smithyandco Posted April 27, 2009 Share Posted April 27, 2009 As per title really... Philips Hybrid TV card (DVB, Analog, Analog/Digital inputs etc)... nicked it out of my project media center after I fried my main PC's graphics card by not noticing I'd knocked the heatsink slightly off the gpu... So the media center is now a motherboard in a case... and not much else.I had Kworld Media Center which came with the card... Which is crap... It even runs slow on Quad Core PCs... So my little single core Althon XP ensures it runs like disabled dog... I've tried a load of freeware media center applications which really show why their free... no bugger would ever pay for them.I've tried some applications which you would usually pay for (got trials) and they are worse than the freeware... Anyone suggest something good which doesn't involve booting from a live cd or installing a media center OS?I'm running XP Pro SP3 before anyone says there is a media center app in Vista... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted April 27, 2009 Share Posted April 27, 2009 Windows XP Media Centre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted April 27, 2009 Author Share Posted April 27, 2009 Windows XP Media Centre Anyone suggest something good which doesn't involve booting from a live cd or installing a media center OS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetaylog Posted April 28, 2009 Share Posted April 28, 2009 MEDIAPORTAL MEDIAPORTAL MEDIAPORTAL!! here Very powerful media centre front end, i have it installed on my dedicated htpc for watching tv, playing films/tv series, listening to music & radio, and theres tons more plugins for it on the website. Check out these screenshots: http://www.evo-host.co.uk/getimg/19363.jpg http://www.evo-host.co.uk/getimg/19364.jpg http://www.evo-host.co.uk/getimg/19365.jpg http://www.evo-host.co.uk/getimg/19366.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee_2f2f Posted April 28, 2009 Share Posted April 28, 2009 I need to get that programme it looks brilliant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted April 28, 2009 Share Posted April 28, 2009 eetaylog- what tuner cards are you using? what problems did you have? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetaylog Posted April 28, 2009 Share Posted April 28, 2009 eetaylog- what tuner cards are you using? what problems did you have? i use a NovaT-500 dual tuner so i can watch one channel and record another, or record 2 channels etc. Works flawlessly with the MP software, and you can use the Hauppauge remote that comes with it to navigate around the software. The only glitch is that the NovaT has issues with waking itself up from standby to record tv (something to do with the tuner re-initialising too quickly when MP comes out of hibernation). Im told this has been fixed in the latest release of the media centre software (1.0.1) with a workaround that delays reinitialisation, but i havent tried it yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shawdreamer Posted April 28, 2009 Share Posted April 28, 2009 Ive heard this "windows xp media centre" mentioned a few times on ere now and I was a bit stumped, thought Vista was the one with the purpose built media centre?... just checked the MS site and even tho theres a link for "xp media centre" it just sends you to something concerning vista. is it the same as vista's and downloable for Xp or something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetaylog Posted April 28, 2009 Share Posted April 28, 2009 Ive heard this "windows xp media centre" mentioned a few times on ere now and I was a bit stumped, thought Vista was the one with the purpose built media centre?... just checked the MS site and even tho theres a link for "xp media centre" it just sends you to something concerning vista. is it the same as vista's and downloable for Xp or something? i think that vista comes with it installed as standard (might be different for home vs premium), but it was available as an add on for XP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted April 28, 2009 Author Share Posted April 28, 2009 Ive heard this "windows xp media centre" mentioned a few times on ere now and I was a bit stumped, thought Vista was the one with the purpose built media centre?... just checked the MS site and even tho theres a link for "xp media centre" it just sends you to something concerning vista. is it the same as vista's and downloable for Xp or something?No it's different... It's a Media Center OS based on XP Pro by Microsoft.It's as good as the Vista media center... and sadly now needed (or Vista) for decent media sharing capabilities on the 360... What happened to the good old normal network shares?Google search linkage @eetaylog: Cheers... taking a look now... will let you know how I get on! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted April 28, 2009 Author Share Posted April 28, 2009 Bugger... Bloody thing confused me...It's installed but no options to configure my TV card... keeps asking for the host TV server (Which would be the PC it's installed on and bam! nothing)Then after a reboot it just starts... and closes... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetaylog Posted April 28, 2009 Share Posted April 28, 2009 @eetaylog: Cheers... taking a look now... will let you know how I get on! It can take quite a bit of setting up so give me a shout if youve got any questions. By the way, the screenshots above are taken with 'Bleazle' skin and not the standard 'blue3' skin, so make sure you download that as well... here Bugger... Bloody thing confused me...It's installed but no options to configure my TV card... keeps asking for the host TV server (Which would be the PC it's installed on and bam! nothing)Then after a reboot it just starts... and closes... right. make sure you have all the requirements to set it up... here. youll have to download everyting it says under the OS components section (.NET Framework 2.0, DirectX9, Visual C++basic 2005 etc etc). the reason its asking for the host server is because mediaportal comes in 2 parts, TV server and Media Server. The TV server part handles everything to do with the TV side of things, while the Media server handles everything else (music, films, pictures etc). Youve got to download and install MSSQL database server to handle all your tv side of things. set the password up as MediaPortal (case sensitive). its a lot of fannying about but trust me its worth the effort. Once youve got the TV server installed on your machine, it can be accessed over a network and streamed to any other client PC without having to install the Tv server on it (in other words many machines on a network can stream the cards in your server PC). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted April 28, 2009 Author Share Posted April 28, 2009 It can take quite a bit of setting up so give me a shout if youve got any questions. By the way, the screenshots above are taken with 'Bleazle' skin and not the standard 'blue3' skin, so make sure you download that as well... here Will download the skin when I've got it going. right. make sure you have all the requirements to set it up... here. youll have to download everyting it says under the OS components section (.NET Framework 2.0, DirectX9, Visual C++basic 2005 etc etc). the reason its asking for the host server is because mediaportal comes in 2 parts, TV server and Media Server. The TV server part handles everything to do with the TV side of things, while the Media server handles everything else (music, films, pictures etc). Youve got to download and install MSSQL database server to handle all your tv side of things. set the password up as MediaPortal (case sensitive). its a lot of fannying about but trust me its worth the effort. Once youve got the TV server installed on your machine, it can be accessed over a network and streamed to any other client PC without having to install the Tv server on it (in other words many machines on a network can stream the cards in your server PC).Everything required is installed... My PC has all the runtimes etc from Visual Studio (inc basic, C++, C#) and additional runtimes inc .net 1, 2 and 3.5My PC meets the requirements for non-HD viewing.All relevant codecs are installed.Latest DX 9.0c runtimes installed.WMP 11 installed.SP3 installed. No reason why it should be pissing me about... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetaylog Posted April 28, 2009 Share Posted April 28, 2009 It can take quite a bit of setting up so give me a shout if youve got any questions. By the way, the screenshots above are taken with 'Bleazle' skin and not the standard 'blue3' skin, so make sure you download that as well... here Will download the skin when I've got it going. right. make sure you have all the requirements to set it up... here. youll have to download everyting it says under the OS components section (.NET Framework 2.0, DirectX9, Visual C++basic 2005 etc etc). the reason its asking for the host server is because mediaportal comes in 2 parts, TV server and Media Server. The TV server part handles everything to do with the TV side of things, while the Media server handles everything else (music, films, pictures etc). Youve got to download and install MSSQL database server to handle all your tv side of things. set the password up as MediaPortal (case sensitive). its a lot of fannying about but trust me its worth the effort. Once youve got the TV server installed on your machine, it can be accessed over a network and streamed to any other client PC without having to install the Tv server on it (in other words many machines on a network can stream the cards in your server PC).Everything required is installed... My PC has all the runtimes etc from Visual Studio (inc basic, C++, C#) and additional runtimes inc .net 1, 2 and 3.5My PC meets the requirements for non-HD viewing.All relevant codecs are installed.Latest DX 9.0c runtimes installed.WMP 11 installed.SP3 installed. No reason why it should be pissing me about... have you installed MSSQL? it wont work without that. I take it the PC youre installing it on is connected to the internet? clicking 'start the installation now' usually downloads and installs everything youll need automatically. Oh, and by the way, make sure you select 'Yes - I will use MP to watch HD content', otherwise it will install a built in version of the tv engine which isnt as good. Follow these instructions see below on how to install MSSQL... its pretty much a straight forward install. click 'next' on every screen except when you get to the choice that offers you 'mixed mode'. choose that, and then setup up the password as MediaPortal (case sensitive). When you go to TV Server configuration on your desktop, MP will log into MSSQL using this password. Click 'save', and then youll be able to scan your tv channels. here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smithyandco Posted April 28, 2009 Author Share Posted April 28, 2009 Microsoft SQL is installed... came in the Visual Studio bundles.And it's updated I did select that I wanted to watch HD content during installation. Like I said... no reason why it should be arsing around Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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