Posts Categorised: HTPCs

0Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case LogoComparison of HTPC GPU’s

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

Anandtech has an excel­lent art­icle com­par­ing 4 bot­tom end GPU’s for HTPC’s.  The art­icle is extens­ive and does a good job of explain­ing issues of fram­er­ate tim­ing, cadence detec­tion, tele­cin­ing and pull­down as well as com­par­ing the 4 GPU’s.  As we don’t believe in rein­vent­ing the wheel — we recom­mend any­one build­ing a HTPC setup read the art­icle before set­ting out.

0AMD Vision Fusion Premium LogoFusion E‑450 coming

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

Semi­Ac­cur­ate has news that AMD are to immin­ently release a new Zacate mem­ber of the Brazos plat­form.  Accord­ing to pre­vi­ous inform­a­tion on Anandtech and Hex­us the E‑450 is clocked at 1.65GHz (up from 1.60GHz) and has graph­ics clocked at 600MHz (up from 500MHz).  It will also reportedly sup­port high­er speeds of DDR3 memory, and fea­ture some kind of turbo.

0FFmpeg Logoffdshow DXVA fixed

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

DXVA in ffd­show, which was [int­link id=“937” type=“post”]broken for the last few builds[/intlink], appears to have been fixed, at least in the 3878 x64 build from 11th June.

17Via Mini-ITX 2 LogoDual-Tuner Mini-ITX Build?

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

After dis­cus­sions on a [int­link id=“919” type=“post”]recent article[/intlink] I wondered if it is pos­sible to build a set-top box sized HTPC with dual-tuner cards inside.  To achieve set-top box size means going Mini-ITX, but with the release of a range of Mini ITX AMD Fusion boards this is the easy part.  Mini-ITX nor­mally only includes 1 expan­sion slot, so to include 2 tuners requires a cre­at­ive solution.
… Read Full Article

0Blackgold BGT3630 LogoBlackgold: The ultimate TV tuner card?

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

Whilst look­ing for drivers for my Pin­nacle 3010ix freeview tuner I noticed Black­gold have a new TV tuner due on the mar­ket.  The Black­gold BGT3630 looks pro­vi­sion­ally to tick all the boxes for me.  It sup­ports DVB-T/T2 AND DVB-S/S2 as well as Ana­log and Cable DVB-C!  So everything and the kit­chen sink.  The card is also sup­plied with low and full pro­file brack­ets and fits a PCI-E 1x slot.  I sup­pose the only thing lack­ing is that it seems to only be a single-tuner for each format.  Of course 2 cards solves that (if you have 2 pci‑e slots free in your HTPC)
… Read Full Article

0FFmpeg LogoUnsolved: Decoding interlaced vc1 in Media Center x64

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

Whilst my MediaPC setup can decode just about everything thrown at it, I have had prob­lems decod­ing inter­laced VC1 con­tent.  The prob­lem is caused by the fail­ure of ffm­peg to sup­port inter­laced vc1.  Whilst there are oth­er codecs (e.g. cyber­link or arc­soft) these are cur­rently not avail­able as x64.  Cyber­link do have an x64 codec for h.264 and mpeg2, but I haven’t been able to get it to work with VC1 con­tent.  Hope­fully ffm­peg will fix inter­laced vc1 sup­port soon, but as its been on the to do list for over 2 years I’m not hold­ing my breath

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

0FFmpeg LogoLAV — A new splitter

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

A new dir­ect­show split­ter has become avail­able.  If you’re not happy with the offer­ings from Haali and Gabest then you might like to try LAV.  I haven’t tried it myself yet, so I can­’t cur­rently offer any more inform­a­tion.  It does men­tion split­ting wtv files though, so I will be try­ing it in the near future.
… Read Full Article