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Can anyone reccomend a sound card that has good Vista support? My system isn't being used as a full fledged HTPC, but I have component and toslink cables running to my receiver for movie viewing. What I want is a soundcard that can do DD 5.1 via SPDIF, as well as have good 5.1 support via my computer speakers for gaming. The driver situation for my current onboard Audigy is somewhat lacking.
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Mar 31, 2007 20:34
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Has anyone played around much with the Linux port of XBMC? I will be using the guts of my current system in a HTPC build in the next month or so, and I'd really love to put XBMC on it.
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Jan 24, 2008 01:23
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Randi Challenger posted:This is what I'm thinking about as of right now, Ive already got a 250GB sata drive at the house so that isnt really a worry in the short term: Personally I would (and did) go with the E8400 over the Q6600. Quad core is completely unnecessary for HD playback, and with the smaller core of the 8400 it will run cooler and use less power.
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Feb 1, 2008 23:47
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Randi Challenger posted:The E8400 as in this one? Is this 100% going to play any 1080P video I throw at it (using CoreAVC of course)? Yep thats the one, and it will absolutely kill any 1080p content. I currently (while I wait for my new setup) play 1080p h.264 files with my old rear end Opteron 165, and the E8400 is several orders of magnitude better than that. If you absolutely must have quad core, then you would be better off waiting a few months for the 45nm quads to come out. It's really not going to be necessary though.
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Feb 1, 2008 23:56
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adorai posted:I successfully set up xbmc for linux today, really wasn't much effort to get it all working. I am working on getting x264 to play back right now, if I figure it out I am going to put together another box I just specced out that I think should be able to 1080p x264 for under $300, configure everything, and post a step by step guide of what I did. It'll be a few weeks probably. Sounds promising.
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Feb 4, 2008 17:03
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Is anyone else considering picking up an Ion based netbook later this year for use as an HTPC? If they live up to the promised performance, it should be able to easily handle 1080p content. And I really like the option of being able to take it with me when visiting parents or friends. The only thing I think I would miss is blu-ray playback, but that could easily be remedied with a PS3 or standalone player. Here is a link to the Ion specs: http://www.small-laptops.com/nvidia-ion/ Edit: missed the Ion discussion a few pages back, oops. Enos Cabell fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Jun 27, 2009 |
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Jun 27, 2009 00:24
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Anyone able to help with a blu-ray issue I've run into? I have a blu-ray drive in my PC, and I use PowerDVD9 as the player and AnyDVDHD so it will work on my HDTV. So far it's worked great, but I recently picked up Sunshine and it will not play with AnyDVD running. When I try to start it I get an error in PowerDVD that it doesn't support playback from virtual drives. If I play it without AnyDVD running it works fine, but it will only display on my monitor and not my TV. Any ideas?
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Jun 30, 2009 22:49
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I came very close to ordering the Asus O!Play for $100 from Amazon earlier, but in researching it I decided I'd be happier with a full fledged HTPC. So I went ahead and pulled the trigger on this build: Zotac ION ITX-A-U Lian Li PC-Q07 Mini-ITX case WD Black 640gb HD 2x2gb DDR2 800 ram I plan to load XBMC on it for use solely as a movie/music player, streaming media from my 4TB Windows Home Server. Is Linux still the best route to go for XBMC?
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Sep 29, 2009 22:06
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I got my Zotac ION based system set up yesterday with Ubuntu and XBMC, and I have to say I'm feeling a little underwhelmed. 720p content seems to play fine, but on every 1080p file I've tried there is very noticeable stuttering every few seconds. These are streaming over a wired gigabit connection from my WHS box downstairs. I really hope I can get this sorted out, because right now it's feeling like a waste of $400.
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Oct 2, 2009 13:17
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Regnevelc posted:Did you build it or buy it? My ASRock with an Ion plays 1080p like it's no big deal. I built it, and installed XBMCbuntu using the Nvidia 190 drivers. I installed the stable release of XBMC, so I will give SVN a shot later. Also I'll have to try rolling back the Nvidia drivers to 185 or 180 and see if that makes a difference. How big and what bitrate are the 1080p files you've tried? Also are you streaming them over a network or not? The stuff I've tried so far averages 12-14gb file size and 15k bitrate or so.
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Oct 2, 2009 14:24
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vanilla slimfast posted:You have to explicitly enable VDPAU support in order to offload decoding to the GPU VDPAU is definitely enabled, CPU usage is under 5% per core. I'll see if I can round up another switch to test that. Edit: Swapped out the switch, and still no improvement. I also hooked my main PC up to the same port, and it can play back any of the files flawlessly. I think I'm gonna throw Win7 on there and see if I have the same issues with MPC-HC. Enos Cabell fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Oct 2, 2009 |
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Oct 2, 2009 20:10
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vanilla slimfast posted:Have you tried copying a file to the local disk and playing it back there to see if it makes any difference? This is the best way to eliminate the network as a possible bottleneck. Just tried playing from the local hard drive, and it had the same exact issues. I'm going to try a fresh install and see if it helps at all.
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Oct 3, 2009 00:16
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Regnevelc posted:Realizing that I know next to dick about Linux, and not having the time to learn it, I may format my Ion and put on windows with XBMC.. I thought the Windows version of XBMC doesn't offload to the GPU, which would make it not very good for ION? On a somewhat related note, I have my ION system setup and working beautifully with Windows 7 Media Center and Media Portal. I would have really liked to use Linux/XBMC, but the network streaming was simply atrocious on it.
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Oct 13, 2009 16:44
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What model is your tv? The vast majority will only output stereo sound from their optical output, so you're probably not actually getting 5.1 sound.
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Nov 25, 2009 23:02
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Lethargy posted:Yes, currently my TV does this, but I'm this close to pulling the trigger on this (Panasonic TC-P46G10): In that case, it looks like that Ultra adapter you linked in your other post Edit: On second thought, I'm not sure if that will work after all. In the setup pictures they show hooking up a coax or toslink cable to the output as well as the input. I have no idea what use that would have. Enos Cabell fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Nov 26, 2009 |
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Nov 26, 2009 00:29
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BorderPatrol posted:Lenovo just snuck a nice multimedia Keyboard/Mouse out there That looks just about perfect to me.
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Dec 29, 2009 01:37
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Thermopyle posted:I'm going to replace the miniPCI wireless card in my Revo 3610 and replace it with a Crystal HD off of ebay (they're going for less than 25 dollars). If everything pans out, I should get 1080p playback in XBMC without using an external player. What does the Crystal HD do that the Ion doesn't?
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Dec 30, 2009 22:16
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blankooie posted:I would go with RAM that fits the motherboard. To clarify, you have 200 pin laptop ram selected.
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Jan 21, 2010 16:25
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Just placed my order for the Ceton InfiniTV 4. It really sounds like a miracle product that will do everything I need. Is anyone here running one?
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Oct 12, 2010 19:06
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Kash posted:Yeah I suppose there's no point going at it half-cocked. If I do it this way I can maybe go mATX and get a nice smaller antec fusion remote black or something. An i3 machine will have no problems playing anything that you throw at it. I recently put together an i3 540 machine, and it happily plays huge 20+ gig, high bitrate, 1080p mkv files with 0 dropped frames. There is literally zero difference in playback between that machine and my gaming desktop. And definitely drop XP and go with Win7.
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Oct 28, 2010 23:46
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Vinlaen posted:Anybody know of a good deal on a Mini-ITX Atom/ION (not ION-2 with the separate card) motherboard? Oh, and I'd like it to support DDR2 RAM (not SODIMMs) and dual-core would be a plus... Actually, I was just thinking about throwing my Zotac IONITX-A-U up on SA-Mart, and it sounds like exactly what you want. Used it for 6 months or so as my main HTPC, and only upgraded because I'm moving to a Ceton cable tuner and needed something a bit beefier. Never had a problem playing any file though. Was looking for about $140 shipped, PM me if you're interested. Edit: this is the model with wireless n, dual core Atom 330 and an external laptop-style power brick. Enos Cabell fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Oct 29, 2010 |
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Oct 29, 2010 14:54
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I finally got my Ceton InfiniTV card delivered and installed over the weekend, and holy poo poo is it awesome. The Time Warner installers jaw dropped when he saw that I was able to record 4 shows at the same time. And I must say, the WMC guide interface is so much better than I was expecting.
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Feb 22, 2011 19:26
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spidoman posted:Depsite thinking I wouldn't care about only using external storage I splurged and bought a 1TB WD Caviar Green for internal storage. Hopefully it's as quiet and cool as people say. Anyone have experience with them? In a non-raid, only media files setup am I going to notice the 5400RPM slowness or does the 64MB cache make everything magically fast? Drive speed is irrelevant for media playback. 5400rpm is pretty much ideal for media storage, since it is typically quieter and uses less power.
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Feb 22, 2011 23:00
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spidoman posted:Thanks, just ordered it, hopefully it won't be too difficult to setup. I'll probably be using the android app most of the time anyway, but I'm happy with the fact that I'm still at one remote with 5 devices now. Are you planning to use this with XBMC? If so, do yourself a favor and when you add the device in the Harmony software make sure it is set as MCE Keyboard. Then map everything you need using this reference as a guide. If using it with WMC, I've found that Media Center Remote SE is the best device to add.
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Feb 23, 2011 21:26
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Bunk Rogers posted:I've recently installed an InfiniTV card in my main PC. Is it possible to stream TV from that card to other PCs on my network? Seems logical but my google-fu tells me no. It's possible to assign tuners to different PCs on the network, but then they are locked to that particular PC and can't be used by others. So say if you assign one tuner to your bedroom PC, then you will only have 3 usable on your main HTPC. Also, you can't view content that was recorded on another PC. So on the PC with 1 tuner assigned, you can only watch shows that you recorded on that particular PC. Basically the best, and only real option is to use an Xbox360 as a media center extender for any additional TV you want to watch content on. Linksys also made an extender, but it is slow and lovely so avoid that.
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Nov 9, 2011 16:08
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TheScott2K posted:You don't get OnDemand, you can't use your smartphone as a remote, and...that's about it. The only other thing is that you will have to call in to order PPV events. I haven't had a single situation arise since getting rid of my STBs earlier this year that I wish I had one. And saving $60/month between the boxes and DVR fees has already paid for the investment in the Ceton InfiniTV and HTPC combo.
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Nov 10, 2011 19:36
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himajinga posted:I'm building an HTPC that fits into a classic Nintendo that is pretty beefy that runs on a 150W picopsu; the specs are as follows: Do you have a guide you are following to do this? It sounds really cool.
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Dec 1, 2011 18:51
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