My First XBMC -- Looking for Tips

1. The GT610 is an older generation of card (I know the 6XX naming scheme makes that confusing). According to another thread on AVS, it does not support bitstreaming. It appears that you have to move up to the 640 to get bitstreaming capable cards. I'm not sure what the options are for AMD.
2. I don't know about the Raspberry Pi.
3. XBMC is really nice and since it is free and requires no codecs and minimal setup, you can give it a try without risking much.
4. I believe you can buy an inexpensive RC6 USB to IR adapter that will allow the Harmony to communicate with the HTPC. I too have tried the phone remote, and while it is nice, entering my phone's pin number each time I want to make a change is cumbersome. For this reason and the one you listed, I don't recommend using your phone as your primary control device.
5. I use an HDHomerun (digital channels only) connected to my network and Windows Media Center for my TV viewing. A lot of others really like the way WMC handles the guide and I see why. I have not gotten in to recording live TV, but it looks like that will work with the click of a button in WMC. I'm not sure how much there is in the way of configuring recording options since I haven't looked.

Something to be wary of is Cinavia protection on newer blurays which will not allow you to play a ripped movie. I don't think there is any software available yet that cracks Cinavia.

David

Hmm, according to a thread on AVSForum, it cannot bitsream. According to NVIDIA, it can. I'll go with NVIDIA on this one and I apologize for the bad info. I wish the false info on avsforum would not come up so high on a google search. For reference: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-610/features.

EDIT: Also, old links, but this was what the guys on the Logitech forum were talking about: http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-RC6-IR-remote-and-HP-Media-Center-Infrared-USB-Receiver-Combo-/140613736140?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20bd3b56cc
Edited by aclos3 - 2/13/13 at 9:58am

I found a list on the web, I'm sure there are more.

MEN IN BLACK 3
DARK SHADOWS
SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN
TED
PROMETHEUS
ROCK OF AGES
THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN
ICE AGE 4
SAVAGES
THAT'S MY BOY
UNDERWORLD:AWAKENING
THE WOMEN IN BLACK
IN DARKNESS
21 JUMP ST
SALMON FISHING IN YEMEN
LOCKOUT
FOOTNOTE
DETENTION
BURLESQUE
PROJECT X
|WRATH OF THE TITANS
GHOST RIDER 2:SPIRIT OF VENGENCE
THE RAID: REDEMTION
SEPARATION
MEETING EVIL
THE RUM DIARY
LONDON BLVD.
THE ADVENTURES OF TIN TIN
THE SKIN I LIVE IN
JACK AND JILL
CARNAGE
GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO
IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY
A DANGEROUS METHOD
THE VOW

All GT(X) 6xx support HD audio bitstreaming. 610 = 520, 620 = 430 with 64-bit memory bus (original 430 has 128-bit memory bus), 630 = 440, all of them are Fermi base (610 = 520 came last in all Fermi cards). 640 and higher are based on Kepler.

Cinavia is AACS watermarking in an audio stream that would survive any kind of audio transer including ripping and re-encoding. So if you rip BD to MKV, watermaking will be there. If an AACS+Cinavia-compliant player detects watermarking without the matching AACS key, then the playback will stop. (Such a player first decodes HD audio, then searches for watermaking, then re-encodes to the original compressed format!) But you can play such files with a non-Cinavia player (including all free media players such as XBMC) just fine.

As I understand it, the player has to be looking for the cinavia watermark for the protection to work, and xbmc doesn't look for it. I have ripped via makemkv and played back via xbmc at least one of the blu-rays on that list without issue.

For Cinavia you need 2 parts


1. A Movie with the Audio Watermark.

2. A Cinavia Enabled Player.

All Software/Hardware that has a Blu-ray License must enable Cinavia.

PowerDVD and TMT Both have Cinavia Enabled.