Sony VGX-XL3 - Page 8

I've only used Ghost to do entire disks in direct one-for-one images. In earlier posts I presumed that Ghost cannot do folders but instead only disk images like Partition Commander. Whatever software you use, it will need to recognize and work with RAID, whatever backup medium you use (probably a USB drive, as Partition Commander, Acronis, and Vista Ultimate's backup program are all incapable of recognizing the Blu-Ray writer), and most of all the ability to make and restore backups of individual folders because you must be able to backup the C:\\Program Data\\Microsoft folder on the XL3. Acronis happened to come with my 750G Seagate drive as a freebie and I was able to upgrade to the full version with a big discount (see my 9/11/07 post). One thing I don't like about Acronis is that you have to turn on your external drive at the right time or it won't recognize it.

If Ghost does all that then I suspect it would be fine as well.

P.S. I kept my latest Partition Commander upgrade because my older version gets confused when faced with very large partitions (does everything right but the graphical representations of the partitions is all wrong) and the new version fixes all that. Acronis will not work unless you have more than one disk, even if it's an external drive that isn't involved with whatever you are trying to do at the moment. That's a huge disadvantage for my other computers, where I keep a hidden partition with an image of the C: drive to restore if I get a virus. If I try to run Acronis on those machines, it tells me that it can't be used on a machine with only one drive. What a huge design flaw! Therefore I have to have Partition Commander for those machines. If Norton Ghost will also let you image one partition to another partition on the same disk as well as backup individual folders, that would be a winner.

I had problems with using Acronis on XL3. The moment Acronis is installed - TV tuner stops working. Uninstall of Acronis does not help either. I have run into this problem twice.

Does anyone have Acronis working on XL3?

Come to thiink of it...Early on when I first got the vaio and wasn't aware of sonys f10 recovery module I installed Norton ghost12 thinking it would be a good idea to have a backup image in case something went wrong. After loads of problems with the tuner and 6 system restores I never did re-install it. But until you just mentioned it...it just never occurred to me that it may have messed up the system the first time around.

I do not have any problems with Acronis BUT the only reason I use the installed version is for backing up my licenses (C:\\Program Data). You can also do that from the bootable CD, it's just a bit more inconvenient to have to change the BIOS and boot into CD, plus Acronis takes a very long time to boot. Or you can leave the BIOS set to boot first from CD and then hard drive and not even have to bother changing settings (just load the CD when you want Acronis and leave the CD out when you want Vista), but it'll take a bit longer to do regular bootups while the XL3 spends a few seconds checking for a bootable CD. Of course, you'll only be doing that when performing a cold boot to reset the tuner, right? |:-P

Booting from the CD need not require ever installing Acronis, in which case it would have no effect on Windows at all. I cannot imagine why Acronis would affect the tuner, but running from CD would be the safest route. I never, ever do images from within Windows because you never know what critical file Windows or Norton have decided to lock down or keep you from even finding (see my 9/11/07 experiment on backing up EFS files for excessively detailed examples).

I had problems with Acronis the moment I have installed it. After first reboot - TV tuner was gone. Nothing helped from there on. I have called SONY and they were troubleshooting for several hours the disapearance of Tuner. I have reinstalled everything from SONY recovery DVD and tuner was back. To prove that Acronis was the culprit - I have made sure that Tuner is working and then I nrun install of Acronis again. Tuner was gone again ... Needless to say, I do not install Acronis again.

When checking options in Intervideo win dVd BD for Vaio seems everything is grayed out and can't change anything. I am hooked up with HDMI. Is this normal?

>>I have made sure that Tuner is working and then I nrun install of Acronis again. Tuner was gone again ... Needless to say, I do not install Acronis again.

You obviously only learned HALF your lesson...the other being that calling Sony is a waste of time...so, run your backup program from bootable CD. That's easy to do with Acronis; I know that you can boot form Norton Ghost but I'm not sure if you can select individual folders from within Ghost if booting from CD. Anybody try that yet?

Rusty, you're short some info. There is no "options" feature within B-R WinDVD, at least not on my machine. But under "Setup" everything seems to be okay. Where are you picking up the "options" feature - right-clicking on WinDVD, from the root directory of a playing DVD, or where? If it's from a DVD menu, is it a regular DVD or a BRD?

Under setup, not playing anything, just trying to set up. Shows two speakers only. I have connected to Sony Amp with HDMI.

Does anyone know how to or if it is possible to connect any A/V source such as an XBox to the A/V input in front of the XL3 so that it renders it to a TV via HDMI?

Thanx.



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OK, I tried running this one down but with mixed results. First, I would point out that within Control Panel > Sounds >Advanced I also saw only 2-channel audio in the dropdown. That would seem to be a more fundamental issue. I installed Sony's latest RealTek driver and was momentarilly pleased to find a "Dolby" selection now appears...but when I highlighted it and clicked Test, I still only got 2-channel stereo (i.e., stereo but just in Dolby). Numerous other ideas, including downloading the latest WinDVD BR patch, were also unsuccessful. And get this: if you go into WinDVD's help menus and look at the help page for audio settings, you'll see that all the surround sound options are even greyed out in the example!

And the final insult: now when I try to test 5.1 within Media Center | Tasks, I get a "incorrect codec" error...and Media Center starts playing a Live TV channel unrequested! Previously, Media Center was the one place that reliably worked with Surround Sound and in fact I tested it just before installing the Sony upgrades. What caused this behavior I cannot say for certain, but the fact that I had just installed the latest RealTek driver seems awfully suspicious. Restoring a backup as I type.

I found on another forum a report that the OEM version of PowerDVD for BR is deliberately crippled to provide only stereo, and my OEM version of plain-old-DVD WinDVD also does not do surround. Is it possible that this is deliberate? But then, unlike regular OEM WinDVD I don't see any menu item or popup for upgrading to to a more capable version. Why cripple it if not to make more money on the upgrade? And that still wouldn't explain why only 2-channel appears in Control Panel.

At the risk of being obvious: does it matter? If my XL3 is putting digital information out via SPIF, does it even matter what the WinDVD or Control Panel settings say? (I'll be able to personally answer this after Christmas assuming Santa's bringing me what I asked for.) Rusty, have you verified during BRD playback that you are not getting surround sound and DTS? (And remember. surround sound only works with HDMI 1.3 or later...I don't know what version the XL3 implements.) After all, my Control Panel reports 2-channel but Media Center sends 5.1 to my amplifier via SPIF anyway.

Tech, I saw someplace that it's supposed to be impossible to take an analog audio in and run it back out through HDMI. I forget the reason but there was a discussion on The Green Button about custom-writing a special mixing applet to do it. But consider this: not all HDMI monitors take audio via HDMI and not all HDMI sources output audio via HDMI. It therefore seems likely that whatever you are feeding your HDMI into also has analog audio inputs in parallel. Could you not just use that?

rjeffb, yes it says so on the XL3 manual that you cannot use the A/V input/output and HDMI at the same time. I was just hoping there is a hack for it yet. I mean, there should be a back door to do this, it would be great to be able to input analog so that it gets processed and spit unto the screen via HDMI which could potentially make it cleaner and HD 1080p (I hope/wish).

In continuation of my tuner issues, the tech Sony sent just left about an hour ago. As soon as he replaced the tuner all went well. First thing I noticed upon reboot was the Vista system tray notice that said it had automatically installed the driver/software for the new tuner. Started media center and tried to configure the TV signal, it said it could not find a tuner so I figured it did not fully apply backend stuff yet so I exited media center. Gave it a few more seconds, started media center again and configured the tuner. It got all basic cable channels, even after splitting the cable connection (one to the cable box one to the XL3 it did not affect the tuner signal reception, I then even added the Motorola signal booster before the splitter I had bought for the heck of it; all is well with that setup too but I sure don't need the booster after all). The other tuner was bad after all. So I will schedule RCN to send a tech with a cablecard out here soon. I also watched Spiderman 3 Blu-Ray on the XL3 this weekend, it was awesome. So far all is well even though I have installed all available XL3 updates available on Sony's and Nvidia's websites. I will be testing other functions such as HD and regular recording on this modified monster. 1.5TB HDD = endless possibilities.

I must add that the Qualxserve tech did not know much about MCE, all he knew was to physically remove the bad tuner out and put in the new one, everything else was on me.




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Does anyone else have the display issue? The other thing I need to address is display issues that arise when the HDMI input is tuned away from the XL3 or when the XL3 recovers from standby, it sometimes does not display until a forced reboot via power button or sometimes holding the power button on the remote until the amber standby button come on and off and the green power button comes on.

Any ideas?




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I have/had the same issue with my Panny 50" Plasma not coming on after I shut down the Panny for for 6 hours or so. I ended up switching from HDMI to componant video. It got rid of that problem but unfortunatlry the picture isn't quite as good as HDMI.

Had an Idea.... Look Here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...=836519&page=2
but apparently this theory is incorrect

>display issues that arise when the HDMI input is tuned away from the XL3 or when the XL3 recovers from standby

Well, first of all, don't let your machine go into standby or hibernate. Standby on the XL3 is asking for trouble on many levels, only a few of which Sony and MS have issued patches for. Besides your monitor, there's also your tuner to consider, and if you think the monitor problem is maddening wait until you find a week's worth of shows didn't record.

I can't force this problem. I can disconnnect the cable and when I plug it back in, the picture is there (although it flashes several times as the monitor and theNVidia card handshake). Cycling through inputs doesn't even do that, I suspect the HDMI in continues to talk back even when HDMI isn't selected as the source. My suspicion falls on the monitor. After living through the terrible "won't turn back on" bug with a Westy 42" I'm predisposed to think that anyway, but we all have the same computer, there has got to be something else going on here. Connecting a different HDMI source, say a standalone Blu-Ray player or an Xbox or Playstation, to the monitor could confirm the problem (if it happened then too) but wouldn't disprove it (because the source could handshake a different way). The only 100% certain proof would be a different monitor, preferably a different brand.

Couple of ideas, all long shots:

1. Getting external audio to output through HDMI: my XBox 360 Elite came with an HDMI cable with twin audio RCA plugs. The idea is that you could connect the XBox, transmitting audio via HDMI, to a monitor that doesn't accept HDMI audiio but hook the RCA cables to regular analog in. Now, if it's all straight-through analog, that could work in reverse. On the other hand, if there's an A2D converter inside that cable then it will only be one way. What I'm getting at is that there might be a way to feed the audio into the monitor's HDMI input without that audio ever going inside the XL3 at all.

2. Screen blanking: long-shot experiment (which was the Westy's sole fix short of a new firmware): the next time the screen issue happens, unplug the MONITOR from AC, wait ten seconds, and plug it back in. That's more addressing D.C.'s problem than Techie's, though.

3. WinDVD 2-channels: I re-read the page that D.C. linked to, and I see someone was having a problem getting sound to come out of the surround sound when playing a Blu-Ray via HDMI. The poster speculated that WinDVD was latching onto the first digital path it saw (HDMI). I noticed that in Control Panel | Sound there's an option to allow optical through HDMI, through SPIF, or both (the default). I wondered if by forcing digital audio to go only to SPIF if it might fix that problem. I found this is NOT a fix for the "2-channel" problem; I tried forcing output to SPIF only and confirmed that WinDVD (and Control Panel, Sound, Advanced) couldn't care less, 2-channel was still selected and other choices still greyed out. It could still be a fix for the original poster's problem, however; I don't yet have a BRD to try it out or to even see if I can duplicate the original issue (of Blu-Ray audio going only to the monitor via HDMI and not to the surround sound amp). BTW this is at best an OS-level fix, not board-level; if anyone has the latest full NVidia control panel installed, can you turn off HDMI audio from there? (I got rid of the standalone Nvidia Control Panel several restores ago and I am hesitant to re-install it now that my system's working well). My thinking - again long-shot - is that if HDMI is turned off at the board level, perhaps that would force WinDVD to realize there's a surround sound output available. The counterargument, both to my suggestion and the original poster's, is that at least in my WinDVD setup, SPIF is already selected - not HDMI!

Or maybe WinDVD is genuinely crippled and cannot do surround-sound. The amount of info on the Blu-Ray version of WinDVD is rather underwhelming, WinDVD definitely seems to have become a lost child since Corel bought Intervideo. I noticed that WinDVD's audio setup tab has a checkbox called "enable auxilliary audio" but the help page skips that checkbox completely - even though it also is checked in the example illustration! Checking and unchecking auxilliary audio had no effect on the ability to change any of the other settings. Also the help topic says nothing about changing any of the stereo/surround sound checkboxes, which I previously observed are all greyed out in the help example as well.

My setup is; cable box and XL3 connect to the Sony HT-DDW995 A/V system (http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/...52921665089040) via HDMI, and the A/V system connects to the SOny KDL-46XBR4 (http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/...52921665116636) via HDMI. This works out well because the A/V system directly receives all HDMI audio from each device (cable and XL3) and sends them out through the speakers while it passes along the video to the TV. The cable box has no display or audio issues whatsoever but the XL3 does as I previously described, I failed to mention that the XL3 audio sometimes ceases no matter what one is doing, it even did it with Blu-ray playback, etc. Now I kind of stopped putting it on standby/hibernate which makes the video display issuea little less troublesome but it still happens, also with audio as well.




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I've had the same problem with my Pioneer 60" Plasma, so i switched to component but like others have said,the picture is not as clear, frustrating.

Techie: your system sounds sweet, but to an engineer it's problematic because it makes it hard to assign root cause. The audio cutting out while playing is particularly troubling, that's a new symptom as Doctor House would say. Does the problem go away if the XL3 is plugged directly into the Sony 46"? (gmann's and D.C.'s problems notwithstanding, I can appreciate how frustrating it must be to have this issue when all of your equipment is from the same manufacturer!) Oh, and I found this amusing sentence in a Sony KnowledgeBase file concernng playing Blu-Rays on Sony computers: "Sony recommends that PCs playing Blu-Ray discs be set to a resolution of 1080P."

D.C. and gmann, do try the unplugging/replugging the monitor's AC power cord as well because I never did try anything other than HDMI, so it's possible that the 42" Westy suffered from exactly the same problem as you are seeing. It never occured to me that the problem might be limited to just HDMI, but now that I think of it...I gave that monitor to my girlfriend, who feeds it from Component and S-video and she has never once had the problem. So if cycling the input power worked for me, it might work for you. It might even work for Techie, although it's unclear exactly what needs to have the power cycled in his case (monitor, audio box, or both).

rjeffb, I understand your point, but when only one of two equipments (XL3 and cable box) connected to the same A/V unit via HDMI exhibits this problem then that equipment is most likely the culprit. But then again, to fullproof the theory I will connect the XL3 directly to the TV for observation.

I came home just now and turned the TV on, even though the XL3 was not on standby, it still failed to display and produce sound. Before I connect it directly to the TV I would say that I realy suspect the issue being in the XL3 because the A/V system is not receiving anything from it. Why I said that is that when sound is being received at least on the HDMI input source the A/V system displays the sound format being received and which speakers it is sending sound out through along with the input source. If nothing is being received it only displays the current input source selected. So in light of this, the A/V system is not receiving any audio to even display this information and video to send to the TV (the A/V system sends both audio and video to TV but the TV is set up to let only the A/V system handle audio output). Also based on the Sony Bravia Synch, which lets the TV and A/V systems communicate and synch via HDMI they each know what and how to handle audio output and turn each other on or off, i.e. like when I only turn on the TV, the TV turns on the A/V system and hands audio output to the A/V system, the A/V system also handles audio output in component and RCA I/O mode, but when using other modes not connected to the A/V the TV automatically outputs audio since the A/V system is not connected on that I/O mode.

I will test and post results.





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>>I also watched Spiderman 3 Blu-Ray on the XL3 this weekend, it was awesome.

Techie, what resolution did Spiderman play in? Not what the XL3 was set to, but what did your monitor actually report (assuming your monitor has a menu item to show the display resolution)? Was it 1920x1080P or some other value? The reason I ask is because others have gotten some underscanned value of 1768 horizontal (or something similar to that) while playing BRDs. I assume you played it with the disableHDTV registry hack to allow 1080P.

My Westy 42", connected to my XL3 via HDMI, would fail to turn on after sitting (with the XL3 in full operation, although not with a screen saver) for anywhere from six hours to three days. My new Westy 46" works perfectly every time. Therefore I cannot blame the XL3, at least not exclusively. My suspicion is that there's a more complicated interaction going on between the XL3 and the monitor (or AV system). If it was just the XL3, I'd be seeing the problem; if it was just the monitor, a hundred thousand customers would be screaming bloody murder (since the problem apparently exists across multiple brands and models).

Here's a possibly off-the-wall idea: might having a screen saver activate (so the video isn't static) help?

I am having the same problem as techie and others. Often the XL3 refusese todisplay protected content and very ofetn the sound disappears. Once connected via component cable these problems go away.

I have also tested thsi scenario with my SAMSUNG BRD1200 DVD player. the moment TV (Panasonic 50" Plazma) is off, DVD player stops playing.

>>I have also tested thsi scenario with my SAMSUNG BRD1200 DVD player. the moment TV (Panasonic 50" Plazma) is off, DVD player stops playing.

That sounds like the auto-activate feature that techie was describing, in reverse. As I understand it, some equipment use the sudden presence of an HDMI "receipient" to turn on and its sudden disappearance as the signal to "turn off." But that can't be the issue (or at least the sole issue) behind your problems. First, if this is by design, then the time it takes for your units to stop responding would be reliably, exactly the same every time. But that's not what I'm hearing form you - that's a bug. Secondly, nobody has mentioned this problem in this forum before, going back nearly a year. Now suddenly several people are experiencing it. That's too coincidental. Did you guys all download the same buggy update? Techie, your machine is brand-new, right?

Dzhafar, one other note - sound through HDMI, at least the XL3's HDMI, is REALLY unreliable...and ironically, that's more or less by design. Only certain cable channels put out the audio signal that the XL3 recognizes as being able to send through HDMI (bad), and it gets easily confused by signal strength changes and all sorts of other things, apparently due to the fact that HDCP applies to the audio channel as well (really bad). Frankly I've given up on the HDMI sound, period; numerous Cablevision channels in my area send no sound out through HDMI at all. I use the SPDIF optical for everything and it always works. I know that's not good news for Techie, who is trying to set up a system that really does make sense and would probably be fanatastic if it worked reliably, but HDMI is still very much in the prototype stage. It's only now that monitors are reliably filling the screen from PC HDMI, as little as a year ago that was a big issue.

Hey, on a lighter note, I'm trying something crazy with my XL3 RAID and if it works I'll post it. Cheers.

dzhafar:
>>Often the XL3 refuses to display protected content<<

So you are saying nothing comes through on Protected Content stations like HBO/SHO. Just a blank screen? Or do you mean that you are getting a Blue screen "Restricted Content Message"? and this only happens if you are connected via HDMI ?

rjeffb, Yes, my XL3 is new. I tried testing straight HDMI from the XL3 to the TV yesterday and it seems to be producing the same issues. I have to continue testing. I am unsure if I need to disable the HDMI synch feature from the TV and A/V system because I assume they will be trying to synch all devices connected to all HDMI ports which may be an issue for the XL3 ( I'm unsure how they know what to/not to synch with.



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Techie, if you get that system working well, you should post pix. Have you gone thru Sony support yet? It would terrible for them not to be able to blame another manufacturer for this one: "since these are all Sony products, I'm going to go ahead and place you on hold while I conference myself in."

Still working on my top-secret RAID project, I hope to post results tonight. Here's a preview: it took over six hours just to format!

>>I'm unsure how they know what to/not to synch with.

I'm sorry that all I'm giving you are vague suggestions rather than a concrete fix, but: on my 24" LG (the one connected to my XBox), the menus include a selection for picking two flavors of HDMI: "AV" and "PC." I have tried both of these and never saw any difference, nor is there any mention of them in the [admittedly scant] instructions. There is no corresponding menu item on my Westinghouse. I wonder if this menu item controls or is otherwise associated with the synch feature you mentioned, and if your monitor has something similar.

Anybody check this out yet?



It's not exactly an XL4...only 1680x1050 pixels (that's the 1080 wannabe that a bunch of midsize monitors claiming "HiDef" are showing up in) and a microscopic hard drive, but it does have a CableCard tuner. A lot cheaper than the XL3 but no BluRay. GeForce 8400, which is supposed to be a pretty nice card. No claim of "near-silent" this time, and no mention of the video output (surely not something proprietary?...) but it DOES come with a 90-day risk-free subscription to AOL, so hey, how can you lose? :-]

rjeffb: >>top-secret RAID project<<

Oh...quit teasing us!! LOL!

Here's proof:

I have already managed to fill up my Recorded TV folder. No, I'm not talking about the little 250GB drives that came with the XL3, I'm talking about the beefy, meaty 750GB Seagate I'm using as a D: drive. It turns out that when you record digital TV, the "picture quality" settings in Media Center don't actually do anything; all digital programming is in "best" quality. So that grainy 1956 episode of "The Twilight Zone" occupies an inordinate amount of disk space.

What to do? I could upgrade my almost-new 750GB to one of the new 1TB drives, but that only gets me a 33% increase. I don't need a bigger drive, I need a BIGGER DRIVE. Which led me to my little experiment.

I moved the BluRay from channel 1 of SATA port 1 to channel 2 of SATA port 0, right alongside the C: drive. I then verified that the BluRay was still recognized (it was), that I can still boot from it (I can), and that moving it didn't result in a performance hit (it didn't). I can't figure out where they hid the PIO/DMA/UDMA setting for individual drive channels in Vista, but I ran the "Windows Experience Index" wizard before and after the move and found that my C: drive got the same 5.2 score before and after so the optical drive is not impacting the hard drive's throughput. BTW, the original number was 5.9, so eliminating the as-shipped RAID0 did result in a small performance hit.

I then installed two WD 1TB drives on SATA port 1 (be sure and buy a SATA power-cord splitter, because the XL3 has none to spare). I chose that drive because they are very quiet (important for an HDPC); low power consumption (very important for the XL3, since I'm adding an additional drive to a very small power supply, plus lower power = less heat); and most of all, because Best Buy had them on sale.

Booting into the on-board RAID controller through Control-I, I set these two guys up as a single RAID0 drive (no JBOD option, which frankly would have been my preference so if one dies I wouldn't lose what's on the other one). Start Windows, go into Admin Tools | Computer Mgmt | Disk Management, reassign the BluRay's drive letter which Windows thoughtfully reset when I wasn't looking, activate the "drive," spend six hours formatting it, create a single folder called "Recorded TV"...and now I have 1.89TB of direct-to-disk TV storage, plus the 1TB JBOD offline storage on my Netgear drive, plus eventually I'll probably replace the 250GB C: with the now-unused 750GB Seagate...

...(top THAT, TiVo and Scientific Atlanta)...

...that's DISGUSTING!

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