Posts Categorised: HTPCs

0Windows Media Player LogoWindows volume control of HDMI output

Published by & filed under Amplifiers, Misc Media Software, Windows. Last updated .

I recently swapped out my old home cinema audio sys­tem (a Yamaha DSP-E800 and a Den­on ste­reo receiv­er) con­nec­ted via USB DAC and 6 chan­nel ana­log for an Onkyo TX-SR605 which has HDMI audio con­nec­tions. In most ways this was an instant upgrade but one issue really frus­trated me — volume…
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3Media Player Classic - Home Cinema LogoComparing madvr GPU performance

Published by & filed under Media PC Hardware. Last updated .

My cur­rent HTPC has an nVidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti 4Gb with which I am able to upscale all con­tent to 1080p with fairly high qual­ity set­tings, and am also (just) able to play­back 8k 60fps con­tent down­scaled to 1080p. How­ever, I have long wondered what the bene­fits of a more power­ful card might be on the abil­ity to use high­er set­tings. Sadly, no-one seems to provide any bench­marks for mad­vr, so how can cards be compared?
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0Optimal LAV and mad-vr settings for a high end GPU at 1080p

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

I have spent a lot of time exper­i­ment­ing with mad-vr and lav try­ing to find the optim­al set­tings for my GTX 1050Ti which out­puts to a 1080p pro­ject­or. Set­tings for high­er res­ol­u­tion dis­plays will be very dif­fer­ent, but as 4k pro­ject­ors are cur­rently so expens­ive, for a truly “home cinema” exper­i­ence 1080p is the lim­it for most people.
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0Constant Kodi Irritations

Published by & filed under Kodi. Last updated .

A few years back I migrated from Win­dows Media Centre to Kodi (thanks to Microsoft for end­ing sup­port and devel­op­ment of MC). Kodi is widely used and very ver­sat­ile, how­ever it has nev­er worked quite flaw­lessly and I con­tin­ue to come across a range of annoy­ing issues. Where I have found a solu­tion I will doc­u­ment it below
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0Problem with playback in Emby for Kodi

Posted by & filed under Media Browser.

A couple of weeks ago I had a sud­den prob­lem play­ing loc­al media in Kodi via the Emby plu­gin. I fixed it tem­por­ar­ily by rolling back to an older ver­sion of the plu­gin 2.3.57. There were briefly issues with a new­er build of the plu­gin but these have now been resolved in ver­sion 2.3.61, at least accord­ing to the only thread I could find with the same issue on the emby for­um.
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0Kodi keymap for miniguide on arrow keys in livetv

Posted by & filed under Kodi.

What a hor­rible title that is, but I did­n’t know how else to describe this. Since switch­ing from Media Cen­ter to Kodi I’ve mostly been very pleased, but a few small niggles have remained where for some reas­on Kodi just does­n’t default to “nice” beha­viour in the same way that Media Cen­ter did. I long ago man­aged to get the “Live TV” link from the main menu to point to the guide view instead of a chan­nel list, but once a chan­nel is being dis­played I could­n’t find a neat way to describe a mini-guide like Media Cen­ter would do.
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0True home cinema for a grand

Posted by & filed under Media PC Hardware.

I’ve long had a “home cinema” setup with a fairly budget HTPC, a 50″ plasma TV, and a 4.1 sur­round sys­tem, but when I moved house a year ago I found I no longer had a place in the main fam­ily room to fit the 50″ TV, so had to revert back to the old Sam­sung 32″ 720p CRT that I bought in around 2006. The room has a large bay win­dow with a little recess per­fect for fit­ting a screen, so a plan was born for true home cinema
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