Playing ripped DVDs in Vista Media Center

Now I can rip a DVD to a VIDEO_TS folder and watch it from within Vista Media Center. Nice.

Really short instructions for the impatient (but I strongly suggest reading the complete instructions):

Open Registry Editor (Start, Run, REGEDIT) and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\DvdSettings

Double-click the key ShowGallery and change the value from “Play” to “Gallery”.

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.
   

Toolchain for ripping DVD:s

I tried out StaxRip today, but couldn't get it to work. Either that or I wasn't patient enough. Either way, not a program I recommend.

CCCP released a new version the other day. Still recommended, although the author of zoom player (my current favourite) does not recommend codec packs.

Still to do: make MCE remote work with zoom player. I looked into HIP, but it didn't work out of the box - perhaps a Vista problem, perhaps something else. At least the devleopers are in touch and it seems like a solution might be forthcoming. What troubles me is that other people have it working without problems and nothing works here.

Still no reply from Jays

I wrote about Jays's unethical use of www.shure.se nine days ago. At the same time I contacted Jays's through their website and sent an email to their CEO. I still haven't heard back from them and www.shure.se is still hi-jacked by Jays.

I'll post to a couple of forums to see if I can get them to reply. Feel free to contact Jays yourself and tell them what you think about their behaviour.

And do digg the original post.

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.