Get an HDMI/DVI converter on top of that). This is what it looks like:   Basically it spits it out to your PC and does most of the processing. I'm only going to be pulling stuff off of a DVR that has component outputs. From what I understand, right now the Hauppage 1212 does stereo in, but there are beta drivers for 5.1.
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Sep 26, 2008 17:20
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How do you guys feel about running Windows/whatever OS off of a Compact Flash card? Obviously, you'd put all your media onto a real hard drive, but then your system drive wouldn't take up a bay. All I'd really need for my system is to run Vista and Media Center.
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Sep 26, 2008 20:14
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VulgarandStupid posted:How do you guys feel about running Windows/whatever OS off of a Compact Flash card? Obviously, you'd put all your media onto a real hard drive, but then your system drive wouldn't take up a bay. All I'd really need for my system is to run Vista and Media Center. If you are squeezed for space, why not get a 2.5" laptop drive and a 2.5" -> 3.5" converter and just mount it in the case? Or just make a separate partition for your OS on your media drive - i.e. just one drive in the machine.
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Sep 26, 2008 22:04
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tonelok posted:It could really be painful. I actually did a install off of a USB stick and it was fine. The thing is I A: Directed all media indexes to the media drive. This gets updated regularly and is large. B: Made sure that I had plenty of ram. C: Made sure the swap was on drive. With the right linux install it rocks pretty hard since the Interface install is rock solid and you don't have to worry about good old time driven install corruption. The downside is that it is slower on boot. That would all obviously be a lot harder if not impossible to do with a windows system and media center.
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Sep 26, 2008 22:59
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To go with my new HDTV, I'm planning to build a HTPC. I don't have any spare high-end hardware, so I'll be buying everything new. Currently I'd like a machine just to play digital HD content, but I'd like to be able to upgrade in the future with a Bluray drive and TV tuner to add functionality. Here's my rough list: Linkworld Black body/ Silver strip Steel 6280-01 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case - $36.99 Foxconn M7PMX-S LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7100 / nForce 630i HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - $49.99 A-DATA 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory - $32.99 Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53GHz 3MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - $119.99 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - $139.99 I'm planning on running Vista MCE on it, and adding a Hauppage WINTV-HVR 1800 and a Lite-on Blueray/DVD reader in the next month or so. Is this going to be a sufficient setup for running 1080p content? My current cable provider's HD offerings suck, and I'm considering switching to digital TV with an HD package through my phone company soon, but this will give me a head start 
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Sep 28, 2008 05:15
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PitViper posted:To go with my new HDTV, I'm planning to build a HTPC. I don't have any spare high-end hardware, so I'll be buying everything new. Currently I'd like a machine just to play digital HD content, but I'd like to be able to upgrade in the future with a Bluray drive and TV tuner to add functionality. Here's my rough list: It's a good start. Up the processor to the 8400 at a minimum though. It's only another $30. I can't speak to the TV tuner aspect, I just use the companies DVR so I don't have to complicate things on my HTPC much more. If you know where to get proper ... files... then you won't even need the Blu-ray player, that being said it's a nice add on down the road. Check out XBMC in lieu of Vista MCE, but either way you really can't go wrong. Best of luck I love mine!
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Sep 28, 2008 05:28
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TraderStav posted:My understanding is that those kind of features are utilized when the software allows for the offloading of the encoding. Most do not. Especially the canned solutions like XBMC. (I can't speak to any others) Ok, to sort of answer my own question, if I use the Cyberlink h246 decoder from powerDVD I can offload the processing to the video card. All you have to do in MPC for instance is select it as an external codec then run in VM7 windowed mode. Only drawback here is the by running in VM7 you dont have the option of subtitles. A bit more searching led me to KMP(Korean Media Player). Followed the same options and now have 1080p running nice and smooth and with subtitles working fine. Took some fiddling but its now all working great.
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Sep 30, 2008 01:29
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TraderStav posted:It's a good start. Up the processor to the 8400 at a minimum though. It's only another $30. I can't speak to the TV tuner aspect, I just use the companies DVR so I don't have to complicate things on my HTPC much more. If you know where to get proper ... files... then you won't even need the Blu-ray player, that being said it's a nice add on down the road. Check out XBMC in lieu of Vista MCE, but either way you really can't go wrong. Best of luck I love mine! Can Vista MCE play Blueray discs? The only reason I'm adding a Bluray drive in the future is because a standalone player is still $250-350, and I can pick up a BD-ROM for the HTPC for ~$100-120. Plus it combines everything into one box/remote, and I like to keep my stand as uncluttered as possible
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Sep 30, 2008 05:18
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PitViper posted:Can Vista MCE play Blueray discs? The only reason I'm adding a Bluray drive in the future is because a standalone player is still $250-350, and I can pick up a BD-ROM for the HTPC for ~$100-120. Plus it combines everything into one box/remote, and I like to keep my stand as uncluttered as possible I don't think so. You will need to use PowerDVD, WinDVD, AnyDVD, etc.
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Sep 30, 2008 14:47
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Is an E6300 powerful enough to decode pretty much anything without needing to bother with GPU acceleration? Mostly 720p x264, maybe 1080p x264, and hopefully bluray once the prices on the drive come down a bit more, and the used bluray market gets a bit more filled in. I'll be upgrading my HTPC to C2D soon, and I'm hoping I can just buy an E8400, drop it in my desktop, and just use my current E6300 in the HTPC. I don't have any 1080p files, or a bluray drive to just see for myself though.
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Sep 30, 2008 18:46
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Kreez posted:Is an E6300 powerful enough to decode pretty much anything without needing to bother with GPU acceleration? Mostly 720p x264, maybe 1080p x264, and hopefully bluray once the prices on the drive come down a bit more, and the used bluray market gets a bit more filled in. As long as you are stick to a player that uses installed codecs and are using CoreAVC, that should suffice. Being 1.86Ghz, it's pretty borderline though for higher end 1080p content.
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Sep 30, 2008 19:20
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evilalien posted:I don't think so. You will need to use PowerDVD, WinDVD, AnyDVD, etc. This isn't true at all. Blu-ray works just fine in Vista MC with a little effort, but it isn't supported natively so expect a good amount of fiddling.
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Sep 30, 2008 20:03
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SuperCaptainJ posted:This isn't true at all. Blu-ray works just fine in Vista MC with a little effort, but it isn't supported natively so expect a good amount of fiddling. You are completely wrong or high or both... Vista doesn't include any decoders for bluray or hd-dvd in any version that has been released to date. The only way you stand any chance of achieving bluray playback in vista mce includes installing software which includes the appropriate decoders. Luckily most br/hd drives come bundled with playback software which can be leveraged to create a starting point for integrated playback. evilalien is correct in his assertion that 3rd party software will be required.
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Sep 30, 2008 20:37
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dfn_doe posted:You are completely wrong or high or both. I didn't once claim that he wouldn't need 3rd party software, and even said that it's 'not supported natively'. He of course will need a decoder, (included in most of the programs listed by evilalien), but I'm pretty sure his question was 'will I be able to watch Blu-Ray in VMC,' to which the answer is yes. In addition to the decoders, he will need a third-party application to take advantage of the Blu-Ray extensibility built into Vista Media Center. (Discussed in http://blog.mediacentersandbox.com/CommentView,guid,d3e0afea-17a6-479f-88b1-0369670fe1ff.aspx) So far, I think the best solution is a plugin for VMC that uses PowerDVD to play Blu-Ray. It's integrated very well with the VMC interface, and using it is entirely indistinguishable from playing a DVD in regular old VMC. You can find the plugin here: http://ourmediacenter.com/node/9. So yes, you can play Blu-Ray right out of VMC, and yes, it takes some fiddling.
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Sep 30, 2008 22:08
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Watching blu-ray movies on windvd9 disables my aero theme. It's not that much of a problem but it'd be more sleek if it didn't switch, so is there anyway to fix it? Thanks
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Oct 1, 2008 02:55
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2 videos: 1st - x264 4674kbit/s, dts 1536kbit/s 2nd - x264 6924kbit/s (variable), ac3 448kbit/s Both using coreavc, the first one uses 100% cpu and is completely unwatchable. The second one was totally fine, when I checked CPU usage, it was around 50%. Does DTS decoding use a ton of CPU compared with AC3? What else could be causing this? I'm trying to avoid upgrading my HTPC here, but it randomly deciding that it isn't fast enough to play certain files is making that hard.  Current hardware is a Pentium D 3ghz with some MSI OEM mATX board and 512mb of ram. Thinking of upgrading to a P5Q-EM, E6300 or E8400, and 2gb of DDR2.
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Oct 4, 2008 19:15
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I pulled the trigger on an HP slimline last week and it arrived today. Well I guess I wasted $50 adding on the TV tuner because it sucks pretty bad (it's a Avermedia m792) . Hooking up my cable, the normal channels look kinda snowy and grainy and I guess it doesn't have qam cause none of the OTA digital channels show up. And from the research I've done (which I probably should have before I bought it), it seems that heating problems arise when people try to install a different PCIe tuner card. So my only option at this point is a usb tuner that can do qam. I want something that'll do as good of a job as my HDTV, but not kill my wallet. Any recommendations? I'm kinda bummed because even though I love the size of this thing and it handles 720p perfectly, it sucks as a PVR right now which is the main reason I got it.
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Oct 4, 2008 20:09
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Can anyone recommend a cheap USB IR receiver? I used to have a Microsoft MCE Remote until my dog, literally, ate it. I thought I had held onto the USB receiver for it but it looks like I lost it while moving. I recently picked up a Harmony 880 and just want a cheap way to get it to work with the computer without having to buy another remote in the process. USB-UIRT is around $50 and for that much I could just buy another MCE Remote. There's gotta be simpler and cheaper IR receivers.
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Oct 5, 2008 17:31
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EvilLarry29 posted:I pulled the trigger on an HP slimline last week and it arrived today. Well I guess I wasted $50 adding on the TV tuner because it sucks pretty bad (it's a Avermedia m792) . Hooking up my cable, the normal channels look kinda snowy and grainy and I guess it doesn't have qam cause none of the OTA digital channels show up. And from the research I've done (which I probably should have before I bought it), it seems that heating problems arise when people try to install a different PCIe tuner card. So my only option at this point is a usb tuner that can do qam. I want something that'll do as good of a job as my HDTV, but not kill my wallet. Any recommendations? I was researching HP slimlines for the size and the price and I decided to forego the tuner because it doesn't do QAM. Where have you read about heating problems with other tuners?
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Oct 5, 2008 18:53
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NashAsh posted:I was researching HP slimlines for the size and the price and I decided to forego the tuner because it doesn't do QAM. Where have you read about heating problems with other tuners? Well, not much except for this post which cites other's experiences in that same forum. I tried to sign up and ask them more about it, but it seemed like too much of a hassle. But yeah, if you do get the slimline, it's a pretty good deal with the $400 off, but definitely stay away from the stock card. edit: well it seems like they've come out with the new 3600t (mine is 3500t) which doesn't even offer the tuner card, so you don't have to worry about it. EvilLarry29 fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Oct 5, 2008 |
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Oct 5, 2008 19:41
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okay so with the whole analog cutoff happening next year.. what sort of capture cards are out there right now that can pull in a digital cable signal and won't be totally useless when the changeover happens and Comcast stops feeding the analog channels? I'm wanting something so I can watch football right now... but I don't want to plunk 150 bucks on something with an analog tuner that's going to be total junk in 6 months. anything other than tuning a cable signal is optional. I'm thinking I'm better off just getting a slingbox for this at the moment, but maybe you guys know of something since I can't seem to find any real solid info.
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Oct 6, 2008 00:42
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Comcast will most likely be still outputting analog signals... I don't think there is any pressure on TV providers to stop. However, the analog over the air channels are getting the boot, so you're grandpa and his rabbit ears and wood-grain TV set is going to have to upgrade. All of those frequencies have already been auctioned off by the government and will be used for different things.
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Oct 6, 2008 17:50
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VulgarandStupid posted:Comcast will most likely be still outputting analog signals... I don't think there is any pressure on TV providers to stop. However, the analog over the air channels are getting the boot, so you're grandpa and his rabbit ears and wood-grain TV set is going to have to upgrade. All of those frequencies have already been auctioned off by the government and will be used for different things. Actually if I remember right cable providers are being forced to continue analog transmissions for another three years.
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Oct 6, 2008 21:54
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Juriko posted:Actually if I remember right cable providers are being forced to continue analog transmissions for another three years. Yea, I knew it was something like that. The commercials have all said nothing will change for Comcast customers essentially during the much less dramatic when we all thought this "switch over" would be.
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Oct 6, 2008 22:00
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Juriko posted:Actually if I remember right cable providers are being forced to continue analog transmissions for another three years. local channels until 2012, and that's it actually. They can do whatever they want with the rest of the channels, and since it's way more cost-effective to cram digital channels in the spaces where analog used to be, I imagine drat near every cable provider will start shutting off the analog as soon as they can manage it.
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Oct 6, 2008 23:06
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Expiration Date posted:local channels until 2012, and that's it actually. They can do whatever they want with the rest of the channels, and since it's way more cost-effective to cram digital channels in the spaces where analog used to be, I imagine drat near every cable provider will start shutting off the analog as soon as they can manage it. Comcast is already doing this in some places. My grandparents were forced onto digital cable (analog locals) about a year ago.
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Oct 6, 2008 23:45
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I'm looking for an affordable, small, simple, low-power-draw device to put serve my music. Basically, just a storage device with video-out and audio-out so that I could browse a music collection with a remote control. (edit: to clarify, this would attach directly to my receiver). I've been looking at getting an AppleTV for this... but I would like to spend less than 200 dollars, and I don't really need video playback capability. I don't want to build anything, but I would be willing to install software if need be. Thanks
Sneeze Party fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Oct 7, 2008 |
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Oct 7, 2008 02:44
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n0n0 posted:I'm looking for an affordable, small, simple, low-power-draw device to put serve my music. Basically, just a storage device with video-out and audio-out so that I could browse a music collection with a remote control. (edit: to clarify, this would attach directly to my receiver). Too bad about the <200USD caveat, it sounds like the slim devices Squeeze Box Classic would fit the bill, but it is about $280. While there are similar devices for less money, they all seem to be from weird off-brand companies. You can always slap together a classic first gen xbox with some xbmc action for not too much money. Heck, I'd even sell you mine if that is the route you are interested in taking. Works great for a media player as long as you don't mind the  proportions of the actual xbox hardware and you don't expect wanting any hi-def playback. I have a 250GB hard drive in mine and a reflashed motherboard, played A/V duty in my living room for a couple years and can also do a decent job as an emulator/rom box. The addon ir receiver for it works great with RCA remotes without any special setup.
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Oct 7, 2008 07:15
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I've been having a bit of an annoyance with my newly built HTPC this week, and was wondering if anyone had a solution. I'm currently using an ASUS M3N78-VM motherboard with onboard video, audio, and HDMI port. it works awesome when I'm playing video and such. sound is all good, and it seems to feed the proper codecs to my receiver, an Onkyo TX-SR606 via HDMI. but, the annoyance comes when I'm not listening to anything, or switching between media. when there is no sound being provided by the HTPC, it shuts off the audio on the receiver. when a sound pops up, like a menu click or alarm sound, the receiver will come on and play the last half of the sound... wait about 10 seconds, and click back off. this is getting really, really annoying. I've started to just play some background mp3s constantly to keep the loud clicking away. this obviously has to be something on the HTPC, as the cable box and PS3 don't exhibit this problem when there are no sounds playing. it's almost like the other two devices produce some sort of null sound that informs the receiver that yes, sound is coming. is there anyway to setup the HTPC to do similar? Current Specs: ASUS M3N78-VM motherboard Windows Vista Ultimate AMD Athlon X2 4850e
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Oct 7, 2008 18:36
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okay so new stupid question time: Is there a legal way to decrypt digital cable channels on a PC? I mean if it's money Comcast wants, I'll pay the equiv of another cable box.. I see that there's what looks like a Coax out on my cable box (comcast + DCT6412) but it either doesn't work or I don't know what I'm doing, is this thing able to provide a tune-able signal? I'll get a new box if the thing typically sends a tune-able signal. I think it's probably just a passthrough of whatever one of the tuners is set to but I couldn't get WinTV to tune it or show me a signal... It kinda takes a lot of the loving point of building my own super DVR if I can't actually record all the channels that I'd like to record.
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Oct 8, 2008 04:01
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I have a basic 720p 27" LCD TV in my bedroom. All this time I've been using an xbox with XBMC installed, and it's served me very well. However, lately I find myself downloading more and more content that the XBox simply can't handle. Mostly stuff like HD anime in h264 .mkv. I have an old laptop that I've stuck in my closet, but I was wondering if it would be possible or practical to turn that into an HTPC? The stats on this, a Compaq R3000, are: AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 768mb DDR RAM NVidia GeForce4 GO 420 32mb I'm mostly interested in making it a quick machine capable of running some kind of HTPC front end, slapping on some kind of media center IR remote, and going to town streaming media off of my living room's HTPC. Would I be able to do that with this old thing?
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Oct 8, 2008 09:56
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Expiration Date posted:Is there a legal way to decrypt digital cable channels on a PC? Yes, and no. Thanks to our friends at CableLabs, you'll need to buy a pre-built PC that has a special BIOS that authorizes it to watch/record encrypted QAM cable, along with one of these that comes only with OEM PCs: http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonderdigital/index.html Once you have that, you get a cablecard from your Cable company, plug it in like you would a Tivo or any other DVR, and you're in business. Some people will tell you that you can actually buy one of those tuners on it's own, which you can indeed do. However, it won't work with your computer. Here's a post from Engadget that sums up why it won't work on it's own: quote:Sorry guys, but you will not be able to use this.
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Oct 8, 2008 16:50
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arisu posted:Would I be able to do that with this old thing? Provided that your TV and laptop having matching input-outputs (VGA->VGA, DVI->DVI,DVI->HDMI are your only options), there's nothing to stop you from loading up an HD video and seeing if it works or not. I've got a similar machine that can handle some 720p content in DivX with some luck, but don't expect miracles.
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Oct 8, 2008 16:56
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shane86 posted:it's almost like the other two devices produce some sort of null sound that informs the receiver that yes, sound is coming. is there anyway to setup the HTPC to do similar?
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Oct 8, 2008 17:24
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shane86 posted:I've been having a bit of an annoyance with my newly built HTPC this week, and was wondering if anyone had a solution. Buy or borrow an optical S/PDIF cable and see if the problem goes away. I had issues with HDMI audio on my HTPC (but not like your issue) and using optical out to my amp instead made me very happy. Especially when it only cost me $15 or something instead of spending hours trying to work out how to fix it some other way.
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Oct 9, 2008 01:47
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I'm in the process of building my HTPC, and was wondering what would be a 'goon approved' tuner card. Specs: AMD 64 Dual Core @ 2.33 GHz 2 GB RAM 500 GB hard drive (on its way) Video card supporting VGA, S-Video, and DVI output DVD burner I really only plan on doing anything with SDTV, and the University's provided cable (assumed decrypted, since we just plug coax into the back of the TV, and voila, we have signal. Premium channels cost extra, and I assume DirecPath gives you a STB for those). In addition, on my initial hardware test-run, everything I have currently works so far, and the picture looked just fine (except for wrong resolution) in booting, but when the SLAX live cd loaded, my picture was terribly washed out. This is running over S-Video. Is there anything I can do about it now, or do I just have to wait until my hard drive gets here and I can install Windows XP and fiddle with settings?
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Oct 11, 2008 03:56
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I just recently got an Onkyo HTIAB and all is pretty drat well, besides some audio issues from my PC. The two issues I've noticed: 1) After I play a .mkv with an AC3 audio track, I cannot go to iTunes (or any software) to play a stereo MP3 or video with stereo audio track. The receiver continues to display a DD light and no sound comes out. If I restart iTunes, all is well again. 2) A .mkv with a DTS audio track did not play correctly at all. Why is this happening? How can I fix it? Some info: - Chaintech AV-710 card, latest drivers - AC3filter v1.11 used for AC3/DTS, set to pass-through via SPDIF - Windows XP SP3 - Zoom Player v5 for my video player - iTunes v8 I have tried setting AC3 filter in a variety of ways, with the checkbox for mpeg audio checked and unchecked, etc. Is there some magic combination of directX filters and audio driver settings that will make this work better? Is there a way I can start from scratch, removing all the audio processing filters from the chain and just getting digital audio to simply pass through?!
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Oct 13, 2008 14:47
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So I have been using SageTv for about5-6 years now with a AXP1600, 512mb of ram and 3 PVR-150's. Its been great for my analog broadcasts and I about gave up on a component input capture card, then I saw that hauappage released one. What sort of specs do you need to capture HD other then a big hard drive? I don't think I need a quad core but I was thinking a 760G chipset AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHZ 2gb of ram I figure that should be enough to capture and watch HD signals at the same time. correct?
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Oct 13, 2008 21:21
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Gromit posted:Buy or borrow an optical S/PDIF cable and see if the problem goes away. I had issues with HDMI audio on my HTPC (but not like your issue) and using optical out to my amp instead made me very happy. Especially when it only cost me $15 or something instead of spending hours trying to work out how to fix it some other way. Warning:depending on your equipment it may not be that easy. I route all my HDMI into a matrix switch then the projector output to the receiver. Unfortunately my receiver has to receive both audio and video over HDMI if you use HDMI so there is no passing it HDMI and S/PDIF. It sucks balls.
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Oct 13, 2008 23:15
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I know this has been answered before, but I can't seem to find it. What is the transfer speed required to watch 720p over a network? Mine is stuttering a bit and I use only 10/100 connections. Would upgrading to 10/100/1000 help, or is the problem elsewhere? Also, is it possible to do the same thing wirelessly?
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Oct 15, 2008 03:00
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