Playing smooth WMV-HD in Windows Media Center Edition

May 2, 2005 eirikso8 Comments

I am running Windows Media Center edition 2005 on a box with a GeForce 6600 GT screen card. Regular DVD, TV, Xvid etc. plays smooth in MCE.

For some strange kind of reason WMV-HD did not play smooth when played back directly from a WMV-HD DVD.

I am not talking “not smooth” as in dropping frames and struggeling with CPU load. On my box WMV-HD 720p plays with 40% CPU-load and 1080p plays with 75% load. I am talking “not smooth” as in the way video plays when your mother-in-law would say “So what is the problem, this looks perfect”, but YOU can clearly see that this is not right. It is not smooth.

Could look a bit like the trouble you would have if you use the wrong methods when you convert from NTSC (30 fps) to PAL (25 fps).

It took some time before I managed to fix the problem, but it is now fixed, and this is my theory:

MCE 2005 works 100% in WMR9-mode when rendering video. On my GeForce 6600 GT this works very well. However, windows media player 10 defaults to video overlay. This is no problem, because MCE runs smooth on top, utilizing VMR9-video rendering.

But, when inserting a WMV-HD DVD MCE2005 actually quits and starts a special instance of windows media player 10. If you have left windows media player 10 the way it was installed by default, it now plays using video overlay. And, apparently – on my system overlay will not play completely smooth.

I went into the Windows Media Player 10 settings and changed the following:

Tools->Options->Performance->Advanced->
Uncheck “Use overlays” and check “Use high quality mode”

For my system, this fixed the problem and WMV-HD now plays smooooooth!

Update:
I just installed an update from Microsoft and the CPU load went from 75% to 45% when playing WMV-HD 1080p. You find the update here:
Update to enable DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) of Windows Media Video content in Windows Media Player 10

And the thread over at AVSForum about this patch here:
WMP10 Patch for WMV Acceleration

Why you do not want to show static information on a Plasma screen!

April 27, 2005 eirikso5 Comments

I snapped this picture at the train station at Stansted. One of the worst cases of burn-in I have ever seen. Click the picture for a closer look. This is why a Plasma screen is totally out of the question for my HTPC!

I wonder what the sales persons told the people at the train station when they sold these screens?

“We have these new fantastic flat screens for your train tables. They are only Â£ 10 000,- a piece and will last for at least two years.”

Silencing an XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP with a Zalman VF700 Cu

April 26, 2005 eirikso63 Comments

Recently, I bought a new screen card to be able to run Win MCE 2005. I went for an XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP. Mainly because the GeForce 6600 GT supports NVidia PureVideo and because the XFX Card had two DVI connectors.

I knew that I had to remove the original fan and mount something more silent, so at the same time I ordered a Zalman VF700 Cu.

I followed the instructions and the VF700 is quite simple to install. However, I encountered one problem on my particular card. The instructions tell you to mount the RAM heatsinks, then mount the GPU heatsink. Well, guess what – the RAM chips are too close to the GPU on this card, so the GPU heatsink will not fit if you mount the RAM heatsinks. It is close to impossible to remove the RAM heatsinks when they are properly in place.

A couple of minutes with some cutting pliers, and the problem was solved. You can see the result in the pictures.

After the modification everything went smooth. From a very noisy card to a dead silent one and a 10 degrees lower GPU temp!

Just thought it could be interesting for people to read this if they plan to buy the same combination.

HTPC Update – Installing Windows Media Center Edition 2005

April 22, 2005 eirikso2 Comments

I have been playing around with HTPCs for several years. I started out with an ATI All-in-wonder back in 1999. I have been running ShowShifter, myHTPC, Meedio, BeyondTV and Beyond Media. My last configuration was this one:

Meedio
J River Media Center
NetRemote
Girder
BeyondTV
SlimServer

I must admit that I am dead tired of administrating several pieces of software and all the communication between them. Now I want something that just works. BeyondTV is a very good PVR. Meedio is a very good media management tool. However, they both need their share of caring and configuring… And running two different main applications is not as ideal as having one application taking care of the whole frontend.

MeedioTV is not yet released in a version that is simple to set up in my region, so running Meedio only is out of the question.

I have tried installing the plain combination of BeyondTV, BeyondMedia and the Snapstream FireFly Remote. But, BeyondMedia is simply not good enough. Browsing my 400 album music collection by having to scroll slowly from “10 000 Maniacs” to “ZZ Top”? Nope.

So, now I am giving Windows Media Center Edition 2005 (MCE) a try.

I will report back here as my installation progress!

How to remote control your music collection from your PDA, laptop, meedio etc…

March 18, 2005 eiriksoLeave a comment

To be able to control my music collection from all the devices in my house I have set up NetRemote. It works very well towards J. River Media Center that I use to manage my music collection. In addition to this, there is a J River Plugin for Meedio, so my TV Screen will always be updated with what I am playing, and I can always change music with the remote in my living room.

To the right you can see the remote I use most of the time. My good old HP Jornada PDA. It has been upgraded with a WLAN CF-Card and works very well.

I am running the client on my laptop, my desktops and the touch screen in the kitchen. All the screens updates live if I change music from one of the devices.

And, last but not least – Meedio, controlled by a Snapstream Firefly remote from the couch.

To make the point clear: I use NetRemote to control what is playing in my living room. In our flat the living room is the hub of the home, so it actually makes sense to control the music playing there from my laptop sitting at the balcony or while making food in the kitchen.

Still, the main functionallity is the ability to control my music collection without having to turn on the television screen.

When I want to listen to music in another room or at a completely different location I use Slimserver to recompress, stream and control the music at that location.

Thumbnails of my old background pictures

February 22, 2005 eiriksoLeave a comment

To give a better complete view of the HTPC-Backgrounds I made two years ago I have set up this gallery. Click the thumbnail to go to the download page:

The touch screen is now mounted in the kitchen

February 9, 2005 eirikso7 Comments

I have not found a suitable front cover, so it still looks like
something I found laying around in a space shuttle… But, it works!

I have set it up with Meedio to give me music, weather, news, web radio, Skype IP-phone and X10-control from our kitchen.

Click here for the original picture

The telephone on top of the machine is connected to a PhoneConnector USB-device and works quite well directly through Skype.

I will come back with more info on details about the setup. Both about the software and the silent cooling of the kiosk-PC inside the home made cabinet on the wall.

Sent from: Eirik Solheim

How to build a completely silent fan for your cabinet

February 6, 2005 eirikso14 Comments

Update:
I needed to change the mounting I have described in this article. More on that here:
The Silence of the fans

Original article:
I understood early that I needed some active ventilation if I wanted to have my HTPC inside a cabinet. Of course this ventilation needs to be silent.

You can read about the cabinet here:
Building a cabinet for the living room to house a HTPC

This is the solution:
A 120 mm fan running at 220 V, speed adjusted with a special device for… well… adjusting fan speed…

I tried mounting the fan directly on the cabinet. No matter how slow I ran the fan it would make a very clear noise. So, I had some kind of idea of how I could mount the fan using rubberbands. I have silenced all my hard drives using floating systems like this.

Last weekend I had my parents visiting, and my father was helping me finishing the cabinets. I told him about my idea for the fan. Half an hour later he had made the following arrangement:

The fan is completely silent, it pushes huge amounts of air, and I have never had a lower CPU temperature than what I am experiencing with my computer inside this cabinet.

Here is a video clip showing the functionallity:
Link to video with silent fan – Windows Media

Edit: Here are some more pictures of the attachment of the fan (click them to enlarge):

How to build a cabinet for your HTPC

February 6, 2005 eirikso17 Comments

I have now finished the cabinet that I will use to conceal my new HTPC in the living room. We have not got enough space for a separate server room. I have given up on the idea to have a nice looking HTPC standing visible in the living room. Basically, only three things need to be visible:

1. The screen
2. The loudspeakers
3. The remote control

The HTPC, amplifiers, disks etc is not interesting to look at.

(Please note the large HTPC screen… LOL. The big screen went black the other day. We are currently waiting to find the perfect flat screen. For the computer itself, all side panels of the original cabinet are removed.)

So, our interior designer has made a nice suggestion for our living room. This suggestion includes a row of quadratic cabinets. I could not find any cabinets with the right measures in any of our furniture shops.

I wanted a cabinet of the following dimensions: 70x50x70 (WxDxH).

The solution is a heavily modified cabinet from IKEA.

1 IVAR cabinet, 80x50x83
1 BONDE door, 70×70
1 set of Capita legs
Some white paint

(Picture: Fantastic loudspeakers from Anthony Gallo. Custom built cabinet. Flowers. Firefly RF Remote. 2 TB of storage. A 15 year old 12 inch screen… What is wrong with this picture? 🙂

Cut off 8 cm and 12 cm from the IVAR cabinet. Make new holes for the mounting screws. Put together, paint, mount the legs, mount the door and enjoy!

I have several of these cabinets and two of them is dedicated to the HTPC, hard drives, amplifiers etc. The cabinet with the HTPC is modified further for extra ventilation.

Sent from: Eirik Solheim

Slimserver

November 19, 2004 eiriksoLeave a comment

I have now installed Slimserver on my HTPC. The result is that I can stream my record collection to wherever I am (as long as I have an internet connection). Slimserver is a very powerful system that is easy to install.

This is the webpage that slimserver gives you to control your music stream.