Posts Categorised: Windows Media Center

1Windows Media Center eHome LogoSolution to Media Center Library Error

Posted by & filed under Windows Media Center.

A couple of days ago I star­ted get­ting an error on my HTPC when I tried to change lib­rary loc­a­tions — either adding or remov­ing.  Media Cen­ter shows the error which says “A neces­sary com­pon­ent of win­dows media cen­ter did not start prop­erly. Restart win­dows media cen­ter”.  I under­stand this error can also affect Media Cen­ter Extenders… Read Full Article

2MCEBuddy LogoMCEBuddy Reloaded: h264 wtv conversion

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

I have wanted the facil­ity to con­vert my recor­ded WTV files to anoth­er format for as long as I’ve had a MediaPC.  The lead can­did­ate has always been MCE­Buddy, but for over 2 years the pro­ject was stalled (as far as the user was con­cerned at least) by prob­lems sup­port­ing h264 video inside wtv files.… Read Full Article

2Windows Media Center eHome LogoFull 7MC codec setup

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

I’ve pre­vi­ously pos­ted sev­er­al times about codec issues on 7mc, but I’ve now got a solu­tion that is com­pre­hens­ive, fairly simple and works con­sist­ently.  With a few free codecs and util­it­ies you can have full decod­ing sup­port, DXVA, sub­titles and fant­ast­ic flex­ib­il­ity work­ing in 64bit (or 32bit) Media Cen­ter.  The fol­low­ing instruc­tions are spe­cif­ic to the x64 edi­tion, but should work just as well on the 32bit edition.
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0UK Channel LogosChannel Logos (formerly on Theme7mc.com)

Published by & filed under Windows Media Center. Last updated .

The Theme7mc site seems to have been pulled, and loc­at­ing the resources that used to be on it isn’t straight-for­ward.  As a former con­trib­ut­or I was keen to find where the con­tents had gone and am pleased I can point people to the Theme7mc archive post on Hack7mc.com where they can all be found.

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0FFmpeg LogoMedia center basic codec tweaks

Published by & filed under Codecs, Windows Media Center. Last updated .

Fol­low­ing on from my [int­link id=“49” type=“post”]previous post list­ing details of the addins and apps[/intlink] that I use with my media cen­ter PC here are the details of the basic set of codec tweaks I use to enable max­im­um file com­pat­ib­lity with DXVA sup­port enabled…
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2CD LogoMulti disc albums in Media Center

Published by & filed under Windows Media Center. Last updated .

I recently added my FLAC music col­lec­tion to my Media Cen­ter box, but one of the last few things bug­ging me about the Media Cen­ter inter­face is that it does not respect the Disc Num­ber. I prefer not to have a dif­fer­ent album name for the second disc, and i also prefer to keep discs sep­ar­ate. Today I acci­dent­ally stumbled on a solu­tion, thanks to a mis-tag­ging of a double-cd album.
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0FLAC LogoFull Flac support in Media Center x64

Published by & filed under Codecs, Windows Media Center. Last updated .

Fol­low­ing on from an [int­link id=“40” type=“post”]earlier article[/intlink], I have been con­tinu­ing to work on get­ting my music col­lec­tion work­ing in Win­dows 7 Media Cen­ter. The prob­lem I have had is that although there are codecs from xiph which sup­port play­back of flacs in 64bit play­ers ([int­link id=“14” type=“post”]see this post[/intlink]) there are (as far as I’m aware) no tag extenders com­pat­ible with 64bit.  After banging my head against a wall for ages I even­tu­ally had a breakthrough.
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1Windows Media Center eHome LogoSpeeding up WMP12 & 7MC media library database

Published by & filed under Windows Media Center. Last updated .

One of the prob­lems with my HTPC that I have only just star­ted look­ing at is how to use it to play and man­age my large col­lec­tion of audio CD’s which I have painstak­ingly ripped to FLAC’s. The Xiph codecs (see pre­vi­ous art­icles [int­link id=“38” type=“post”]here[/intlink] and [int­link id=“14” type=“post”]here[/intlink]) make it pos­sible to play FLACs in 64bit media cen­ter, but the media lib­rary was incred­ibly slow.
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