[GUIDE] Windows 7 HTPC Playback Guide

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lol. I did that but I wasn't sure if the latest/greatest version could be located other than at that site.
 
Yes, I was eyeballing that today. ^_^ It looks like a nice simple alternative that gives a more OEM look like the regular media center video library.
 
regarding subtitles:

in the subtitles section you note that using vsfilter will kill hardware accel. Is there a way to have it set so that only movies that need subtitles will enable vsfilter, and everything else will run without, defaulting back to hardware accel?

The reason i ask is that <5% of my movies require subs, and the rest id like to play as they are now, without using cpu for video decoding. if this has to be done manually each time, that is acceptable.

thanks
 
Not that I know of. Either you have VSfilter autoloading, or you don't.
 
I just setup Win7 using this guide on my nForce9400 HTPC. Thank you w1retap.

Some MKV files play fine in Media Center, others bitch about:

"Media Center can not play the file. Be sure the path...."


Nothing about a codec... they play FINE in WMP. What's up??


PS - Using x64 Windows 7... sorry.. didn't see this guide before I built this PC. Is this because CoreAVC/Halli are 32-bit? I have a 32-bit 7 license, should I go ahead and install that? I can't see this PC ever needing >4GB of RAM so 32-bit is OK.
 
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32-bit will definitely give less issues to deal with. Under 64-bit, you have to use the 64-bit versions of things and some of them are still pretty buggy. I'd recommend 32-bit and start over if you're already having problems.
 
Not a problem at all, luckily I hadn't activated the license yet. Unluckily I'm moving on Friday so playing with this PC is on the backburner but I'm really excited about it.

Your guides and help are much appreciated here.
 
w1retap, this is a brilliant article :)

Wondered what your thoughts were on XBMC? http://xbmc.org/
I've been playing with it, and it's pretty slick. It is a standalone media center, to replace W7MC.
 
No.. in order to get XBMC to use hardware acceleration you have to configure external players. I'll never use it unless they fix that.
 
IF that somehow happens, that would be great. XBMC would allow you to no longer have to rely on a bunch of external software. One app to do everything.

But yea, HA is a must.
 
I'm currently using XBMC (Linux) but am looking at W7MC because of WMV, BluRay and Hulu support.

However, just so you know, XBMC for Windows does support external players so you can use MPC-HC (for example) to have hardware-accelerated decoding. However, I don't like having to use an external player because of the potential loss of focus, etc, etc.

Anyways, I have a couple of questions about W7MC:

1) Why is it recommended to use FFDShow? Doesn't the built-in media player simply pass-through all audio to the spdif?

2) Why does it say "Looking for files..." (or something) everytime I go into my Movies. This seems to take quite a while and because it's picking up 500 movies the interface goes VERY, very slow.

3) How can I install TotalMedia 3 (BluRay player) and MediaBrowser? If I install TotalMedia 3 first it creates a custom strip in W7MC and then after install MediaBrowser, the MediaBrowser strip doesn't show up nor does it appear in the extras.
 
1) Why is it recommended to use FFDShow? Doesn't the built-in media player simply pass-through all audio to the spdif?

Personal preference I guess. I have some Top Gear rips with weird MPEG1 audio that the internal 7MC filters don't play back. I have ffdshow set to decode everything except AC3 and DTS, those it passes though to S/PDIF.

2) Why does it say "Looking for files..." (or something) everytime I go into my Movies. This seems to take quite a while and because it's picking up 500 movies the interface goes VERY, very slow.

Are you using MediaBrowser? I'm confused as to what you are talking about.

3) How can I install TotalMedia 3 (BluRay player) and MediaBrowser? If I install TotalMedia 3 first it creates a custom strip in W7MC and then after install MediaBrowser, the MediaBrowser strip doesn't show up nor does it appear in the extras.

um... w1retap? :p
 
3) How can I install TotalMedia 3 (BluRay player) and MediaBrowser? If I install TotalMedia 3 first it creates a custom strip in W7MC and then after install MediaBrowser, the MediaBrowser strip doesn't show up nor does it appear in the extras.

When you launch your movie within Media Browser it will automatically launch TMT3.

For Media Browser to show up, use the Registry settings that w1retap shows you in the tutorial in the Media Browser section.

If you're launching ISO files, make sure you have Virtual CloneDrive or DeamonTools Lite installed & configured in Media Browser. Works great with all my BlueRay/HD-DVD ISO's.
 
Thanks for all of the help everybody.

Being a software developer, I was curious about how Media Center worked and why Media Browser wasn't showing up so I investigated a little and found that the included registration.xml7 file was invalid.

I've made a new version and posted about it here: http://www.mediabrowser.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3483

This avoids having to use the registry hack and allows you to re-register the application the proper way :)
 
I just went thru this with a fresh install of Windows 7 RTM on a quad-core HTPC. I had Mediabrowser installed at the time.

When I started WMC or Mediabrowser and tried an .mkv file i could see the time line but no play, then WMC would crash.

I uninstalled everything i could find, and Installed K-Lite full setting the options as best as I could carefully, now they play fine with subtitles working.

I'd like to see a tutorial on how to install K-Lite correctly, without a lot of the options.
 
There won't be a guide for k-lite since everyone that knows anything about it avoids codec packs. If you had followed the guide you wouldn't have needed to install k-lite.
 
I'd like to see a tutorial on how to install K-Lite correctly, without a lot of the options.
k-lite.jpg
 
Haha, bingo.

This guide works, no doubt about that. That proves that you did something wrong. (mingus)
 
ok, well i just did a complete reinstall of win7, will try it tomorrow. I used the lazy mans version, will try the real way.

Looks like the guide is being updated, will wait on that and follow exactly.

thx
 
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Also curious when the guide is coming back, or is there a way to view an achieved version. I just upgraedd to 7 ultimate and want to setup things correctly.
 
I didn't realize it was gone. Just hold tight for now. It will be back and if w1retap is changing something its for the better.
 
I'm learning more and more each day but I'm still a little confused...

Haali Media Splitter is a DirectShow filter and the DivX MKV (preview) is a Media Foundation filter.

If you use the Haali splitter than you must use a DirectShow H.264 decoder which isn't optimal on Windows 7.

However, with the DivX MKV filter you will be able to use the Windows 7 built-in Media Foundation H.264 decoder which is faster and newer (DXVA v2.0, etc).

Is the above true?

What about the problems people are commenting about MKV's with DTS audio not playing with the DivX MKV splitter? Isn't the splitter just splitting out the DTS audio the same as Haali? I've also seen information stating that Haali splits the H.264 as "AVC1" and DivX splits it as "H.264". What's the difference?

It seems like using DivX's Media Foundation filter and then the built-in Windows 7 H.264 filter (which is Media Foundation) is much better, no?
 
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maybe he is building a disk and script so its automatic setup.
Can only hope :)
 
Hm, why not leave the originals back up there though?

edit: good thing for google cache, I needed to know the program that allows the directshow codec changing :p
 
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well I am betting that he is going to use mymovies 3 with the new setup.
Maybe there are some conflicts or something causing delays.
 
well I am betting that he is going to use mymovies 3 with the new setup.
Maybe there are some conflicts or something causing delays.

No... He hasn't been online since he took the guide down. Hmmm... I might remember most of the old one to post temporarily but I would hate for it to conflict with anything new that may come up.
 
maybe he posted his guide elsewhere I don't know.

if you have a copy I guess you could start a temp thread about it.
But I would ask the mods first.
 
w1retap just contacted me via another forum informing me that he was banned for posting an "apparently" inappropriate picture in GenMay.

He no longer wants his guide available here.

I'll be contacting a mod shortly so they can delete this thread.
 
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AFAIK the guide will be back up but only on a private site which is.... private, sorry.
 
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I've posted a guide to setting up the Audio and Video codecs. This guide is based on w1retaps but is missing most of the items such as subtitles since I didn't use them because they break hardware acceleration, and the media browser and mymovies stuff. I could only remember what I did on my two HTPCs which covered the methods for ATI and nVidia. I think he also included some antipack thing but I wanted to stay away from that since I haven't used it.
 
Does anyone use media browser to launch MPC-HC?

I was just playing around with this once I discovered that directvobsub breaks hardware acceleration and my only option if I want HA with subs is MPC-HC(well not my only option, but my best).
So I learned that media browser can open external players instead of playing in media center which makes it pretty much seamless.
So I set media browser to open MPC-HC and tell it to open all the video formats that it can.
It will open MPC-HC when I tell media browser to play any of my mkv tv shows. However the shows don't actually start playing. And the play button on MPC-HC is greyed out.
Also media browser refuses to launch MPC-HC when I play movies, which are also mkv's. Instead it just plays them in media center.

However I can manually launch MPC-HC and point it at a movie and it will play fine. But I don't use a mouse with my HTPC so I really need media browser to launch it for all of my mkv's, start playing the movie and go to full screen.
Anyone else have these problems? I've also posted on avsforums but so far have not solved my issue.
 
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