Sound problem in Vista MC

A short recap of a problem I posted at The Green Button.

My sound stopped working over HDMI today in Vista MC. It has been working for several months previously without problems. Today the problems started, and I haven't even installed or updated any new software. I'll try to explain the details (I've rebooted, checked cables and all the simple stuff):

- Sound over SPDIF (optical) works
- Sound over HDMI does not work with Vista codecs in VMC (e.g. playing DVD or live TV). It does work with ffdshow audio, e.g. playing a Divx file - even within VMC. This makes me think the problem is not hardware related.
- Sound does not work with ffdshow audio through zoom player, but it does work using Media Player Classic (as well as VMC). This is extra weird since the codecs in use are the same.

If I exit VMC, open audio properties and play some windows sounds the sound is spotty, i.e. it comes and goes. If I configure the HDMI sound device the test sounds play perfectly.

The next day I figured new drivers could never hurt, but had problems finding them. It turns out that Intel High Defnition Audio HDMI is bundled with the driver for the G965 graphics. I found a new version over at Intel, dowloaded, installed, rebooted and the sound is back to normal.

What still has me stumped is that I had made no modifications at all to the system to make the problem appear. But I'm happy it seems to be solved now.

Got a new TV for the bedroom - pondering DVD solution

Now that the analog broadcasts have been shut down I figured I might as well get a new TV for the bedroom. I wanted a 20-23 inch widescreen TV with a built in DVB-T tuner and HDMI and there weren't that many options available. I ended up getting the Philips 23PFL5522D (clever name there, Philips!) which I'm pretty pleased with so far.

The TV sits up on a shelf and we view it from below which means I have to crank up the brightness quite high to get a good picture. When I stand up and look at it straight the image is far to bright, but it looks good from the bed.

With the TV in place I now need to find a media solution for this one as well. I'm currently thinking about:

• Xbox 360 Arcade as a media extender to my HTPC. As an added bonus I also get a gaming console. The Xbox also has a built-in DVD player. It might be a tad on the noisy side though.
  
• Sansa TakeTV (not available in Sweden yet AFAIK). Nice small form factor, but I need to rip movies before I can watch them. Rather inconvenient.
  
• Small DVD-player (there's not enough room for a full size DVD player). Not sure what's available, I might need to do some research here. This might double as a DVD player for the car. I would like one with HDMI, and I haven't seen this yet.
• Other options? AppleTV or a Mac Mini perhaps? Wait and see?

DVB-T bug in Samsung Q97/Q96 plasma TV

After I got my HTPC I noticed that the built-in DVB-T reciever in my Samsung Q97 started to behave erratically (Q96 is an identical model with slightly different looks and should behave the same). Often the TV displayed "No Signal", although the analogue channels were working fine and the DVB-T receiver in my HTPC was showing digital channels perfectly.

Sometimes I could get the digital receiver to work after switching the TV off and then back on again, but after a while that didn't help either. So I had to start thinking. What had changed in my setup? I had added an HTPC connected over HDMI. After some testing I came to this conclusion:

If there is a signal on HDMI when you start the TV, the digital receiver will not work. Workaround: make sure your HDMI connected device is off when you turn on the TV.

I haven't seen this problem described anywhere else, but I'd be surprised if my TV was the only one behaving like this. Its a minor annoyance, but not a big enough problem to bother with the hassle of returning the set.

Windows Media Center five years old

Reading Charlie Owen's blog I stumbled upon this post on Media Center's fifth birthday which was quite interesting.

Back from vacation

Ok, back from two weeks on Sardinia. Nice place.

As for my HTPC I have two itches at the moment:

1. I can't get Vista Media Center to find all my channels
2. I noticed that I didn't get proper surround sound over my toslink connection to my sound system. When I let ffdshow audio handle Dolby Digital decoding it seems to work. But then I can't get normal audio to work properly. Also, it would be nice to have audio through HDMI and optical digital out simultaneously. I will expand on these problems in a later post and see what (if any) workarounds I have found. All pointers are welcome.
   

Setting ctrl+enter in Firefox address bar to use .com

Thanks to Ray's comment on this page I found that I need to set browser.fixup.alternate.suffix to .com in Firefox's about:config to get the behaviour I want on my HTPC. I've mostly been using english OS:s on my other computers, but the HTPC has a Swedish Vista and Ctrl+enter in the address bar goes to .se which is not good behaviour.

HTPC: suspend after recording and DVD playback

I've been trying to get the Scaleo to shut down to S3 (suspend to RAM, power efficient and quiet) by tweaking the settings in the screensaver for Vista, but had some problems. After reading about Vista Power Management I reverted everything to default settings and chose the most energy efficient power scheme. During testing I set the shut down time to 1 minute. First I suspected that an active utorrent session might mess things up so I closed all open programs and verified that the computer shut down properly. It did. Then I started utorrent and repeated the test. It worked again.

Now for the ultimate test: schedule a recording, shut down the computer - which as you know after reading up on Allchins article means suspend. It works as expected. The computer wakes up for the recording, records the show and then shuts down. I had all kinds of problems before but it seems to work as it should so I'll stop tinkering.

I have one more test and that is to shut down the computer when media center is active. It seems (at least for MCE 2005) that the computer will not suspend after a scheduled recording if media center is active.

Also, I tried watching a DVD today. For a region 2 DVD it works, but it is unbearable - the fan and/or drive noise is terrible and is not an option. I haven't even tried a region 1 disc - it doesn't matter if it works with that noise level. I guess the stand-alone DVD player stays besides the TV for a while. For the long run, ripping DVDs and compressing them will be the way to go. I just need to find a good toolchain for that. Handbrake was promising, but does not support 5.1 sound or proper subtitles so no go.

HTPC status report, episode 2

I finally found an easy way to replace caps lock with ctrl. Also, the front VFD display seems to be working somewhat. I did a hard reboot (power off, cord out) and it came back to life. No thanks to the support over at Fujitsu-Siemens who so far has missed two times out of two possible.

What else is new? I'm thinking about getting the Media Control Plugin for Media Center. And I've replaced IE with Firefox. IE 7 was bearable, but I like firefox much better. And with the del.icio.us Bookmarks plugin I get synced bookmarks between all my computers. Brilliant.

HTPC status report

Things are starting to look good now. Let's get the problems out of the way:

• I've had one recording with no sound. Not sure what it is and the thread I found on greenbutton did not help.
• This morning the system had not gone back to stand-by after a recording during the night. The show was properly recorded though.
• My VFD (physical display) is not only dim as some users have reported - its not working at all. Will contact support about that and see if they can help.

What is working at the moment?

• I can playback 720p matroska files. And the quality is brilliant. Playback even works within MCE.
  
• I can record TV shows and entire series very easily. With good quality.
• I can pause live TV up to two hours.
• I can get 5.1 audio (although I have to manually switch between audio through HDMI (to the TV) or through optical (to my surround system))
• Thumbnails for all videos in MCE
• Burning a recorded TV show to a DVD works. Somewhat. The aspect ratio for a show in 4:3 format became 16:9 which is not good.
  

What have I done, and what should you do?

• I uninstalled Nero and threw it far away.
• I installed CCCP
• I installed 7-zip
• I uninstalled Adobe Acrobat and installed Foxit instead for PDF files

What remains to be done?

• Since finding all channels was a real nightmare I want to back up the channels file. Need to find where it is and back it up.
• I hate the caps lock key and always re-map it to ctrl. Haven't done that yet for the HTPC, but will soon.
• See if I can get the music library working with music stored on another machine (where I already have all my music collection and a slimserver running for my Squeezebox)
  
• Do the same for images that are stored on the same machine where my music is
• Fix aspect ratio for burning 4:3 TV shows to DVD
• Test DVD playback and make it region free
• Set up DVD ripping (DVD Fab Decrypter and Any DVD are main contenders), perhaps coupled with Handbrake to store to DivX immediately.
• Get DVB-T subtitling to work
• Probably tons of other stuff that will come to me eventually. But I'll leave something for future posts.
  

Cached video thumbnails in Vista MC

It took me forever to find, so here it is for future reference: the cache for video thumbnails in Vista MCE

It is in the following folder;

C:\Users\USERNAMEcmc\AppData\Local\Microsoft\ehome

and is called video.db

Edit: Forget it - that wasn't it. I'll look some more and see if I find it.

Increasing the Live TV buffer in MCE

I didn't find an explanation on how pausing live TV was implemented, but I found a fix to increase the buffer size.

Continuing to whip Vista into shape

After finally having all TV channels available (I failed to mention I downloaded Mediaportal to do a channel search - I couldn't find TV4 when searching Malmö, but it showed up when I tried Hörby) it is now time to get the rest of the system in shape. I put some TV shows in a directory watched by Media Center and enter it. Boom. Media Center crashes.

Search the net and find something about Nero being a problem and bad codecs. Then I couldn't find my media since Nero had kidnapped the registry settings for that. To make a long story short (and it was way too long) I uninstalled the piece of utter crap that is Nero and hope to never look back.

Next to get thumbnails working. More searching and I found a fix. Using only the value for .avi I now have working thumbnails again. Unfortunately the thumbnail is based on the first frame of the video which makes it kinda useless (often black). Will take a look at that later.

Then I told the kids we could go out and play and come back and watch Bolibompa (Swedish children's show) once we were done. I paused live-TV and went away. Big mistake. It seems only ~40 minutes were stored so we couldn't start watching from the beginning. So we started at the earliest possible point, which was fine for a while but then we jumped forward in the program with no way of going back. My guess is that the buffer for pausing live TV is a fixed amount of HDD space and not an amount in minutes. Which means the buffer can grow and shrink depending on the compression of the stored material. I'll look over at thegreenbutton and see if they have anything to say about it.


Am I pleased with having an HTPC? I think I will be. Earlier today I was ready to return the unit, but now I feel and can get it to work. Albeit with quite a lot of time and work on my part. It is definitely not a plug'n'play solution and I wouldn't recommend it to many people without a lot of warnings.

Insane-man finally decides!

Well, it seems I managed to get out of indecisive land after all. All it took was a push from my wife who explained that we need to be able to record TV and that I probably won't be happy unless I can get everything to work exactly as I want. So an HTPC it is. But I took the easy way out and got the Scaleo EVI since I didn't want to have any hassle setting it up.

Boy was I wrong.

It took me 4-5 hours to get TV4 and TV6 up and running. I was very close to returning the entire system, but kept looking for new services within Vista MCE and finally TV4 showed up. I don't think I did anything (and I have an excellent signal with rooftop antenna), but I did try to enter a different area code to see if I could get MCE to find the additional channels (who were on the same mux btw).

Now on to configuring the rest of the software. Vista MCE crashes when entering a folder with Xvid files, some reports that this is a Nero problem (which came pre-installed). I'll update and see if it helps.

Still lost in undecisive land

If I'm not getting an HTPC at the moment, is there anything else that might be interesting? I really want to view HD content on my TV, but how? Perhaps getting and HD DVD player might be the way to go. Elgiganten currently has a promotion where you get a player and five movies for 4kSEK. But then again - will HD DVD be alive in a couple of years? If the DVD playing functionality in the Toshiba HD-E1 had been region free and with DivX support I might have taken the plunge since it is a great upscaling DVD player. As it is now I still need a second DVD player for my region 1 movies and Divx content.

What about a gaming console? The PS3 is 6kSEK (still waiting for the price cut that US saw recently) and the Xbox 360 about 4kSEK. With the PS3 you get a Blu-Ray player in the price, but the Xbox has video live which seems interesting. Not yet available in Europe, but it will come.

So. I'll wait some more. But I'm really itching to buy some new gadget. Any suggestions?

HTPC: The non-decision decision

After doing some research on different routes for an entertainment system I ended up feeling most comfortable with an HTPC. It basically boiled down to two options: the Scaleo EVI or an AMD-based system built on discrete components. Both alternatives are about 10kSEK.

What do I get for this money that I don't already have today?

1. Recording of TV programming in SD
   
2. Possibility to view downloaded HD material

I already have a DVD-player. I can already watch DivX material (albeit over sneakernet - burning a CD and walking with it to my DVD-player). An HTPC will not give me HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. There's no terrestrial HD broadcasting where I live (and I will not install a satellite dish). Paying 10kSEK for being able to record TV shows and viewing downloaded HD material is simply too much money.

If TV recording comes to the Apple TV that might be one way to go. A Scaleo EVI with HD-DVD/Blu-Ray for 10kSEK might be another. A silent TViX 4100-SH a third.

None of which alternatives are available today.

So I have decided. To wait.

If I were to go for a solution today it would be the Scaleo EVI with 32-bit Vista, but the risk of not being able to update it to support HD broadcast and HD-DVD/Blu-ray in the future holds me back. And I'm not interesting in spending the time on building a system on my own - even if its put together by a store I will need to spend time on configuration and software installations.

Choosing an HTPC

Now that I've decided on an HTPC running Vista, all that remains to do is to get a system. I can either get a pre-built system from a major supplier or go for a system assembled from parts - either by myself or a store.

The pre-built systems are nice, somewhat expensive and not very easy to expand. A Sony Vaio system might be a good choice, but I haven't found any in Sweden. Other options are Scaleo EVI (12kSEK) or Acer Aspire Idea (11kSEK). If I drop the HDMI requirement an FIC spectra for 8kSEK might be an option. (The Scaleo is available for 10kSEK at netonnet - and they have it in stock in Malmö close to where I live. Interesting...)

The main problem with these systems is that they are most likely not possible to upgrade later. The main reason for this would be to be able to use HD-DVD or Blu-Ray in the future. Another option would of course be to get a separate stand-alone player.

The benefits of a pre-built system is that they are well integrated, everything should play well together and they have a relatively nice form factor.

Looking at a system built from components then. There are a couple of firms in Sweden that sell HTPC:s they assemble themselves. The ones I've found are pyrotech.se and tvpc.se. A local firm such as itel also might have HTPC models.

My price point is around 10kSEK (I wouldn't cry if it was cheaper) and in that category pyrotech has their HTPC 2 system for just shy of 8kSEK. Itel's version costs 8.500 SEK, but has more memory and a slightly larger disk but no TV-card. Add another 1kSEK for that and the price is similar to the Scaleo EVI system from netonnet. Oh, I also need a USB stick for WiFi so thats another 300 SEK.

All of these choices are driving me mad - and is the reason for me writing these posts. I must try to make some sense of it.

If I'm going for an assembled system, at least I've decided on getting the Antec Fusion chassi and an AMD processor (I'm leaning towards the new low power BE-2350) with a G690 motherboard. For a TV-card I want the Hauppauge Win Nova T-500 which has dual DVB-T tuners (no encrypted channels).

Hopefully I will have decided soon and can tell you what system I got. But if you have any comments or pointers on what to get, please let me know.

Video solution, part 4 - Home Theater PC

As you might have gleaned from my summary of media players I'm not really happy with the current alternatives available. This leaves me with one option: getting a HTPC. It might sound easy in theory, but can be infinately complicated in practice. I've decided to look at hardware and software simultaneously and look at the alternatives as a complete system. Of course you can install Myth TV on a hardware you originally planned for MCE (if there's Linux support for your HW). The options for me are:

• A Linux system with PVR software
• An OS X system
• A Windows Media Center Edition 2005 (or XP) based system
• A Windows Vista Home Premium system

There are a couple of alternatives for Linux, where MythTV seems to be the best choice. Going this route will probably take some time to set up, but get you a great system once everything is up and running. Other cons include lack of hardware support for newer hardware. I was hoping on using a graphics card that could off-load the processor for HD decoding and I haven't seen any support for those in Linux yet. Also, not all DVB-T tuner cards are fully supported. So, tempting as it may be, I'll move on to the next option:

An OS X system. The Mac Mini is close to a perfect fit for an HTPC but it does not have HDMI out (it does have DVI, and a DVI->HDMI converter so you can get the image to your TV but no sound), its built on the Core Duo (not the Core 2 Duo which is a 64-bit processor as opposed to the 32-bit Core Duo) and also the hardware is overdue for an update. If Apple were to release a new version of the Mac Mini anytime soon with HDMI I'd buy that in an instant. You need a third party solution for DVB-T recording; Elgato seems to have the best solution for this.

Many people swear by Windows Media Center Edition 2005 since they have something up and running that they are pleased with. I'm building a new system and am very reluctant to go with an old operating system. Which leaves me with:

Windows Vista Home Edition. Its certainly not the be-all and end-all for everyone, but this would be my choice if I were to build a system today. It has a built-in Media Center and even if people complain about driver support I'm sure its better than for Linux when going for new hardware. E.g. I'm looking at the Radeon HD 2400 Pro graphics card for off-loading the processor when playing back HD content and there's no support in Linux for that card. (Apparently there's barely support in Windows, but that's another matter.) Choosing Vista also leaves the door open for alternative DVR software such as Mediaportal, DVB Viewer or GB-PVR should I not be happy with the built in Media Center.

Most problems reported with Vista and MCE are related to viewing scrambled channels, and as I mentioned in my first post in this series this is not something I need to do. What remains now is to choose between 64-bit and 32-bit Vista and set up a suitable hardware configuration. But that's for the next post.

Video solution, part 3 - Media Players

This is the third post in a series where I'm trying to find a good solution for handling TV and video in my living room. In the last episode I introduced the contenders and covered the HDD recorder category.

Now on to the media players.

This is an interesting category where a ton of development is going on at the moment. If you're interested you can read up on the MPC Club forum. The most interesting option here is probably the TViX M-4100SH which has HDMI, supports resolutions up to 1080p and has a DVB-T tuner add-on. You still have a sucky GUI and a box that is pushed to its limit with HD content. It costs 3.400 SEK for the box, 900 SEK for the tuner and an additional 1.000 SEK for a 160GB HDD = 5.300 SEK. And there's no support for the matroska container, which means you might have to re-mux or re-encode stuff. Oh, and it only supports wireless networking with an external USB dongle (which adds more to the cost) and the stability is less than stellar. Some people have also reported problems with the fan noise being perceived as a problem.

AppleTV is the other interesting candidate in the media player category. For 3.700 SEK you get a box with a 160GB HDD, but no tuner capabilities. Unless you hack it, the box only support media you can watch in iTunes, which means we need to re-encode pretty much everything. It appears you can also get a tuner to work with AppleTV which is promising, but not quite there.

XBMC is a tried media center, but the xbox suffers from being to noisy and it does not support HD content.

If you are willing to wait until late this fall the Syabas Media Tank is probably the media player to get. Its only a reference design and no consumer models have yet been announced. The HW specs look excellent though and it is well worthy of consideration.

Which leaves us with the final category: a Home Theater PC. Details and options to follow in the next post in the series.

Video solution, part 2 - Meet the contenders

As I just mentioned I'm looking for a solution to handle my video and TV. I'm fine with multiple boxes, but would prefer an integrated solution. Without further ado, lets bring out the contenders:

• HDD recorder with DVD
• Set-top box with DVB-T HDD
  
• Media player / media streamer
  
• Home Theatre PC

The HDD recorders with DVD I've looked at were the Sony RDR HXD870 and the yet to be released Samsung DVD-SH853. The main problem with these units is that the GUI is rather bad, they do not support scheduled season recordings and you can't play high-definition content on them. In other words you need to complement a HDD recorder with a media player to fulfil all requirements. The price for a HDD recorder is approximately 4.500 SEK.

There are a couple of set-top boxes available with a harddisk and DVB-T. They suffer from the same drawbacks as the HDD recorders (although some models, e.g. the Topfield 5700 can be hacked to provide a decent GUI with exentions). They also have no DVD-player, but I have one already today so its not a big issue. Prices between 4.000 SEK to 6.500 SEK for the unreleased dreambox 8000.

In the next post in this series, I'll cover the media player options.

Finding a video solution that makes me happy

This is the first post in a series where I'm trying to find a video solution that makes me happy.

I'm picky. I'm not impossible, but picky. Having looked all over for a good solution for handling my music I settled for the Squeezebox and I must say I'm very satisfied. There are a few performance issues with the server; if I haven't been using the remote for a while it sometimes takes a long time before the Squeezebox reacts to input. Other than that its excellent.

Having the music part taken care of I now need to find a solution for my TV and movies. Did I mention I'm picky? But not impossible. My top priorities are to:

• Record Swedish DVB-T freeview channels in SD with 5.1 sound, including show series programming
  
• Watch DivX/Xvid in up to 720p resolution
• Watch DVD:s
• 5.1 sound output over optical or coaxial to my surround system
  
• HDMI output for video and sound to my TV
  
• Have a really nice looking and easy to use GUI
• Have a rock solid, quiet system with as low power consumption as possible
• No wired network (i.e. if a network is needed it has to be wireless)
  

I would also like to (but these are not absolutes):

• Pause Live-TV
• Dual tuners to record two programs simultaneously
  
• Watch and record Swedish DVB-T freeview channels in HD (only test transmissions in Stockholm at the moment, unclear whether or not this will become a reality and when)
• Watch HD-DVD and/or Blu-ray once the format war is settled
• Have a nice looking physical box

I do not necessarily need:

• A gaming platform
• A VFD
• To watch encoded TV channels
  
• To surf the Internet on my TV
• One box for everything - multiple boxes is fine if not ideal
  

Btw, my TV is a Samsung 42" plasma which is not suited as a computer monitor but excellent as a TV.

In the coming posts we'll take a look at possible solutions listing pros and cons. I'm pretty sure I'll end up with a Home Theater PC (HTPC), but then again I might not. Stay tuned.