Posts Categorised: HTPCs

0Haali Matroska logoHaali Media Splitter: Official Site Down

Published by & filed under Codecs, News. Last updated .

HTPC related sites and resources seem to be drop­ping like flies at the moment.  First [int­link id=“1918” type=“post”]Media Cen­ter Stu­dio disappeared[/intlink], then [int­link id=“2141” type=“post”]TheHTPC.net developed problems[/intlink], and now the offi­cial site for Haali Media Split­ter is down.  For­tu­nately the media split­ter can still be down­loaded from lots of oth­er sites, and we will keep a mir­ror here in case oth­er sites drop it.  There are also altern­at­ives, includ­ing the MPC-HC stan­dalone codecs and LAV.  Links to these are avail­able on our [int­link id=“741” type=“page”]downloads[/intlink] page.  Lets hope that this is the last in the recent series of HTPC related losses.

0AMD Vision Fusion Premium LogoBrazosTweaker: AMD Brazos E350 tweaker

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

As reg­u­lar read­ers will know, my main HTPC is cur­rently based on an AMD Brazos E350.  I’d like to say a quick thanks to Semi­Ac­cur­ate for their recent art­icle high­light­ing the excel­lent BrazosTweak­er by Sven Wit­tek.  This tool (and its sib­ling FusionT­weak­er) enable the tweak­ing of P‑States (the voltage in low power mode) of Brazos and Llano chips, just like K10Stat, Phe­nomMs­rTweak­er, RMC­lock, Crys­talCPUID and oth­ers have done in the past.  To quote Semi­Ac­cur­ate, “the main pur­pose of both these tools is to modi­fy the voltages and clock dividers of the built-in P‑States on these chips.”

The FusionT­weak­er util­ity is still some­what buggy by all reports, but BrazosTweak­er seems reli­able to me.  I highly recom­mend read­ing the Semi­Ac­cur­ate art­icle and then grabbing the tool if you have a Brazos HTPC, or laptop.

8Warning: Not foundTheHTPC.net — Down for the count? No

Published by & filed under Misc Media Software. Last updated .

Sad news — for the last few days TheHTPC.net has been show­ing a Serv­er 500 error.  Now the own­er (anoth­er Jon) has put up a mes­sage say­ing the site is broken and he may not be able to find time to fix it.  I for one am very much hop­ing to see TheHTPC.net back in the near future.  If that is not to be then I hope we will be able to source and provide a mir­ror of some of the out­stand­ing resources that were pre­vi­ously avail­able there.  RIP.

… Read Full Article

2FFmpeg LogoFFDShow DXVA H.264 corruption resolved

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

I have recently been suf­fer­ing cor­rup­tion play­ing back some H.264 files with FFD­Show try­outs.  After a bit of exper­i­ment­ing I’ve found that the last build without this issue is build 3949 from 24th-July.  I pre­vi­ously had issues with earli­er releases of FFD­Show that [int­link id=“1414” type=“post”]didn\‘t work with DXVA[/intlink] at all — for­tu­nately build 3949 does­n’t suf­fer this issue.  I also [int­link id=“919” type=“post”]previously had a problem[/intlink] where some builds of FFD­Show were less effi­cient on my HTPC and were unable to smoothly decode some high bitrate movies, e.g. a rip of the Inglori­ous Bas­terds Blu-Ray, which has forced me to con­tin­ue to use an old build from mid-2010 until now.  Build 3949 does­n’t suf­fer from these issues either — so in terms of the 3 prob­lems I’ve had over the years with ffd­show, build 3949 does­n’t suf­fer from any of them, mak­ing it my build of choice for the fore­see­able future.

2media center studioMedia Center Studio

Posted by & filed under Windows Media Center.

It seems that the Media Cen­ter Stu­dio site is per­man­ently down.  For­tu­nately sev­er­al people have man­aged to archive the files needed to install it, and have provided them, along with some instruc­tions.  I have improved upon their manu­al instruc­tions by mak­ing a self-extract­ing installer with short­cut.  My ver­sion of the installer can be found on the [int­link id=“741” type=“page”]downloads page[/intlink]

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

0Motorola NYXBoard QWERTY RemoteLooking beyond the boxee remote-keyboard

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

For a long time I’ve been search­ing for the ideal HTPC remote con­trol.  I want a fairly stand­ard remote, but with a QWERTY key­board on the back, or inside a flip/slide out part.  I’ve been track­ing the options in [int­link id=“46” type=“post”]an art­icle from Jan-2010[/intlink], and even­tu­ally ordered myself a Boxee remote a few months back.  The boxee is an excel­lent wire­less key­board, but unfor­tu­nately, boxee have opted to go the “Apple route” (aka dumbed down) on the non-qwerty side.  There are a total of 7 but­tons, non of which is a power but­ton.  There is also no “back up” type but­ton.  This makes the boxee pretty use­less for Media Cen­ter 7.… Read Full Article

14MC-TVConverterMC-TVConverter: An alternative to MCEBuddy?

Published by & filed under Misc Media Software. Last updated .

I’ve been fol­low­ing the devel­op­ment of MCE­Buddy for a while now, as it was the only free way to transcode WTV files to a more com­pat­ible format.  It is still in Beta how­ever, and whilst it works it has 2 down­sides to my mind.  It transcodes the video which means an inev­it­able loss of qual­ity, and this also means it takes a long time to transcode each record­ing.  Around 4 hours for a 1Hr BBC HD record­ing on my Sem­pron LE-1100 serv­er.… Read Full Article