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Vista MCE TV faq

post #1 of 31
8/10/06 at 7:10am
Thread Starter 
Thought it might be good to have a FAQ for Vista MCE TV. Don't have all the answers, so please help.

Q. Is an analog TV tuner required for Vista MCE?
A. Yes for Beta 2, but not for release 5449 or higher.

Q. Is there cable QAM support?
A. Not for existing cards. The new OCUR CableCard will be supported in the future, which will require QAM support, but if this support will extend to other new and/or existing tuners is not known.

Q. Can I buy an OCUR CableCard and put it into my existing HTPC?
A. No. Only pre-built OEM PC's that have been approved by CableLabs will have the OCUR card.

Q. What about satellite?
A. Microsoft has announced an agreement with DirecTV although no specifics yet. There is still hope that this will not be a closed box solution as with CableCard.

Q. Which TV tuners run under Vista?
A. This is the current list: (Please add any others)

Analog Tuners
Hauppauge WinTv PVR-150, 250,350
ATI Theater 550 Pro

Digital Tuners
Dvico FusionHDTV3 & 5
Vbox Cat's Eye 150 & 151
ATI HDTV Wonder

Q. How many tuners can run under Vista MCE?
A. Currently the same as with MCE 2005, 2 analog and 2 digital.


Q. What is the minimum hardware requirements to run a HDTV tuner under Vista MCE?
A. Probably around a 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4, w/512 MB memory. My 2.4 Ghz PC freezes with 100% processor utilization when starting Live TV under Beta 2, but my 3.0 GHz PC works fine. This may change with the next release.

Q. Do you have to supply your own decoders?
A. No, Vista has it's own decoders, unlike MCE 2005. Installing your own decoders is still a good idea.

Q. What graphics cards work with Vista MCE?
A. Most existing graphics cards will work in the standard default mode 800x600. The minimum graphics specs for HDTV should be no less than MCE 2005 which per the Microsoft Web Site are:

Video adapter with 128MB DDR video memory with 128-bit interface; AGP8x interface or PCI express; video memory bandwidth of 10Gb per second or greater; and driver support for MPEG-2 iDCT acceleration.

Q. Which remotes work with Vista MCE?
A. The ATI Wonder Plus does not. (Please post for other remotes.)

Q. When is the next public release of Vista?
A. The second and final public release, Vista RC1, is current scheduled for late August or early September. Microsoft is still holding to the October 25 manufacturer release date.

Russ www.hdtvtunerinfo.com
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post #2 of 31
8/10/06 at 7:33am
Q. Did Microsoft listen to requests to disable the DELETE button after videos are played?
A. No, Microsoft continues to allow anyone to accidently delete a video after it is played.

If anyone knows a work around for this please post, otherwise I find MCE of little value. It will delete even read only files.
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post #3 of 31
8/10/06 at 9:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JackLT View Post

Q. Did Microsoft listen to requests to disable the DELETE button after videos are played?
A. No, Microsoft continues to allow anyone to accidently delete a video after it is played.

If anyone knows a work around for this please post, otherwise I find MCE of little value. It will delete even read only files.

I know if you run your video off a network share / server (in my case), the delete does not work because the permissions are for read, not for write or change.
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post #4 of 31
8/12/06 at 4:50am
Thread Starter 
Has anyone tried the Avermedia A180 HD card with Vista MCE?
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post #5 of 31
8/12/06 at 8:14am
Yes, i have run the A180 in vista and it was working great.
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post #6 of 31
8/24/06 at 11:19am
This is a cross post to:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...56#post8277356


I can't seem to get video hardware acceleration to work in Vista. Either with Nvidia or ATI cards/drivers and either with the in-box MPEG2 decoder or Nvidia decoder. Video playback for HD content is choppy.

Any ideas?
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post #7 of 31
8/24/06 at 2:13pm
>>Q. Which remotes work with Vista MCE?
>>A. The ATI Wonder Plus does not. (Please post for other remotes.)

My Remote Wonder Plus is working perfectly in Vista. I simply installed the XPMCE drivers and it worked fine. But I guess the spirit of the question is correct ... there are no native Remote Wonder drivers in Vista.
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post #8 of 31
8/25/06 at 9:14am
Is AC3/DTS passthrough via SPDIF still an issue?

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/121313.aspx

http://groups.google.com/group/micro...44a340172bcb7e
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post #9 of 31
8/26/06 at 11:23am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dabl View Post

Is AC3/DTS passthrough via SPDIF still an issue?

I think it would be best to wait for the RC1 release in three weeks or so rather than work on the Beta 2 release.

There is a interesting discussion with a Microsoft guy on Vista audio processing at

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...ighlight=vista
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post #10 of 31
8/29/06 at 5:57pm
Thread Starter 
For a short time only (first 100K downloads) get the pre-RC1 release of Vista. Open for anybody. The link is here
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post #11 of 31
8/29/06 at 6:08pm
Downloading it now! Thanks!
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post #12 of 31
8/29/06 at 8:30pm
Hi All,
I downloading this right now. I would like to evaluate this. Can I set up a dual boot configuration?
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post #13 of 31
8/30/06 at 10:51am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruce Embry View Post

Hi All,
I downloading this right now. I would like to evaluate this. Can I set up a dual boot configuration?

Yes, if you have two drives it would be easiest. Load on D: if C: is your XP drive. It won't mess with your data (unless you format it of course). When you boot you will get a choice of which OS to boot, the default will be Vista however.
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post #14 of 31
8/30/06 at 11:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by cimiegle View Post

Yes, if you have two drives it would be easiest. Load on D: if C: is your XP drive. It won't mess with your data (unless you format it of course). When you boot you will get a choice of which OS to boot, the default will be Vista however.

Thanks for the help!
My current XP MCE2005 setup works great. I wondering if Vista is really going to be a good upgrade path. I know Vista will be required for BR/HDDVD playback, but is that all it has to offer, then I may not mess with it for the time being. My current system works excellent and does everthing it was ment to do. I changed out LCD display and now the system displays the current running video/dvd/TV channel.
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post #15 of 31
8/30/06 at 11:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by RussT View Post

I think it would be best to wait for the RC1 release in three weeks or so rather than work on the Beta 2 release....]

I should have been clearer, I wondered if this issue had been resolved in any of MSDN developer builds following the public Beta 2 release. Obviously this would require input from those users privileged to such releases.

I can't imagine the RC1 won't have this feature. I did get the pre RC1 release, but actually don't yet have a tuner card for my machine. I was waiting for the ATI 650, which has sadly turned out to be a disaster. Hopefully ATI will be able to rectify the situation soon, but of course as yet they've said nothing.

Thanks for the audio talk link, it was indeed interesting.

--Don
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post #16 of 31
8/30/06 at 5:34pm
Thread Starter 
Sadly the pre-RC1 release doesn't seem any better (if not worse) than the Beta 2 as far as TV video is concerned, other than you don't need an analog tuner. Over 4 hours or so, I tried both Nvidia 7600GS and ATI X800 graphics cards w/Vista drivers on a 3.0 Ghz pentium 4, 1 GB memory & Sata drive, with Cyberlink and Nvidia decoders (along with the Vista decoders) and got jerky video on all tested digital cards (Vbox 150, Fujiplus USB & ATI HDTV Wonder). Adding a second tuner and trying to use it, first basically pegged the machine at 100% and eventually crashed Media Center. There seems to be something fundamentally wrong with the new Vista graphical interface at least for video. This is not ready for prime time.
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post #17 of 31
8/30/06 at 7:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by RussT View Post

Sadly the pre-RC1 release doesn't seem any better ... This is not ready for prime time.

Is the rest of pre-rc1 any better than the beta?

I felt the last beta was not ready for anything at all ...
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post #18 of 31
8/30/06 at 8:07pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by JackLT View Post

Is the rest of pre-rc1 any better than the beta?

I felt the last beta was not ready for anything at all ...

Not that I could see. It loads faster, only took about ten minutes for the whole setup. But the same old code. The compatibility helper is now a default on the main menu, but didn't help on any apps I tried.
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post #19 of 31
9/5/06 at 5:57pm
does vista mce support a way to utilize the zone feature of usbuirt?

ie: tune 2 separate settop boxes with same blaster
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post #20 of 31
10/17/06 at 10:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jgallup04 View Post

Yes, i have run the A180 in vista and it was working great.

What kind of CPU are you using to record HD OTA video. And are you able to record it at max without any frame drops? I am looking into buying this card to use with Vista and my Xbox 360 as an extender however I want to know if my CPU is fast enough to record OTA HD.
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post #21 of 31
10/18/06 at 6:03am
You can add the nvidia nvtv card to the list of compatiable analog capture cards using the xp driver. One card is working fine for me, but I'm having problems with two cards. This is with rc2.
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post #22 of 31
10/18/06 at 9:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexmm View Post

What kind of CPU are you using to record HD OTA video. And are you able to record it at max without any frame drops? I am looking into buying this card to use with Vista and my Xbox 360 as an extender however I want to know if my CPU is fast enough to record OTA HD.

Recording OTA takes very little CPU

The digital broadcast is already encoded in mpeg2, it's simply a capture and write to Hard drive, you could easily do this with a 1ghz P3, playback is a different story
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post #23 of 31
10/18/06 at 5:10pm
I am using Kwold ATSC-110 PCI card with Vista RC2. No analog card is required any more.
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post #24 of 31
10/20/06 at 8:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sotti View Post

Recording OTA takes very little CPU

The digital broadcast is already encoded in mpeg2, it's simply a capture and write to Hard drive, you could easily do this with a 1ghz P3, playback is a different story

Excellent. The machine I plan to use it in is a Celeron D 2.66GHz. I was fearing I'd have to upgrade it. It only has 512RAM so I will probably need another stick to run Vista RC2 but other then that, looks like I will be good for 6 month or however long RC2 works.
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post #25 of 31
12/6/06 at 6:45pm
Thread Starter 
For anyone interested in using a hybrid tuner such as the ATI HDTV Wonder, ATI 650 Wonder or Fusion HDTV5 as both analog and digital in Vista RC2 or later, I have posted a install routine here. Kram drivers alone will not cut it after RC1.

Russ
www.hdtvtunerinfo.com
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post #26 of 31
12/11/06 at 6:12am
First time using MCE here and I'm using Vista RTM along with ATI 650 trying to receive OTA HDTV and analog cable. According to MCE my digital signals for OTA are 1 bar but I am able to view the channels. These channels will stutter on occasion. The channels stutter a lot when I'm trying to view full screen. I have a radio shack yagi mounted in my attic with a pre amp. Does anyone have any idea if my problems are due to either the tuner card, antenna, Vista RTM or something else?
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post #27 of 31
12/11/06 at 7:17am
The older nvtv analog tv card works with vista rc2 and rtm builds. There are no vista native drivers but the xp drivers work.

One catch is I noticed strange problems (random hangs, reboots) when two of these cards are installed in rc2 that may or may not be associated with these cards. I haven't tried two cards with rtm.
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post #28 of 31
1/13/07 at 8:21am
Anyone know why ATI hasn't released their Vista ATI HDTV Wonder drivers yet?
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post #29 of 31
7/10/07 at 6:22pm
Is there any difference between the regular and XP MCE edition WinTV PVR 150:

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/produ...ta_pvr150.html

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/produ...pvr150mce.html

with regards to vista compatibility or performance?
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post #30 of 31
7/11/07 at 6:29am
I am running the PVR-150 MCE in my Vista HTPC without problems. Not sure that answers your question, though.
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