Just a quick update on a previous post about problems with BBC HD in Windows 7 Media Center when using ATI video cards.
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Posts Categorised: HTPCs
14
The search for a HTPC remote-keyboard
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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2
Multi disc albums in Media Center
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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5
VirtualDub x64 with plugins
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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0
Full Flac support in Media Center x64
Following on from an earlier article, 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 (see this post) 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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0
Speeding up Media Browser
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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1
Speeding up WMP12 & 7MC media library database
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 here and here) make it possible to play FLACs in 64bit media center, but the media library was incredibly slow.
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0
Haali finally release official x64 splitter
Haali Media Splitter is now “officially” available for 64bit. To download simply go to the Haali site and download from the link at the top right. Both 32bit and 64bit splitter are included. Various fixes are mentioned altho I haven’t yet had opportunity to test them.
0
64bit Xiph codec breaks file-type dialog in WMP12
In an earlier article I recommended installing the Xiph codecs to support FLAC files in 64bit Media Player and Media Center. One of the comments (my thanks to thom007) on that post pointed out that the Xiph codecs break the “file type” dialog box in Media Player 12. Below is a work-around which restores the file-type dialog box. The possible side effects are as yet unknown, so experiment at your own risk.
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0
Playing downloaded FLV’s
I recently had a problem with 2 PCs which appeared to be configured identically, but whilst one would play a FLV downloaded from youtube, the other would fail. Some other FLVs played OK on both systems. After much further investigation I discovered that the activeX version of flash player on 1 of the PC’s was up-to-date, but on the other was not.
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