eva2000

Yeah ordered a MCE remote so I can finalise things

Testing the recording ability and works very well love how I can now record 2 shows at same time

Vista Ultimate SP1 MCE



1st 500GB drive holds my current video/media files for video library while 2nd 500GB for PVR duties


EPGStream.net guide at work






Now to figure out if there's a way to change the way recorded tv shows are displayed as it's very inefficient use of screen space to have them displayed in one line in middle of screen heh.

tuchan

You have given me a little inspiration to get my HTPC all running again properly!




I was running Windows Media Center but had issues with it, have since gone back to XP Pro, all is good now, reliable and it works well. I just have a wireless mouse\keyboard on the coffee table

tuchan

Oh now this would have to be the best mATX board to ever come out surely and here in Oz http://pcmaniacs.com.au/lanparty-jun...er-p-4438.html
Crossfire HTPC anybody!




eva how is that little board going, still running?

eva2000

Yeah DFI matx looks good for high FSB too from what i read.

My G33M-D2SR still running well - running the Olympics etc without a hitch

JAFFA

You seem to be digging the HTPC business dude, good on ya.

I use Realalternative to play realmedia. Not sure about video, but real audio plays back just fine for me and I'd assume its pretty much the same in regard to realvideo.

Not so sure about Klite, it always gave me masses of trouble on XP and Vista so I use the Vista Codec Pack which has a specific addon for 64 bit support, can't find a link for it, but if you need it I can send it to you (its freeware). It has FFDShow bundled in with it so its easy to upscale old standard definition files to 720p, 1080p or whatever resolution you want and I'm 99.999999% sure that it has .mov support as standard as they play fine on my MCE.

The only other thing I need to make sure everything plays for me is a simple registry hack to allow Mediacentre to see and play .mp4 files:-
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mp4]
"PerceivedType"="video"
"Content Type"="video/mp4"


Regarding the guide listings, obviously we run on a slightly different system in the UK, but it doesnt matter what postal code you put in as long as it is in your general area, so maybe try some postcodes for other nearby addresses... I never use my real postcode Also be careful when disabling seemingly useless services as some of these make it impossible to get guide updates.

Regarding displaying the recorded TV in a more efficient manner...
I have to agree it is not good how they lay it out in Vista MCE. The old way was vastly better in MCE2k5. To be completely truthful XP MCE is a lot better than Vista in every way so if it annoys you that bad I'd suggest giving it a shot.


If there is anything else you need just let me know, I've had a few years MCE experience now and have pretty much had to deal with every problem imaginable in the past, otherwise check the green button there is a lot of info there and I believe there is quite an active Ozzy MCE community so you shouldnt find it hard to get Aus specific help.

eva2000

thanks for the tips.. i got rmvb and mp4 etc to play, all i had to do was make sure windows media player was properly associated with the extensions by open with link to an extension and set windows media player to play by default.

Then when i went back into MCE they played back fine

As to guide used epgstream.net for Australian guide - not as fully updated as I'd like on HD channels but seems to work

JAFFA

Oh I just worked something out,

To change the way the files are displayed in MCE if you press the 'i' button on the MCE remote you get a popoup dialogue and on that dialogue it has an option called 'View List' Give it a try, if you dont like it you just select View Large to go back to normal.

eva2000

Yeah i'm using that view list right now.. forgot to mention it.. thanks though

I'm also using MCEBuddy http://mcebuddy.com/ to automatically convert recorded tv to wmv files it's like a 1:20 compression ratio!