Ask me your MCE questions.

[jkresh]

pretty sure you should be able to add the digital tuner of the 650 fairly easily, if you cant through regular setup then you can try http://mce.ramonvanbruggen.nl/...com_frontpage&Itemid=1 which is generlay designed to add a 3rd (or ...) tuner not a second but might work. I only have an analog tuner (theater 550) on my vista box right now so I cant say from experience but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

As to the Dish local channels at the very least you can go to guide setup and add/edit channels to either check the channels off or in a worst case scenario manually add them.

 

[JohnAn2112]

Hey I got Vista Ultimate set up over the weekend but I'm having a problem with Media Center. I have a Hauppauge USB 2.0 tuner and I can get everything set up properly, but when I go into Live TV, all I get is a green screen instead of the actual picture. The audio comes in just fine. This tuner is MCE certified and works with SageTV in XP SP2 and Vista, but not in Media Center. I did also notice that wmv files weren't playing correctly (distorted green image) in WMP 11, but I disabled dxva in WMP and now it's working properly so maybe it's an issue with dxva in MCE?

My specs:

Athlon 64 X2 3800+
MSI K8N Neo 2 (Nforce 3)
2GB PC4000 RAM (running at PC3200)
Nvidia Geforce 7800GS AGP (using the latest Forceware drivers for Vista)

 

[Wreckage]

Is there a way with MCE to access the Firewire port from my cable box? (connecting the firewire to my computer to stream video)?.

 

[jkresh]

Wrekage, for unecnrypted hd and for all standard channels (premium channels are iffy) you can use firestb (http://home.comcast.net/~timmmoore/firewire/readme.htm) assuming you cable box is supported (a lot are but not all).

 

[Kaido]

Does MCE2005 support HD-DVD & Blu-ray movies?

 

[jkresh]

Kaido, if you have windvd or cyberlink then yes (I am positive on hd-dvd, pretty sure on blue-ray), but it doesn't natively handle hd-dvd or bleu-ray so you need some kind of licensed software which can link with mce and decode the data.

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: Quasmo
As of now there is no work around for the digital without analoge problem. This guy found a work around with the ATI HDTV wonder, the same solution might work for you. http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/post/17668.aspx

Just wanted to add that the drivers are available here: http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com/krammcehdtv1.html (thanks homestarmy)

Originally posted by: jkresh
Wrekage, for unecnrypted hd and for all standard channels (premium channels are iffy) you can use firestb (http://home.comcast.net/~timmmoore/firewire/readme.htm) assuming you cable box is supported (a lot are but not all).

Link's not working, try this: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/98686.aspx

 

[Quasmo]

Originally posted by: Fraggable
I have a Vista Home Premium media center set up and working great, but the setup bugs me.

I use a Theater 650 tuner. I have Dish Network TV with no HD subscription. I currently use the S-video out from the STB to the S-video in on the 650 and it works fine, image quality is as good as SDTV gets. But the HD tuner just sits there, and I know I get about 12 HD channels locally. Is there a way to get Vista to use both inputs and list channels on both in the guide? I have a feeling the answer is no, but as long as you're taking questions, there you go.

One more thing, we subscribe to local channels over the Dish, but Vista doesn't list channels below 100 in the Guide since during setup I told it it was satellite. Any way to add those local channels?

You should be able to add local channels in the guide setup menu. I'm not sure if you'll be able to get the local channels guide or not (may not be an option), but you can definitely add them in the menu.

 

[IBuyUFO]

Which qam enabled tuner card are you using and how did you hack it? Can you record channels coming in from the qam tuner? Have you tried vista MCE with said tuner?

 

[Quasmo]

Originally posted by: IBuyUFO
Which qam enabled tuner card are you using and how did you hack it? Can you record channels coming in from the qam tuner? Have you tried vista MCE with said tuner?

The tuner I'm using is the HD Homerun from Sillicon dust. It's an actual external box that sits outside of your HTPC and streams HD content over an ethernet cable. It has two tuners. To hack MCE all you need is the correct driver from silicon dust. What it does is tell your computer that it is an ATSC tuner and routes the streams to different channels. So you have to code which channels go where with a remapping tool. All the info is on their website.

http://www.9thtee.com/hdhrtech.htm

 

[intogamer]

How would you record content from your Provider's Box set?

Is there an IR blaster that controls the box set when recording?

 

[Quasmo]

Originally posted by: intogamer
How would you record content from your Provider's Box set?

Is there an IR blaster that controls the box set when recording?

yes.

 

[Fraggable]

Originally posted by: Quasmo

Originally posted by: Fraggable
I have a Vista Home Premium media center set up and working great, but the setup bugs me.

I use a Theater 650 tuner. I have Dish Network TV with no HD subscription. I currently use the S-video out from the STB to the S-video in on the 650 and it works fine, image quality is as good as SDTV gets. But the HD tuner just sits there, and I know I get about 12 HD channels locally. Is there a way to get Vista to use both inputs and list channels on both in the guide? I have a feeling the answer is no, but as long as you're taking questions, there you go.

One more thing, we subscribe to local channels over the Dish, but Vista doesn't list channels below 100 in the Guide since during setup I told it it was satellite. Any way to add those local channels?

You should be able to add local channels in the guide setup menu. I'm not sure if you'll be able to get the local channels guide or not (may not be an option), but you can definitely add them in the menu.

I can add the channels but don't get guide info for them, which isn't really all that helpful because I can't schedule any recordings. Oh well.

jkresh linked me to a utility that was supposed to help with making my 650 act as a dual tuner, but it didn't work out. It saw both tuners and let me name the HDTV tuner and enable it to be seen in MCE, but when I ran the MCE setup again it never gave me an option to configure the second tuner. At one point, when I was selecting whether it was a digital or analog tuner, it said if I had an OTA HD tuner and a SD tuner, I should configure the SD tuner first and then it would give me the option to configure the HD tuner, but it never gave me the option to do it later on.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I have a DVICO Fusion5 HDTV QAM tuner. Do you have any idea how I can get that running in Media Center? I guess I can skip on QAM support for now, but just to watch SDTV in MCE would be nice.

 

[jkresh]

DLeRium, dvicos newest drivers support qam in mce, and it should have supported sdtv in mce fine out of the box, what problems are you having? (note I dont have a fusion 5 so I cant verify that it works but they do say they support it).

 

[BD2003]

Is there any recently added support for filters like ffdshow? Its really the only reason I use mediaportal instead of MCE.

 

[Quasmo]

Originally posted by: BD2003
Is there any recently added support for filters like ffdshow? Its really the only reason I use mediaportal instead of MCE.

Nothing yet, but a group of people are getting together at TGB to create a 3rd party look-a-like that works with MCE. It's pretty much a skinned zoom player integrated into MCE.

 

[Yreka]

Is there any way to play HD-DVD or BD discs through Vista Media Center w/o having to exit & use PowerDvd ?

 

[jtvang125]

Not that this is an issue but I'm just wondering why my avi files play a bit choppy in WMP and WMP Classic but play perfectly smooth in Vista MCE?

 

[nullpointerus]

From what I can tell, VMC uses a different decoder than WMP and WMP Classic.

 

[Quasmo]

Originally posted by: Yreka
Is there any way to play HD-DVD or BD discs through Vista Media Center w/o having to exit & use PowerDvd ?

I believe you have to have the 64bit version of Vista and a video card that has HDCP for BR and HD-Discs to work.

EDIT: I am wrong, researching on how to get it to work.

 

[Quasmo]

anyone?

 

[Fraggable]

Allright here's another MCE question. With either XP MCE or Vista Home Premium, is there a way to make a tuner work when connected to the second tuner of my satellite's STB, in other words on channel 60?

The STB will only allow me to set the second tuner to channels 60-99 I think, and MCE and Home Premium only seem to offer options to tune to channels 2,3 or 4, S-video, component, etc.

 

[edtsui]

Is there any possible (non-convoluted) way to stream xvid/divx to an xbox 360 from Vista Ultimate?

 

[jkresh]

edtsui, transcode360 works well, I guess you might consider it convoluted since it does transcode but it works in realtime on a moderate pc and once it setup there is nothing really involved in streaming a divx/xvid video.