Setting up MCE2005 First Timer Questions

Psygnosis

Hi,

I have the following setup plugged into a mirai 32" lcd through the VGA
Pentium 4 3.2GHz with hyperthread technology
Genuine Windows Xp Professional
1024MB Ram
DVD ROM
DVD RW
120GB HDD
256MB Radeon x800 Pro
Creative Audigy 2 Sound Card
Tevion PCI Tv Card
Logitech MX 700 Cordless Mouse
Comes with all original drivers

Now what I am going to do is install mce2005 on it. It has Xp at the mo and I have managed to connect this up to my yamaha av59 sysytem with surround sound working. I have a couple of questions

1 Will I get HD materiel through the VGA cable I have connected. I will using mateial from the web.
2 with Mce2005 am I going to run into problems with SPDIF pass through seems to be problems with this I have read of.
3 I have freesat card from I do not want to record yet but if I did would this cause major issues.

I am sure i will think of more but for the mo that is all

Krusty_Clown

1. Don't see why not.
2. Does your PC have SPDIF out? I have approximately the same setup as you, and my pass-through works fine. I have to use the Receivers remote to adjust the volume, but that's no great loss.
3. Not sure i understand the question, but no, it shouldn't cause any problems. You may need to list your region as the UK, but other than that it should be fine (you're talking about taking the video feed from the Satellite box, right?). The other thing is that you cannot pick and mix TV sources with MCE. i.e. you cannot have multiple EPGs (like one for NTL analog and one for Sky Satellite).

Other platforms, like Meida Portal, support pick and mix tv sources.

Psygnosis

Ok cool
Currently I am converting my DVD collection to XVID AC3 format with AutoGK,
Is there any software plug in that I can use to sort these for me ie download covers give a little about the film say from imdb or am i asking for the impossible

Also my music is all copied over
Now this is a serious pain all my music are albums. Most do not have proper Id3 tags now Media Centre has catogrized them all wrong there are bits of albums every where is there any software I can use to sort this. Basically say right click album folder apply the album u want and it will download covers rename the files.

Now I havent touched the TV part yet?
I have Freesat with bbc's five and ch4. So that is all grand happy with that. Now if I want to setup a PVR will this cause major hassle. I know you can get a DVB sat card but ill be missing a couple of channels.

Also I am moving to Rush shortly and am considering getting NTLS MMDS I dont think there is cable in the area how would this fit in.

Thanks guys I can tell this is going to be very time consuming but Im loving it

8T8

For the movies get My Movies a plugin for MCE that will give your thumbnails and metadata. You mange the collection through a separate program in the start menu program group just in case your wondering.

As for music not sure about that if your missing the ID3 tags, the only utility I know if is this Album Art Fixer for changing the album cover artwork.

MCE does not support DVB-S sort of... there are round about ways of making it work*.

* The German version of MCE does support DVB-S & DVB-S2 but all others do not, don't know if the patch which enables support leaked out onto the net or not, never investigated it.
* There are special drivers available for certain DVB-S cards that trick MCE into thinking they are DVB-T cards which MCE does support.
* There is a hack for MCE that allows DVB-S to operate through MCE as a plugin but it's a little messy.

Psygnosis

Ok for recording from sky sat with this card Tevion PCI Tv Card. I could use the svideo in. And setuo the sound etc as well,
I was wondering how does the epg work. Does media centre recognize when you have changed channel on the box etc,

8T8

When recording through a set top box MCE just before the program starts it will change to the correct channel through the IR blaster to begin recording.

However if you change the channel during recording it will not change back as MCE has no way of knowing if you changed the channel.

Psygnosis

My tevion card does not work so I am going to have to get a compatable one for media centre looks like the PVR150 is the best. Does media centre have some sort of online EPG from sky so it knows what channel to change the sky box to>

8T8

MCE has an EPG that matches Sky's so yes it knows what's on & when.

As for TV tuners the PVR150 is a common choice but it is not the "best" the NVIDIA Dual-TV MCE & ATI 5xx/6xx Theatre Pro series are in terms of image quality but those are very difficult to find this side of the pond these days for some reason I do not know.

Psygnosis

Ok so far so good bought a pvr150 card so waiting for this
I have another question though. My graphics card outputs dvi and VGA I have the VGA connected to the tv so VGA 2 VGA.
My friend was saying I would be better using the DVI to HDMI would this make any difference in picture quality

Krusty_Clown

It certainly wouldn't be any worse, but could greatly improve your picture.
It might offer higher resolutions than are available using a VGA cable.

Also, if I'm not mistaken (and I'm sure I'll be corrected!) VGA is an analog signal, while DVI is a digital signal, so VGA is more susceptible to interference and loss.

Is there no DVI input on the TV? Also worthy of mention, HDMI carries sound as well as video, while DVI is video only, so don't expect to get sound from your TV if you're using a DVI to HDMI connecter or cable.

8T8

The Mirai is probably a 1366x768 display I'm guessing the max resolution over VGA is 1366x760.

1366x768 is not a computer resolution which is why it is unavailable to you but that does not mean you cannot achieve it with a custom resolution.

As to why some people prefer 1:1 pixel mapping to fill out the screen or give the sharpest picture possible it depends on the make & model of the display.

I for example am quite happy with 1280x720 over VGA on my HTPC I tried the HDMI port and it didn't give me any major desire to switch but again all displays are different so it depends on the quality of the VGA parts in the display.

karltimber

Tag files for Mp3

I used Tag & Rename - it's time consuming also but coonects to the web per album and updates the tags of the albums.
I spent hours doing this as I couldn't see certain albums on my Creative.

K

meelick

Psygnosis wrote:

My friend was saying I would be better using the DVI to HDMI would this make any difference in picture quality

I have a choice of VGA or HDMI going into my 1366x720 LCD, but had mad overscan problems over HDMI, whereas the VGA picture fits perfectly. The nVidia control panel allows some serious tweaking of the output, and maybe with that you can get the picture to fit properly, but I gave up after about an hour of messing. VGA looks fantastic, so I'm leaving it at that for now....

HDMI is not the plug-and-play solution that people are led to believe, especially where DVI is concerned...

Cheers,
Dave.

Psygnosis

Thanks guys
Meelick are you from Meelick? in Co.Clare