Media Center

Thats something I never got round too - a decent sound card, and bluray.
 
Those are going to come at some point in the future I reckon....

I at least have Optical out with the board I'm getting
 
I love HD sound though - my neighbours don't :p

Bought the Matrix ad Fast and Furious bluray box sets - busy watching them - don't think the neighbours appreciate their walls vibrating :d
 
whoresome ! :)

I has to be waiting to get my hands on Transformers 2.... 1080p and all that.
 
Yeh - thats on my list :p That scene near the end where they in that digging/construction yard near the pyramids - have to hear that bass on a decent system.
 
TB, that is going to enhance your life so much :) .... sweet ... i feel like upgrading mine now, dam wedding!!!
 
ToxicBunny said:
What are the specs of your HTPC xrapidx?

Mediabrowser just has the best interface that I've seen so far.... I'm MORE than willing to replace it with other stuff, I just have too many movies and series for MCE to handle on its own.

So far the specs I'm looking at are 2.8ghz Core2Duo, 2GBs of RAM, random average graphics card and 250GB Hdd (will stream stuff off my storage servers)
Click to expand...

I would recommend starting with 4Gigs and ensuring the MB supports additional space. My Media Browser Caching folder is over 2Gig's already.

HTPC cases, like someone mentioned, are only for show and not functionality... money best spent else where.

EDIT: Another thing to mention is getting a decent Video Card for playback of large HD media. I had issues with a bottom of the range Nvidia card, got a 9900 GT and playback is smooth.

EDIT: Oh cr@p, you've got most of the above mentioned.
 
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The graphics card I have is mostly a temporary place holder for now until I see what and where thigns are going... I wasn't going to spend big money on a card I wasn't going to use the full potentioal of.

I've upped the specs somewhat though from my original... 2.93Ghz Core2Duo, 4GB of RAM, 1TB drive, 9400GT 1GB card (which from everything I've seen should do a decent enough job of offloading the processing of HD material)
 
If you're planning on running it 24/7 - no need to boot up when you park in front of it - get an AMD 5050e. Its rated 45w - and the performance seems pretty good. I don't play games on mine and it works perfectly fine for watching movies. You don't hear it - AT ALL - and I never switch it off (I've pulled the HDD from a WD external drive - basically a laptop HDD - and popped it in - VERY quiet).

I have the a Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H Motherboard with 4GB (Maybe even 2GB - cant remember) ram and I am using the onboard screeny. It has HDMI out and I've never had any issues playing 720/1080 MKV's from my NAS.

The only issue I have is when playing a blu-ray disk, *something* seems to run out of cache or something - about every 30 mins and it starts to stutter. A one sec pause & play fixes it but it is annoying. However I suspect it is the cheapo blu ray rom I've got in it.


And yes - MediaBrowser rocks!! Use it with MediacenterMaster (to get the covers/backdrops) and you'll be blown away!
 
I already have doneALOT of the ground work on the MediaBrowser and have alot of my stuff already categorised etcetc
 
Love my HTPC with Media browser. I use metabrowser for covers/backdrops. Question to those using 7mc, what codecs did you install? I installed 7 yesterday on my HTPC and I'm struggling to get all my HD mkv's working flawlessly as it did in Vista. In Vista I only used FFDSHOW and Haali splitter but it doesn't seem to do the trick for 7. Some mkv works and others dont, some dont even show up in mediacentre at all.
 
With Win7 I'm using the DIVX preview and an AC3 package from somewhere.
 
Penquin said:
Love my HTPC with Media browser. I use metabrowser for covers/backdrops. Question to those using 7mc, what codecs did you install? I installed 7 yesterday on my HTPC and I'm struggling to get all my HD mkv's working flawlessly as it did in Vista. In Vista I only used FFDSHOW and Haali splitter but it doesn't seem to do the trick for 7. Some mkv works and others dont, some dont even show up in mediacentre at all.
Click to expand...

I used FFDShow and Haali...

http://chaocracy.com/blogs/ogre/arc...ure-windows-7-to-play-matroska-mkv-files.aspx

Had streaming issues, but I upgraded my graphics card and now it's seamless.

As for the *.mkv files not displaying in MB, remove allow nested folders inside the config.
 
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"I used FFDShow and Haali..." those are the only two from CCC that i install. Works awesome. Subs didn't work for me the one time i wanted to use it though.
 
Slooth : yeah you have to sign up for the community site... nothing hectic

milo : I have an HDPVR... so i could have some fun trying to get it passing through the HTPC
 
ToxicBunny said:
milo : I have an HDPVR... so i could have some fun trying to get it passing through the HTPC
Click to expand...

Hmmm - has anyone got Media center working with an HD decoder?

I keep wanting to upgrade - but this is whats holding me back... Even if I can just use the standard def channels with media center, and the HD one direct to the TV, I'd be sold.
 
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