Home Theatre PC Links Roundup

April 25, 2006 eirikso13 Comments

I have a lot of visitors looking for information about media centers right now. Here is a quick list of links in this blog that is useful if you want to start experimenting.

You find all the articles in the Home Theatre PC (HTPC) category here:
Eirikso.com – HTPC

And a selection of specially useful articles:
The media center software list
HTPC Frontend roundup
Screen technologies. LCD or Plasma?
Perfect adjustment of your LCD
How to build a cabinet for your HTPC
How to build a completely silent fan for your cabinet
Thumbnails of my old background pictures
How to remote control your music collection from your PDA, laptop, meedio etcâ€¦
Silencing an XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP with a Zalman VF700 Cu
Playing smooth WMV-HD in Windows Media Center Edition
Windows Media Center Edition with 3 tuners
Placeshifting – your media everywhere
HighPad Media Control – PDA Remote for Windows Media Center
Still in list-mode: the Media Center Blogs
Apple Media Center – At last!
Converting DVR-MS files from your media center
How to program the buttons on your MCE Remote
Webcam screensaver for your media center
Recommended HTPC hardware
Some notes on signal quality in a home theatre PC (HTPC)

…or you can take a break and have a look at a lot of other popular articles!

Perfect adjustment of your LCD

April 6, 2006 eirikso20 Comments

When connecting my QPVision 37″ LCD to my media center through DVI I had no problems running the native resolution of 1366×768 on the screen. This gave me one-to-one pixel mapping and a completely sharp picture.

However, my friend Staale ran into some problems that seem to be quite common. He did some tests and created a simple and very effective test pattern that can help you find the right resolution.

It seems like quite a bit of LCD screens that has a resolution of 1366×768 report to the screen cards that the correct resolution is 1360×768. Seems like a small difference, but when you run 1360×768 on a screen that actually is 1366×768 the screen sometimes does a bit of scaling that makes parts of the picture slightly unfocused.

Here is an example. The first picture is taken as a super close up of the screen in 1360×768. The next one is the same area on the same screen forced to 1366×768 through the advanced settings in the screen card driver:

And here is a detail of those images:

The difference seems big here, but it can be difficult to detect and that is where Staale’s brilliant test pattern comes in. It is a simple grid of black and white pixels that will clearly reveal a screen that is not mapped one-to-one. You can download the image here:

GIF (3 k)
PNG (4 k)
BMP (1,2 MB)

It should never be converted to a JPG. Any lossy compression will destroy the file.

Download it and insert it as your desktop pattern. Centered and not streched.

If your screen looks like this:

…then you have a perfect one-to-one pixel mapping.

If it looks like this:

Screenshot of problem with the pixel mapping

…then you have a problem with your pixel mapping.

Unfortunately it can be difficult to solve the problem. It depends on the screen, your screen card, the firmware in the screen, your screen card drivers, the software you use etc… It involves advanced tools and might even put you into serious trouble with your screen and the image from your computer.

For relatively new Nvidia screen cards and drivers you have options to take complete control of the refresh rates and resolution to the screen. You can also try playing around with PowerStrip. Or, use AVS Forum. An excellent source of information on advanced use of media equipment.

Digg this story here.

And please feel free to comment if you have solutions to this problem for specific setups.

Screen technologies. LCD or Plasma?

March 13, 2006 eirikso8 Comments

People keeps asking me what I would recommend for a home theatre PC (HTPC). LCD or Plasma? In general I would recommend a good LCD. I know that the problems with burn in have been close to eliminated on the best plasma screens. Still, I find the crisp and clean LCD picture with absolutely no burn in problem preferable. A quick roundup:

Cathode Ray Tube (CRT)
First of all, it is perfectly OK to use your old tube. A standard cathode ray tube (CRT) connected to a PC through S-Video or even composite video should work fine if you adjust your screen card and use a proper media center software. The whole point of these softwares is to give you a front end from your computer that looks good even on low resolution television screens.

A quick trouble shooting tip: if you get a black and white signal from your PC when connecting through S-Video you probably have to select the correct output (S-Video ro Y/C) in your screen settings. If you get black and white when connecting through composite you probably have to take a look at the video format settings. Choosing NTSC when you have a PAL television could give you a black and white picture.

Liquid Chrystal Display (LCD)
LCD has been used for computer screens for some time. For the last couple of years they have been able to produce them big enough for use as television sets. Only half a year ago it was a problem that the contrast ratio (the difference between black and white) was too low. Resulting in loss of detail in dark and bright scenes. Now, that is about to end. Some of the vendors has introduced LCDs with contrast ratios of 3000:1 and 5000:1. Earlier that was only possible for Plasma displays. Another problem was response time. Bad response times could result in problems with fast moving video. Now, most LCD screens have a response time of 8 milliseconds or better. That should be enough for most people watching video or playing games on their screen.

Plasma
Plasma screens traditionally gives better contrast ratio, a more correct black level and in general a slightly more soft picture. Half a year ago a good plasma would without doubt outperform a good LCD in quality for watching movies. Right now that have changed because of better LCD panels. In general you have to pay more for a proper high resolution plasma compared to a high resolution LCD (a resolution of 1280 x 720 or more).

And for the people that want more than a quick round up:
Wikipedia: CRT, LCD, Plasma
Comparison: Plasma vs. LCD TVs

And yes, the pictures in this post are all super close ups of the described technologies. With compliments to my new Canon S2 IS!

Dagbladet today

March 9, 2006 eirikso13 Comments

Today there is an article about media centers in the norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. They have asked me about different solutions and give a quick overview of what all this is about.

I will also attend to a net meeting at dagbladet.no on tuesday 14th at 1300 CET. This meeting will be in Norwegian.

Please also feel free to post any questions or comments on this post in my blog.

To make it easier for Dagbladet’s readers I will give you a quick roundup of some media center links and advice:
– The complete list of software solutions
– A quick roundup of some of the systems I have tried
– An update with links to other articles as well
– Converting DVR-MS files from your media center
– Placeshifting, your media everywhere!
– Remote control your music collection in MCE
– Everything in the HTPC category

Update:
The Goatse joke was already taken, so I chose to wear my BoingBoing tee. 🙂

Update2:
Link to the story on dagbladet.no (Thanks, Jon)

How to control your amplifier from the MCE IR-blaster

February 25, 2006 eirikso32 Comments

I just upgraded my home entertainment system with a Pioneer VSX-915 amplifier. Meaning that I now connect my Home Theatre PC to the amp digitally through SPDIF.

To control the volume properly I have to use the volume on the amplifier and not adjust the volume out of my Media Center. The easiest solution is of course to use the remote of the amp, but I don’t want to use two remotes. I only want one remote in my living room and that is the MCE remote.

If you have a relatively new MCE remote you can easily program it to control your amplifier directly. The new MCE remotes has three programable buttons. The TV On / Off and the volume. You program the remote as described here.

But, I have my amplifier inside a cabinet. I could of course buy some kind of IR repeater to catch the remote signal outside the cabinet and beam it out inside to the amplifier.

But hey, the MCE remote reciever can be programmed as well, and it even includes a IR blaster to do exactly what you want: beam out IR signals to control a set top box (…or an amplifier).

This is what you need:
Continue reading “How to control your amplifier from the MCE IR-blaster” →

Web Browser for Media Center Edition

February 2, 2006 eirikso4 Comments

Browsing standard web pages on a TV screen with a remote is never very comfortable. Most web pages are made for navigation with a mouse and a keyboard.

Still, if you have a media center and an LCD screen it can be interesting to have a quick look at some news headlines, a couple of blogs or something like that.

Doing that from within media center has been difficult until now. Meet the MCE Browser. An excellent little plugin that gives you a browser with zoom functionallity and easy navigation with the arrow keys, OK and channel up/down for browsing links.

(Via Thomas Hawk and The F-Stop Blues)

Thomas Hawk reports from a dinner with Microsoft Exec Jim Allchin

January 30, 2006 eirikso3 Comments

Thomas Hawk has been fortunate enough to be invited to a dinner with Microsoft Exec Jim Allchin and a couple of very interesting bloggers and technologists. As usual he reports with info, thoughts and some excellent pictures.
Not a 100% confirmation, but maybe we will be able to upgrade our Win XP media centers with WMP 11 and get better handling of large media collections?

I also talked with Jim about Windows Media Player. Last April I complained to Jim at our meeting about how slow Media Center handled large digital media libraries. This of course has more to do with Windows Media Player than anything. As I’ve reported previously, Jim also confirmed that we should expect to see dramatic performance improvements for large digital libraries in Vista and Windows Media Player 11 (can I get a “hot donkey” please!).

I also asked Jim if Microsoft would be releasing a standalone version of Windows Media Player 11 for people with XP and he said that they would. Although it may not have all of the features as the player shipped with Vista and although Vista is the priority right now, Jim said that we could expect an XP version of the popular player down the road as well.

Head over to ThomasHawk.com and read the rest. There are some updates and links to other discussions and blog posts at the end of his article.

(Screenshot of WMP11 from WinSuperSite.com)

Sudoku for MCE

January 22, 2006 eirikso3 Comments

I don’t know how it is for the rest of the world, but in Norway there’s a complete Sudoku craze right now. A craze that’s so evident that I learned to hate Sudoku even before I had solved one single puzzle…

But for you Windows Media Center users out there that has joined the craze, this is good news. KMS Software has made a simple, yet excellent implementation of Sudoku. This is a game that is perfect for the TV screen and the remote control. Simply navigate with the arrow keys and enter numbers with the numeric keypad on the remote.

They have added a possibility to enter numbers as “maybe” to let you draft out as you play. They have also implemented the game so that it will remember your current puzzle until you start a new one. So, you can quit MCE, watch a movie etc. When you start Sudoku again it will present you with the last game you where working on.

I tried to install Sudoku on a computer running standard WinXP Pro and Meedio just to see if this game will work for non MCE users. No success so far.

KMS Software has a little collection of stuff for MCE and quite a bit coming up. Will be interesting to follow the popularity of small time killers like this one for MCE.

Two good news for the Media Center Community

January 11, 2006 eirikso1 Comment

The green button is currently the most popular community for Windows Media Center Users. Unfortunately, the web site has performance issues, browser compatibility issues and problems with their search functionallity. That’s bad.

So for the good news:
1. The green button gets competition: Remotely Cool.
– Sounds like a promising project

2. The green button (TGB) gets a performance and functionallity boost
– TGB is a fantastic source of information for MCE users. Firefox support, good search, better RSS support and better performance in the works are lovely!

Edit:
Seems like remotely cool is gone…

Via Thomas Hawk

The Media Center Show Number 35 – DigitalDeck

December 3, 2005 eiriksoLeave a comment

It’s out. Go and get it. On this weeks show Ian Dixon has Joe Harris from DigitalDeck. Joe returns to the show to talk about DigitalDeck and their home entertainment system for the connected home. He also has an update on the Media Center Awards, the vote page is up so get voting!

Listen and subscribe here!