Posts Categorised: HTPCs

0Windows Media Center eHome LogoGet Media Center 8 free

Posted by & filed under Windows Media Center.

If you’ve got Win­dows 8 Pro, and wish to add Media Cen­ter to it you need a key from Microsoft.  In future this wont be free, but you can get one free until 31st Jan 2013 thanks to a Microsoft offer.  I have registered for mine, even though I don’t run Win­dows 8 because I may want to use it in future so why not!

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2Blackgold BGT3630 LogoProblem with BlackGold 36xx TV Cards

Posted by & filed under Media PC Hardware.

I’ve been hav­ing on-off issues for a while with my TV-Serv­er.  I run DVBLink on top of Win­dows Serv­er which allows me to share my TV sig­nals to all my PCs, Android phones, PS3, Xbox and oth­er DLNA devices.  How­ever, I’ve had an issue where seem­ingly at ran­dom I’ve lost the abil­ity to tune some chan­nels.  Ini­tially I put this down to DVBLink, but after extens­ive test­ing it appears the prob­lem is with the TV cards.  Once the cards have lost tune this seems to last for a while in DVBLink, maybe it would­n’t have the same effect in a straight Win­dows Media Cen­ter setup.

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0codecsComplete codec setup guide for Windows 7⁄8

Posted by & filed under Codecs.

Win­dows 8 is fin­ished and will soon be avail­able for retail sale. With that in mind it seemed a good time to write an updated guide to get­ting codecs set up for a fully oper­a­tion­al HTPC for both Win­dows 7 and 8. For this guide I’m using a new fea­ture of HTML5 which cre­ates expand­able instruc­tions. At the time of writ­ing this is only sup­por­ted by chrome and safari 6 but hope­fully oth­er browsers will add sup­port in the near future.

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0Images by Name Studios LogoResurrected: Collaborative ImagesByName Project

Published by & filed under Media Browser. Last updated .

With the sad loss of TheHTPC.net there no longer appears to be a home for the Col­lab­or­at­ive Images­By­Name Pro­ject (know as CiP or IBN at vari­ous times).  Whilst devel­op­ment on these seems to have hal­ted some time back, the resources them­selves are still sub­stan­tial and will be sorely missed.  As I still had down­loaded cop­ies avail­able, and could­n’t find them any­where else of the net, I’ve decided to host them here so that oth­ers may con­tin­ue to enjoy the pre­vi­ous hard work inves­ted in cre­at­ing them.

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0BlackGold BGT3600 DVB-T2 & DVB-S2 tunerBlackgold 3600: The new ultimate TV Card

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

I’ve recently moved house, but now that I’ve restored inter­net access (always the first pri­or­ity) I’ve been tasked with fully sort­ing out TV in the house.  The pre­vi­ous setup isn’t bad — with a Media Serv­er (includ­ing TV cards) tucked away, and a HTPC in the lounge.  These both run Media Cen­ter and DVBLink.  This way I can also get TV on my desktop PC and laptop.  In the near future I’ll be build­ing anoth­er HTPC for the bed­room TV so we can watch recor­ded pro­grammes in bed.  All these poten­tial record­ings and watch­ing are bey­ond the cap­ab­il­ity of my cur­rent tuner setup — a Black­Gold BGT3620 and a Compro S350.  … Read Full Article

0Media Player Classic - Home Cinema LogoDecoding Interlaced VC‑1 with DXVA

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

A couple of days ago ver­sion 1.6 of Media Play­er Clas­sic — Home Cinema was released.  Although I don’t use MPC-HC, I do keep an eye on the releases as it can be a use­ful back-up when a file wont play.  It’s been quite a long time since the last offi­cial release so I had a quick scan of the changelog and one thing imme­di­ately leaped at me: “VC‑1 DXVA Decoder now decodes VC‑1 inter­laced mater­i­al”.  Until now there has been no open source x64 codec that will decode inter­laced VC‑1.  Finally hav­ing this avail­able com­pletes cov­er­age for all the media files I have ever tried to play.  Hope­fully this will also get added to ffd­show try­outs and LAV Video in the near future.