Posts Categorised: HTPCs

0Tips for new Kodi users

Published by & filed under Kodi. Last updated .

I’ve recently star­ted the migra­tion from 7MC to Kodi now that Media Cen­ter is no longer sup­por­ted, and con­sequently many plu­gins for it are no longer being act­ively developed.

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0Windows Media Center eHome LogoWindows Media Center on Windows 10

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

With the launch of Win­dows 10 Microsoft has offi­cially killed off Win­dows Media Cen­ter. How­ever, Win­dows Media Cen­ter was found in the early builds of Win­dows 10 and noth­ing fun­da­ment­al to Win­dows 10 is incom­pat­ible with Media Cen­ter. This begs the ques­tion: Can Media Cen­ter be added in to Win­dows 10? The answer: yes!
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0DVB LogicFixed: DVBLink MCE Client first tune fail

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

One of my many HTPC cli­ents has had a strange prob­lem — the first time it is tuned into a chan­nel it fails with the com­mon (and mean­ing­less) Play Ready error. Chan­ging chan­nel once always seems to bring it back to life how­ever. After much dig­ging around I finally found the very straight­for­ward solution
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0DVB LogicFixed: DVBLink media center playready message

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

I’ve been using DVBLink to share TV around my home for sev­er­al years. Of all the issues with it, the most dreaded is the “Play Ready” error on Win­dows Media Cen­ter cli­ents. The prob­lem is this error mes­sage is mean­ing­less — it is gen­er­ated by Media Cen­ter, and just means it can­’t get a sig­nal from the tuner. The fail­ure could be any­where behind the scenes. Recently my 2 main cli­ents star­ted throw­ing this error com­pletely out of the blue.
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0Media Player Classic - Home Cinema LogoPlay BluRays and DVD’s in MediaCenter with MPC-HC

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

I’ve long run Win­dows Media Cen­ter on my HTPCs in com­bin­a­tion with DVBLink and Medi­aB­rowser. How­ever, recently we have been watch­ing more phys­ic­al disks than in the past, and I have found vari­ous issues with Media Cen­ter. Usu­ally I have MPC-HC con­figured as an extern­al play­er, but doing this for phys­ic­al disks proved less than simple. Even­tu­ally how­ever, I have man­aged to get it work­ing flawlessly.

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0Alarm Clock LogoKeeping your HTPC clock in sync

Posted by & filed under Misc Media Software.

I’ve had a long-stand­ing issue with my HTPC where it loses a minute or two every day. If I leave it switched on for weeks on end, with only standby util­ised, I find that it starts miss­ing the start or end of TV pro­grammes due to hav­ing the wrong time. I’ve tried modi­fy­ing the win­dows time ser­vice set­tings to make it update reg­u­larly, but this has­n’t worked. Thanks to an art­icle on Life­Hack­er I recently stumbled upon I’ve now had an accur­ate clock for a couple of weeks.… Read Full Article

1Media Player Classic - Home Cinema LogoHow to set remote control jump keys for MPC-HC

Posted by & filed under Windows Media Center.

As I’ve doc­u­mented in the past, I have sev­er­al HTPC’s run­ning Win­dows Media Cen­ter. I also use Medi­aB­rowser for TV series and movies ripped from disk. I’ve found that Medi­aB­rowser works much bet­ter with an extern­al play­er than the intern­al play­er — per­form­ance seems to be super­i­or — so I use Media Play­er Clas­sic Home Cinema. I also have sev­er­al Media Cen­ter remote con­trols for use with the vari­ous HTPCs, and one of the most fre­quently used pairs of but­tons are the “jump” or “skip” but­tons which in media cen­ter jump the cur­rent play­back for­ward by 30 seconds or back by 30 seconds. This is really handy for skip­ping adverts in recor­ded TV.  How­ever, under default install­a­tion set­tings these keys don’t work when play­ing videos in MPC-HC.  After much tri­al and error I finally figured out the cor­rect configuration

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0Updating QT Lite & QuickTime alternative

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

I’ve long been a user of Quick­Time Altern­at­ive, as a much light­er altern­at­ive to the full Apple Quick­Time. Sadly QT Altern­at­ive (and its cous­in QT Lite) has­n’t been updated in over a year, whilst Quick­Time has received sev­er­al secur­ity and bug fixes. Updat­ing QT Lite is a straight­for­ward pro­cess which I will detail below. I have also built an updated installer which is avail­able on the [int­link id=“741” type=“page”]downloads page[/intlink].  This installer is based on Apple Quick­Time 7.7.3 (28-Dec-2012)

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0AVStoDVDHow to burn files to compliant DVD-Video

Posted by & filed under Misc Media Software.

As I’ve doc­u­mented well on this blog I run all my TV through a serv­er and Win­dows Media Cen­ter. Occa­sion­ally I want to archive some recor­ded TV to DVD. Not a DVD of data-files, but a stand­ards-com­pli­ant video DVD that will play in set top play­ers. This isn’t always straight for­ward as prop­er DVDs have to con­form to vari­ous stand­ards, includ­ing being encoded in MPEG2 and hav­ing a PAL or NTSC res­ol­u­tion (480p or 576p). Most of what I have recor­ded is 1080p and I also have some 720p, and most of this is encoded using H.264. So turn­ing these files into a stand­ard DVD video means both recod­ing and res­iz­ing the videos.… Read Full Article