Conrad Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 So I've finally finished building my first ever PC, a HTPC. It's took me a good few months as I've been buying the parts as and when I could afford them. Finally got everything together last week and finished building it. Been a few teething problems, I'd wired a few things up wrong. I'd also installed Vista Ultimate 64 and didn't realise I couldn't get a wireless adapter that was compatible. Anyhow, here's my spec: ANTEC FUSION CASE V2 BLACK 430W Asus P5E-VM HDMI Intel G35 Motherboard HITACHI T7K500 500GB INTEL CORE 2 DUO E8400 2 X 3.00G CORSAIR 4GB (2X2GB) 800MHZ SAMSUNG 20X DVD+/-R/RWV WINDOWS VISTA ULTIMATE 64 I managed to build the above for £350. Luckily for me I could claim VAT back through our business and using sites such as Novatech I avoided P&P when possible. Oh and I managed to get Vista for free too which helped... I have it all hooked up in my room to my Plasma and have managed to get a wired internet connection hooked up as well. So far so good... My only problem is getting Windows Media Centre to play avi files. I have a couple codec packs installed and WMP 11 plays them fine, but just not in WMC. Any idea why this is? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 Your having issues i have never heard of. What codec are the AVI's encoded in? I've also never had a problem with wireless adapters. You are better to try MCE without any codecs installed. I actively stay away from codec packs and try to only install individual codecs for my needs. Most of the time i get away with XVid/DivX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conrad Posted September 10, 2008 Author Share Posted September 10, 2008 Your having issues i have never heard of. What codec are the AVI's encoded in? I've also never had a problem with wireless adapters. You are better to try MCE without any codecs installed. I actively stay away from codec packs and try to only install individual codecs for my needs. Most of the time i get away with XVid/DivX. Well when I very first installed Vista I tried playing lots of my axxo downloads in WMP and MCE, non would play. The error I get in MCE is 'Cannot play video. One or mopre codecs required to open this content could not be found' I installed K Lite codec pack and a Vista codec pack I found on the net. I also have Media Player Classic. I can now play everything if I open WMP but still get the above error when trying to view in MCE. Kinda annoying as I can't use my remote... As for the Wireless issue, that's down to my OS being 64 bit. The Wireless adapter I bought was 32 bit only and Netgear don't do a 64 bit driver as yet. I posted up on here if anyone knew of a 64 bit adapter but the only ones available are custom ones according to DamanC. No worries anyway, done a wired connectiion now which is better anyway... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 For wireless do a search for Ralink. No worries at my end for drivers etc As for codecs, i have no idea what axxo downloads are. I only ever watch Xvid, DivX and MKV files. I download the DivX codec, MKV codec and AC3 codec and i have never had any issues. Its possible that MCE is looking for an AC3 filter so have a search for one of those. Good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conrad Posted September 10, 2008 Author Share Posted September 10, 2008 axxo is just the dude who uploads the DVD torrents, all of them are .avi files I'll have a look into the codecs and filter you have suggested. Justgav on here and a few others use an alternative to MCE, can't remember what that was called but may get that if can't get round the codec issue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daston Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 My windows media has problems getting avi's to work. Down load VLC player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 axxo is just the dude who uploads the DVD torrents, all of them are .avi files I'll have a look into the codecs and filter you have suggested. Justgav on here and a few others use an alternative to MCE, can't remember what that was called but may get that if can't get round the codec issue Ahh ok, yeah i know who you are on about. As far as i know all of them are Xvid. You are probably having conflicts because of installing codec packs so i would uninstall all of the codec packs. Type Divx into google and download it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conrad Posted September 10, 2008 Author Share Posted September 10, 2008 My windows media has problems getting avi's to work. Down load VLC player. Yeah i have that and Media Player Classic and they all play avi's fine. With the codec pack I have installed Windows Media Player 11 plays them all fine too. It's just when trying to view in Windows Media Centre they wont play Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 Your first issue is Vista 64, codecs for 64 bit are a lot more tricky it appears.... There are a few out there, but they are seriously buggy, and then you will start having driver issues. (I gave up with 64bit for a while purely because of those issues) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conrad Posted September 10, 2008 Author Share Posted September 10, 2008 Woop, sorted the problwm now. Downloaded a new codec pack and installed some ffdshow components. In case anyone was interested it wouldn't work because: Windows Media Center was running in native (64-bit) mode, while Windows Media Player was running in 32-bit mode. The problem was that I only had 32-bit video codecs, and Windows Media Center couldn’t use them from its 64-bit ivory tower.Article Link On another note, anyone know if I can hook my Sky box to my PC to record TV? Will I need a graphics card for this or will my motherboard be able to do it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 Woop, sorted the problwm now. Downloaded a new codec pack and installed some ffdshow components. In case anyone was interested it wouldn't work because: On another note, anyone know if I can hook my Sky box to my PC to record TV? Will I need a graphics card for this or will my motherboard be able to do it? You can, with a tuner card, however it will use IR blasting, which MCE does support, but I've had issues with it, it is a bit slow and sometimes double-taps the numbers so gets the wrong channel...BUT it does work fairly well. I use a cheapy hauppage card which does software MPEG (not ideal as MCE prefers a card with hardware mpeg compression) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conrad Posted September 10, 2008 Author Share Posted September 10, 2008 You can, with a tuner card, however it will use IR blasting, which MCE does support, but I've had issues with it, it is a bit slow and sometimes double-taps the numbers so gets the wrong channel...BUT it does work fairly well. I use a cheapy hauppage card which does software MPEG (not ideal as MCE prefers a card with hardware mpeg compression) Oh ok, thanks Gav. Sorry to be a pain but can you point me in the direction of what it is I need? Just any tuner card or something specific... I was hoping to record some boxing off Sky, not sure if it's possible (or better) to Sky+ it first then somehow transfer to PC. Or just record directly to my hard drive via a tuner card. The 2nd option suits me better... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 Oh ok, thanks Gav. Sorry to be a pain but can you point me in the direction of what it is I need? Just any tuner card or something specific... I was hoping to record some boxing off Sky, not sure if it's possible (or better) to Sky+ it first then somehow transfer to PC. Or just record directly to my hard drive via a tuner card. The 2nd option suits me better... 2nd option is out, the sky+ is locked down and you can't do much with it (blame sky).... There are ways around it, such as getting a satellite card which has a CAM module (dragon I believe), but they aren't legal and as such info is scarce but is out there. I've just checked and my tuner card is a HVR1100, it is by no means the right card BUT it does work. I believe the right card for MCE is the PVR150 which has MPEG hardware (well, that was the one they used on XP MCE). If you have a look on http://www.thegreenbutton.com there is a good amount of info. I have the same issue, as I use virgin but with the IR blaster to perform the same function. The other thing is I don't believe MCE records in AVI format but rather the windows media version of a WMV, there are however tools which will do the conversion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conrad Posted September 10, 2008 Author Share Posted September 10, 2008 2nd option is out, the sky+ is locked down and you can't do much with it (blame sky).... There are ways around it, such as getting a satellite card which has a CAM module (dragon I believe), but they aren't legal and as such info is scarce but is out there. I've just checked and my tuner card is a HVR1100, it is by no means the right card BUT it does work. I believe the right card for MCE is the PVR150 which has MPEG hardware (well, that was the one they used on XP MCE). If you have a look on http://www.thegreenbutton.com there is a good amount of info. I have the same issue, as I use virgin but with the IR blaster to perform the same function. The other thing is I don't believe MCE records in AVI format but rather the windows media version of a WMV, there are however tools which will do the conversion. Thanks for the info and link dude, appreciated. It was the tuner card route that I meant anyway, hooking up to my Sky+ box would be a PITA as that's in another room. My PC is in my room next to my multiroom Sky box. I'll look into that tuner card,... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 Thanks for the info and link dude, appreciated. It was the tuner card route that I meant anyway, hooking up to my Sky+ box would be a PITA as that's in another room. My PC is in my room next to my multiroom Sky box. I'll look into that tuner card,... Use the multiroom box, that would be the perfect one... I've got the v+ box (virgin's sky+) on the main telly, and the multiroom box on top of the mediacentre and that isn't connected to anything other than the PC. That is then streamable round the house Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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