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iostream.h posted:I'm just using the standard XP Media Center and love it (although I had to install the Community Codec Pack for x264 support). I never could get MediaOS and XBMC to work properly. XBMC is a bitch to get working right ow since they are still transitioning over. I would probably be content with XPMC, but I love interface coding so I like being able to do my own thing
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Apr 21, 2008 13:02
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EC posted:The latest win32 port is fairly easy to getup and running, at least the basics. I have lots of stability issues with plugins/scripts and the like, but others that are more knowledgeable with XBMC don't seem to, so take that with a grain of sale. It isn't HARD, but you do have to run around downloading various packages to get up and running, and if you are an idiot like me and end up downloading the wrong one you might get a bit confused since it will half function.
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Apr 21, 2008 16:03
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Echo_ posted:I'm using MediaPortal and I have a Hauppauge PVR 150 MCE and I cannot figure out how to record from the composite inputs. I'm sure it is just an easy thing in the settings but I cannot find it. If I remember right the composite input is just listed as a channel in the channel setup. You just have to make sure it is scanned in and select it by surfing to the input.
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Apr 30, 2008 06:38
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Harminoff posted:drat kind of bums me out, sense I got this tv, and it would be nice to have more then my locals in to watch in hd.
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May 1, 2008 19:54
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Zedlic posted:Having spent around 15 hours in the last week tinkering with Meedio I can safely say that it's a clusterfuck of non-intuitive and non-documented settings that have to be exactly the right way or else it won't work. Meedio has one thing that I wish eery frontend had. Simple library support. You can make an entry on your menu to a library that is parsed out through the file name and directories based on our own filter. You can then tell it an application to run on that file. This is awesome since you can point it to a script in any language you want have it handle the loading. When I first used meedio and no one had made an emulator plugin I tried to make one. The plugin documentation was horrible at the time, and while I managed to do some basics I could never get library views working right. Then I realized all I needed was a small c program that would start a file in the right emulator based on the variable the standard library functions of meedio could pass. A day later and I had a fully serviceable emulator fronted loading all my roms , pc gams, and old Playstation iso's. It was quick and dirt but it worked flawlessly.
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Jun 11, 2008 22:23
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BrownThunder posted:I'm not sure if this is the perfect place for this question, but it makes the most sense to put it here. Divx/Xvid. It will take some playing with though, because it seems each of the systems have their quirks with it.
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Jul 1, 2008 00:01
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Stares At Floor posted:Hey folks. I've read more than a few pages of this thread before posting and I think I have the gist of what I need to do what I want to do. I'm getting ready to move into a brand spanking new apartment and I would like to build an HTPC for the place. Basically I need it to do these things: If you want HD over cable or satellite you're not going to be doing it with an HTPC
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Jul 10, 2008 05:26
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Martytoof posted:What do you guys do about cable clutter? I tried to be incredibly neat and organized in my arrangement of cables and connectors but everything still comes out looking like a bird's nest. Main culprits are the IDE cables for my DVDRW and two IDE drives. SATA cables are no problem, but these flat IDE cables just seem to get in the way everywhere. Also, there are some power cables that are dragged around the case everywhichway but I guess there's not much to be done about that I was pretty hardcore with mine. I am using one of coolermaster's old, original HTPC cases which is think is amazing considering it cost 75 bucks when the closest competition was in the 200's. I used nothing but rounded cables that were as short as possible and routed flat on the edge of a support. I then took my power supply and removed all the excess connections. It was an old PSU I didn't care much about so I just cut it down till it had a single lead for the video card , one for the optical drive and 2 for the hard drives. Obviously if you have one of those detachable cable supplies this is a on issue
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Jul 11, 2008 00:02
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Gorilla Salsa posted:I was wondering if I could use one of these instead of say, a popcorn hour to play all my media on my Hard Drive. It's definitely cheaper, and I could just slap on a media center front-end, right? (I have like 3 GB free on a 500 GB hard drive that I could use to install) That doesn't have things like memory or a hard drive etc. It isn't exactly cheaper on the whole It also won't do HD.
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Aug 22, 2008 18:31
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TraderStav posted:After taking the great advice from this thread I priced together a package and went to the XMBC forums to see what they think of the hardware being that these guys are the ones who are working on it. The first response I received has me concerned as it seems to contradict the information here. Could you guys take a look and give me more thoughts? Someone with a similar set up as to above is able to do 720p fine but not 1080p. Is this a problem with XMBC, the hardware or some other variable not accounted for? I have no personal experience with the configuration but I know that XBMC's media playback requires more power over all so it might be that you need a better proc to do 1080 in XBMC. The other thing to be wary of is that you have to be talking specifics with HD. While you might be able to do h.264 at 1080 at one bitrate you might not at lets say the bitrate of the average bluray. XBMC is a package deal so you have to take their media player with the rest of it. The downside obviously is you can't replace it with a different, possibly more optimized build but the pro is easier setup and stability.
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Sep 2, 2008 23:46
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TraderStav posted:Appreciate the feedback, I hadn't really considered any other options. To that end, what are the options? I really enjoy turnkey solutions with minimal set up required. I'm a smart guy so configuring is not a big deal but I am not interested in re-inventing the wheel on every installation. I tried doing a MythTv setup a few years back and just did not want to fuss again with something like that. Applications like Media Portal Support launching of media to other players or its own built in player. Personally I would just get a faster processor or hope for performance increases and gpu acceleration.
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Sep 3, 2008 00:34
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TraderStav posted:What is everyone using for input? I'd like something RF preferably and easy enough for my wife to use. These Logitech harmonys any good and worth the price? Do they do RF to the HTPC but also able to do infrared on other devices? Leaning toward the Xbox 360 one provided it will work with the HTPC well so that way I can pull one remote out of the family room. I spent 100 dollars on my harmony (IR) and it was possibly the best purchase I made for my home theater. I am struggling with it a bit in my newest setup, but I can't think of a remote that would handle it better and my setup is a very special case. Activities based controlling blows away every other universal remote implementation. Instead of selecting through inputs or remembering what goes were you just hit one button. If I hit the "watch satellite TV button" that I set up it will turn on my TV and set it to HDMI input, turn on my receiver and set it to the DVR input, turn on my sat box. It then sets up the buttons so that the channel buttons and menu/guide buttons apply to the TV but the volume buttons control the Receiver. Then if I hit the "play 360 on Projector" it will turn off the tv, turn off the sat box, switch my matrix switches input to A4 from A1, turn on the projector and set it to HDMI1 and then turn on the 360. Before the harmony I basically needed a god damned instruction manual for my friends just so they could play a PS2 game. With the harmony the entire process is transparent. The only downside is that the commands, being IR, have to be sent in order so the more complicated the setup the longer you need to point the remote when changing activities. The software is web based, but it works well. It makes setting up basic activities as simple as it possibly could by predicting what components (based on their type) would need to be used and asking you some questions. You can also get pretty in depth with it if you want. Seriously, if I had an option between another RF remote and using a harmony with an IR-RF relay I would use the harmony without a second thought. It is awesome.
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Sep 4, 2008 23:53
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TraderStav posted:Interesting. So does the harmony communicate with the PC via RF? Our coffee table provides for a real nice obstacle and my dog is a moving target which always seems to be in the way so I'm not a huge of IR. Also, my receiver is a Bose so that uses RF and thus not able to be controlled by this most likely. Not a big deal, I don't mind the two remotes. There are a lot of older models on their site and I will be damned if i could tell you all the differences. They, for the most part, all work the same either way. Most of the Harmonies are IR. You would need to get a receiver. The harmony has a code base for various IR PC remotes. You have 2 options if you are looking to deal with RF. One is get a repeater setup. Have the receiver in the best spot and then run the blasters into the cabinet/onto the devices. They also make repeaters that you attach a unit to the remote itself. Some Harmonies like the 890 are actually RF and come with a receiver with IR repeaters. You can also buy extenders for them. I didn't really want to pay that much for one nor did I like the look so I stuck with the 550 and am looking into getting a repeater setup.
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Sep 5, 2008 00:44
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Tell him to ditch the tuner and wait. it will only be tears as he tries to keep up as boxes go HDI only for HD etc. If he wants a PVR he should stick with his providers. No one likes to hear this but it is a lot of loving trouble right now to do Media Center based recording if you are not using old standard cable. Actually he talks about having satellite DVR so I am honestly at a loss as to the need for the card. Also he should be getting a couple of xbox 360 controllers and the wireless dongle instead of logitechs. Really though we need to know what he is using it for because the system seems horribly planned. Is he trying to play PC games on it? I would assume not given no video card mentioned so why 4 gigs of ram and why quad core. Actually why that CPU at all. It seems like he made a budget and was choosing parts in an attempt to break it. Basically from the choices made he is spending to much and I doubt he is knowledgeable enough to setup a PVR that works decently. He is going to get frustrated with that and end up with a 169 dollar paper weight.
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Sep 12, 2008 23:10
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FloydianOne posted:I am waiting to see what kind of games he wants to play, but here is what he had told me earlier about his goals: What source is he recording from? This is going to be a big thing. PVR is not as strait forward as it was 4 years years ago and it is not probably going to be as simple as dropping in the card and attaching some cables unless he only intends to use basic cable for the life of the device. He could also get away with less ram but at the price I would stay at 4. He needs to keep in mind though that he will have to run vista 64 to really use this ,and be sure that all his poo poo will work ok with it. I would be weary of the capture card until I got confirmation of actual solid driver support on vista 64 for it. In my past experiences the capture cards are always what cause massive headaches. First of there is no way he needs a quad core for this. A dual core would be more than enough and cheaper. If he wanted to spend that kind of cash he would be better off picking up a faster per core dual core since that will have a better net benefit for each individual application assuming a lot of poo poo he runs will not be multithreaded. I would probably go for a silverstone ATX case myself too, but that is just preference.
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Sep 13, 2008 00:40
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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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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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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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Does anyone know if anyone makes an atom board with HDMI out. I have an old 2600 base media PC that I want to replace with something smaller and quieter. I don't need full HD playback on it, because it is mostly used for old games that I don't want to have to constantly pull out of storage. As far as I can tell no one has a board with and atom and HDMI out.
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Dec 4, 2008 00:29
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TheScott2K posted:
I feel like MS has kind of written off most of the functionality Media Center. They got burned by blueray and cablecard and it seems like they just don't want to put money into supporting something they can't have enough control over.
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Dec 13, 2008 01:08
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TheScott2K posted:If you're looking to control anything outside of your PC tuner and possibly a cable box via a blaster you'll need a more robust remote than that one. The Harmony remotes can "learn" signals from other remotes, tap a huge database of consumer remotes, and use that data to set up macros. When I press "Play XBox360" on my Harmony it clicks the projector over to HDMI, the stereo receiver over to Video 2, turns off the DVR, and turns on the XBox - the whole "valve lineup" necessary to play XBox games on my screen. It's a whole different level of functionality, meant more to run the whole home theater rather than just the media PC. This is really useful with big setups. The startup procedure to go from watching tv on my setup to xbox on the projector is: turn off tv turn of dish box switch on projector set projector to hdmi2 switch on receiver switch av receiver to input 5 lights dimmed delay turn on 360 set HDMI matrix switch to inpu3a set HDMI matrix switch to inpt3b It is way easier than doing it by hand, and requires no explanation to guests on how to use it.
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Dec 30, 2008 03:20
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So Gizmodo(or maybe it was engadget) has some really awesome videos up for the Atom on Ion platform. The Nvidia reference PC looks like it is using a nano itx-ish form factor and it is just small as hell. I hope this hit market soon because It is replacing my media box for sure. edit: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/12/nvidia-ion-platform-gets-demonstrated-at-ces Juriko fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Jan 13, 2009 |
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Jan 13, 2009 21:32
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Mugmoor posted:This is amazing, I may hold out on building a new HTPC until these hit market. It really has me excited. If it runs as well as I hope I might just finally dump cable/sat and run all streaming media. I can literally velcro that thing to the back of my TV and act like it is integrated unit.
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Jan 15, 2009 01:01
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Crackbone posted:Never never never never NEVER buy cables from B&M stores. To get specific I used a 25 foot VGA cable from Monoprice driving a 720p projector and had zero ghosting issues. This most likely would have changed at 1080p but the point being that you can go far with VGA before the signal turns to poo poo.
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Jan 16, 2009 19:39
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iluvpr0n posted:This AVS Forum thread. Wow that was actually useful. Normally I am pretty negative about AVSforum but I hadn't realized there was finally a affordable ITX board with HDMI and PCIE. Time for a new media center! Juriko fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Feb 19, 2009 |
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Feb 19, 2009 22:12
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Jook posted:Does anyone use Laptops for HTPCs? I know some Laptops have HDMI out and should be powerful enough to do full HD decoding but I never hear of anyone really making use of them as an HTPC. I figure that for a couple hundred dollar premium I could have an HTPC that doubles as a portable computer -- am I right? If so does anyone have any recommendations? It works fine. I know some people that do it. The biggest issues is that most people want their media PC's to be static elements, like a set top box. You can build a solid minITX based system for 300 or so dollars so unless you need that functionality it is a big premium.
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Apr 11, 2009 11:50
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