Posts Categorised: HTPCs

0Haali Matroska logoProblems with DS splitters playing a range of m2ts files

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

Ever since set­tings up a HTPC run­ning Win7 Media Cen­ter I have had the occa­sion­al prob­lem play­ing m2ts files. ffd­show sup­ports all of the codecs used in m2ts files but still a few files play without without either audio or video, or the play­back isn’t smooth des­pite more than ample hard­ware. I have exper­i­mented extens­ively with both haali matroska split­ter and [int­link id=“58” type=“post”]gabests mpeg splitter[/intlink] but both have their flaws.
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1Closed Captions Subtitles LogoSubtitles and DXVA in Windows Media Center 7 x64

Published by & filed under Codecs. Last updated .

Thanks to a guide on theHTPC.net I have been able to get sub­titles work­ing with hard­ware accel­er­ated decod­ing in Win­dows Media Cen­ter 7 x64.

For this sim­pli­fied guide to work you must already be com­fort­able with the vari­ous tweaks neces­sary to change the default codecs used in Media Cen­ter. Once you know how to tweak codecs (and change their mer­its) you can simply fol­low these steps…
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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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14Boxee Remote LogoThe search for a HTPC remote-keyboard

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

I’ve been look­ing for a new (more ver­sat­ile) remote con­trol for my HTPC. At the moment I have to use a full-size key­board as the remote con­trol has no such facil­ity. I’ve been look­ing for a suit­able remote con­trol with key­board, and whilst I haven’t yet found quite the right thing I have found some inter­est­ing products…
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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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5VirtualDub LogoVirtualDub x64 with plugins

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

I’ve used Vir­tu­al­Dub for many years as video tweak­er / reen­coder. I recently needed to edit a video and decided to try the 64bit ver­sion. All is well, except for the lack of plu­gins (and hence greatly reduced ver­sat­il­ity). After dig­ging around for quite a while I man­aged to loc­ate the fol­low­ing selec­tion of plu­gins which did the job nicely.
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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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0Inside HDD LogoSpeeding up Media Browser

Published by & filed under Media Browser, Storage. Last updated .

An art­icle on Hack7MC caught my eye a couple of months ago, but I have only just got around to fol­low­ing up on it. The idea is to speed up the Media Browser plu­gin for Media Cen­ter by mov­ing its lib­rary to a Cheap USB Flash drive, which hope­fully offers much bet­ter per­form­ance than nor­mal hard-disk drives. The first thing I did was test a couple of flash-based devices that I have against my desktop HardDrive…
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