Assassin's Simple/Beginner HTPC Buying Guide - Page 414

Every once in a while I noticed a little hiccup but it is barely noticeable and I was just looking really hard to figure out what the hell was going on. I noticed the same thing in Plex and Boxee and after I turned off hardware acceleration the video problems went away. I believe I was getting video playback issues in XBMC with the sync to display option on and the audio would get messed up as well. Now that I know hardware acceleration needs to be turned off I will try enabling the sync option again to see if I am still getting issues or if it all works out. I don't remember if I was selecting it while hardware acceleration was on as well.

Ah, DD is a 5.1 speaker setup, so the bulk of your sound in DD is sent to the center speaker. However, any TV is 2 channel, so you only hear the right-front and left-front channels.

Is there any significant difference in the final BR Rip output using MakeMKV and:

Corner A) I5-650, Gigabyte H67, Radeon 5770, 8GB RAM

Corner B) I5-2500, Gigagyte Z68, Radeon 5670, 8GB RAM

I would surmise the I5-2500 would be slightly FASTER but not a hill of beans in the final rendering. However, perhaps I'm missing the forest for the trees.

Picked up this drive as well, it just came a few minutes ago via UPS Man. It was the last piece of the puzzle that I needed to assemble my new HTPC. I'm reading thru your paid guides, wow there is a lot of great info in there. So I'm going thru it step-by-step. What bluray software do you recommend or like I'm looking at PowerDVD 12 Ultra.

Whoops. H55 MOBO. I do have a few 'puters but not as many as you've built.

Thanks for the info on "which one is faster". I believe both are the same BR reader, although the latter is a rebadge

if you plan on playing iso or physical disks then IMO the better choice would be TMT5. I think it does a better job with playback and hooks into WMC nicely.

Are you against ripping your media to MKV format and leveraging LAV/SHARK007 to play the format directly? I do this now and use TMT5 less than 5% of time.

I tried tuning off bit streaming and configuring the shark007 codecs to send stereo to the TV so that should have worked. In the end followed the steps at the end of Assassin's guide to connecting the HTPC to the HDTV and it appears to have resolved the issue.

Thanks for the info. I was looking at playing a physical disk. I'll rip my own to my iso libary. Just wondering what would be the best for if a friend or family member brought a movie over to watch. I'll look at TMT5.

I have a PS3 I usually use for Bluray viewing byt since I picked up the that drive from newegg I figure I'd look into software for playback.

Ok so what program do I need to rip the 3D blu-rays, and can I set media browser to automatically play back 3D in tmt5, or does wmc/mb already support 3D playback?

You can rip with "Make mkv"

http://www.makemkv.com/

This may help a bit with your other question , Ie: MB 3d play back

http://community.mediabrowser.tv/per...ou-should-know

I just started noticing this issue when I updated my ATI Driver to 12.3. I will have to some more testing with it though.

So, I THOUGHT I had solved my 'blank display' issue using my AVR/Projector with my new H67/G530 system. Until last night, when I turned the AVR and PJ on (PC is running 24/7 since also being used as a server), and bam -- blank screen. I tried toggling the input on my AVR, but it didn't do anything for me this time.

But - and here's the strange thing - when I invoked the "mouse cursor' activity on my Harmony remote, the cursor showed up! So I was getting the white cursor on a black background. Never could get the desktop or WMC to show, but apparently SOME form of video is being passed. Anyone seen something like this before?

Yep, had the same thing with the cursor. For me, I could exit to the desktop and then back to WMC. There are 3 things you could do:

1. Use HDMI Detective to resolve any handshake issues. I've never tried it, probably works, but it's another thing in the video chain, isn't cheap, and in my case not necessary.

2. When I shutdown my system (macro on the remote) I exit to the desktop on my HTPC. When I turn on the system, I program a delay (about 8 seconds) to let the AVR and projector be fully operational, and then execute a command (in the macro) for the green button. Not really a problem with the 8 second delay since the projector takes longer than that to warm up anyway.

3. You could also try varying what gets turned on 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. It didn't work for me however.

Hi


I have over 800 iso's. Mostly blu rays though some DVDs mixed in. I was going to rebuild and use MakeMKV as suggested by assassin but do notnwant to sit there and babysit my htpc. Is there a way I can copy a entire hard drive and convert them all to MKV with the options I want in one batch convert ?

Thanks


By the way assassin I finally have my harmony one working with my htpc. Bought the hp ir receiver and no issues though the mouse movement is slow and it will move for a while then stop. Then I have to hit the button and hold it down again rather than just holding it the entire time

If they are unencypted ISOs, you should be able to use Handbrake to batch convert.

Hi Assassin,
I've put the parts list below for my HTPC using the recommended hardware in your first post. My intention is to use a CableCard with the Ceton InfiniTV and get rid of the set-top boxes from Time Warner. I also plan on using an extender in a different part of my home.

With that in mind, could you please let me know, if you think the configuration might work or if I'm missing anything?

I'd appreciate any insight you might have to share.

I plan on getting your paid guides as soon as I sort out the hardware bit.

Thanks.

See MakeMKV command-line usage. I haven't tried it myself.

Thank you. I appreciate the help.

I have 570 nvidia card hanging around. will this be compatible with a jriver setup. Wont it be huge for most micro cases? also i heard it does not bitstream??

can anyone recommend a video card that will be good enough for jriver ? or recommend one that can do some gaming as well?

2 disparate questions.

1) gtx 570 may not bitstream, but can I buy a separate sound card like one of those creative ones to handle all audio, if so any guide on how to set it up with WMC? do i change the bios or something?

2) How do I play divx, xvid, avi files in WMC? Assassin's guides did not go over this? or maybe is it that I need to install the old sharkey codecs instead of the LAV ones? Do i also need to install MPC?

thanks for all the erudite scholars here for their help.

I'm sure this question has been answered before, but I will ask it anyways. Are MKV files unable to fast forward / rewind? I am playing them through Mediabrowser. The ones I have attempted to don't seem to do anything. Am I missing anything?

mine al fast forward/rewind just fine. The fast forward/rewind in WMC sucks in my opinion though though it does work. Wish it was adjustable to how much it jumped forward/rewind. leats last itm ei checked that poriton wasnt adjustable

1) if you have an intel chip you don't need a video card (the on board graphics are quite good).

2) avi is a windows format so it should play fine in WMC, no codecs needed. Divx and xvid may require a codec like LAV or Shark007 (which includes LAV, Halli, FFDshow)

It's a MB/WMC thing not a MKV issue. You can still skip fwd/skip back, or simply hit 1+0+play and that will fwd you to the 10:00 point in the mkv.