New to MCE and PVR's
- Thread starter JohnWPB
- Start date
I dont know that much about DVD decoders. But isnt one as good as another for the most part, or is there really a difference? I just install my copy of Cyberlinks Power DVD when I build a new machine, and it installs a decoder.
Even without purchasing a software DVD player ect, there are quite a few free decoders on the Internet. As I do not know, I just wanted to ask if there really was that much of a difference in them.
WayneW
Senior Member
I have no personal knowledge about decoders either, I was just going with what Electron advised. 
According to the official Microsoft support list, there are only two MCE approved decoders. Your PowerDVD is one of the two, but E felt that the nVidia one was better. Hopefully E can educate us if it is a functional difference or an appearance difference or what...
According to the official Microsoft support list, there are only two MCE approved decoders. Your PowerDVD is one of the two, but E felt that the nVidia one was better. Hopefully E can educate us if it is a functional difference or an appearance difference or what...
based on hundreds of MCE users on other boards, nvidia is the better choice. I did install PowerDVD on another test build, and the latest version seems to be better , but still not better than nvdvd in my opinion. The nvdvd one is the most installed codec on MCE machines, which is why I stick with it.
Ok! Phase one one is complete!
I received the case, and installed all the hardware. The case is really nice, with one small drawback. If you have more than one HD, it gets a little tricky. The case has, as the web page states, has room for three 3 1/2 drives, and two 5 1/4 drives. The problem is that 2 hard drives will not fit in the 3 1/2 bays (2 floppy drives would). So I put one in the 3 1/2 bays. One down one to go.
The problem is that the other hard drive bay is on the far right of the case (section 2 in the photo) mounted vertically. If you only had one hard drive and a CD/DVD you would be ok using that drive bay, as you could use 2 seperate IDE cables. In my case (and just about EVERYONE else's) you have a DVD in the system as well.
The problem with this is a standard IDE cable does not have enough length between the double ends to reach from where the DVD is mounted, and then to run to the right side of the case. What I did to overcome this, was to use the area hilighted in yellow in the photo, to "rig" up my 2nd hard drive there. It was a pain as I had to put one screw in the drive bay facing outwards to hold the drive in place. I placed one more screw on the top of the fan mount. It is far from perfect, and not mounted 100% solid, but this thing isnt going to be mounted in a vehicle or anything. The advantage of this is the drive is righy by the fan, to help keep it cool.
(To avoid this, you could simply get a longer IDE cable, but it was 9:30 at night when I started this, and I didnt feel like waiting another day to put it together!)
What I did like about this case is the way the top cover is designed. It has a grill and a donut shaped housing on the inside dirrectly over the processor to funell air. With the 2 fans in the case on the back, as well as the one on the side all being exhaust fans, this pulls fresh cool air dirrectly into that "donut" and goes dirrectly into the processor fan. I could never see the CPU overheating with this design.
The case also comes with a PCI case cover that you run your sound card out put into, and then another jack to run it back out to your speaker system (Small 1/8" to 1/8" cable included). Then, on the back of that PCI cover (Inside the case) is another 1/8" jack that you run the sppplied cable to power the meter on the front of the case. There is a vollume control on the front, to adjust the sensaticity of the needle. I had to figgure this out with just reasoning, as the instruction "pamphlet" is 100% USELESS!, I has 2 pages in english, and it seems that it was translated through 4 languages before it ever made it to english. On top of that, the 2nd english page is messed up as it starts and ends in english, but the main center part of that page is in french. A real mess! Here is a quote of a small part of the pamphlet that actually is in English to give you an idea of what I am talking about: (There are NO typos below, just the EXACT phrasing from the paper)
Cooler master power supply let you PC operate better and more efficient, with the best power source as it comes away to your PC" Great Huh? hehehe
Overall it is a great case, and looks nice in the entertainment center with the rest of my components. The sound meter lights up a nice blue, and the needle moves to whatever audio the system is pumping out.
I received the case, and installed all the hardware. The case is really nice, with one small drawback. If you have more than one HD, it gets a little tricky. The case has, as the web page states, has room for three 3 1/2 drives, and two 5 1/4 drives. The problem is that 2 hard drives will not fit in the 3 1/2 bays (2 floppy drives would). So I put one in the 3 1/2 bays. One down one to go.
The problem is that the other hard drive bay is on the far right of the case (section 2 in the photo) mounted vertically. If you only had one hard drive and a CD/DVD you would be ok using that drive bay, as you could use 2 seperate IDE cables. In my case (and just about EVERYONE else's) you have a DVD in the system as well.
The problem with this is a standard IDE cable does not have enough length between the double ends to reach from where the DVD is mounted, and then to run to the right side of the case. What I did to overcome this, was to use the area hilighted in yellow in the photo, to "rig" up my 2nd hard drive there. It was a pain as I had to put one screw in the drive bay facing outwards to hold the drive in place. I placed one more screw on the top of the fan mount. It is far from perfect, and not mounted 100% solid, but this thing isnt going to be mounted in a vehicle or anything. The advantage of this is the drive is righy by the fan, to help keep it cool.
(To avoid this, you could simply get a longer IDE cable, but it was 9:30 at night when I started this, and I didnt feel like waiting another day to put it together!)
What I did like about this case is the way the top cover is designed. It has a grill and a donut shaped housing on the inside dirrectly over the processor to funell air. With the 2 fans in the case on the back, as well as the one on the side all being exhaust fans, this pulls fresh cool air dirrectly into that "donut" and goes dirrectly into the processor fan. I could never see the CPU overheating with this design.
The case also comes with a PCI case cover that you run your sound card out put into, and then another jack to run it back out to your speaker system (Small 1/8" to 1/8" cable included). Then, on the back of that PCI cover (Inside the case) is another 1/8" jack that you run the sppplied cable to power the meter on the front of the case. There is a vollume control on the front, to adjust the sensaticity of the needle. I had to figgure this out with just reasoning, as the instruction "pamphlet" is 100% USELESS!, I has 2 pages in english, and it seems that it was translated through 4 languages before it ever made it to english. On top of that, the 2nd english page is messed up as it starts and ends in english, but the main center part of that page is in french. A real mess! Here is a quote of a small part of the pamphlet that actually is in English to give you an idea of what I am talking about: (There are NO typos below, just the EXACT phrasing from the paper)
Cooler master power supply let you PC operate better and more efficient, with the best power source as it comes away to your PC" Great Huh? hehehe
Overall it is a great case, and looks nice in the entertainment center with the rest of my components. The sound meter lights up a nice blue, and the needle moves to whatever audio the system is pumping out.
This is the reason I went with the Antec Overture, as the Antec designs are usually well thought out. The case looks great tho! As for the HD's, if you really had to, you could buy an external case for another HD or for the DVD player (and put the HD in the dvd bay). Keep in mind that really long IDE cables can usually cause problems, but if your board supports SATA, you could maybe get a SATA adapter, and a longer SATA cable (they are smaller too)
Round IDE cables are often much easier to route between drives, too. If the length between the connectors is long enough, you can do side-by-side 5 1/4 drives.
My "HTPC" machine is very small. To put an optical drive in it would require using a laptop drive. I avoided this altogether and used an external (USB2/firewire) DVD drive. Since I rarely use this machine to play DVDs from disk, this hasn't been a problem. If I need the drive, I just plug it in on demand. This is also convenient because my server does not have an optical drive either.
My "HTPC" machine is very small. To put an optical drive in it would require using a laptop drive. I avoided this altogether and used an external (USB2/firewire) DVD drive. Since I rarely use this machine to play DVDs from disk, this hasn't been a problem. If I need the drive, I just plug it in on demand. This is also convenient because my server does not have an optical drive either.
Treetop, hehehe sorry, thought the above post described just about all of it
I procrastinated, again, I tell myself I will stop doing that, but I just put it off.... Lol!
I ordered the PVR150MCE, and the MCE Remote bundle just a couple hours ago, and it will probably be here on Monday. That is just about the final step. I have all the software set up, Message server to pop up info, Airpanel tied into it ect. Im using the Svideo out of it right now, and it looks decent on the Bigscreen.
Also installed a few plugins that are really nice, especially the Netflix one. Of course the MCE MAME plugin is the bomb! I have around 2000 games available and a couple PC (PS2 like) wireless controllers to play them with. VERY nice indeed! The way that mame lets you assign buttons in any way you want on a game by game basis is a really nice feature!
I bought a DVI cable, and tried to get that to work last night, and went in circles for over an hour and just gave up for the night. It goes dirrectly from the DVI out on the card, to the "Input 5 DVI" on the back of the set. I will go back to it later and see if I can get it working. I couldnt get ANYTHING whatsoever to display on the TV, no scan lines, scrolling screen, nothing but a black screen displaying the onscreen "AV5". Have some readin up to do to try to figgure it all out.
I am happy with the case, though it is a bit larger than I immagined. It still fits in the entertainment center, and just looks like another piece of audio equiptment. I had to open it up a couple days ago, and was nicely supprised to note that the hard drives, and internal temp of the case was just slightly warm.
I procrastinated, again, I tell myself I will stop doing that, but I just put it off.... Lol!
I ordered the PVR150MCE, and the MCE Remote bundle just a couple hours ago, and it will probably be here on Monday. That is just about the final step. I have all the software set up, Message server to pop up info, Airpanel tied into it ect. Im using the Svideo out of it right now, and it looks decent on the Bigscreen.
Also installed a few plugins that are really nice, especially the Netflix one. Of course the MCE MAME plugin is the bomb! I have around 2000 games available and a couple PC (PS2 like) wireless controllers to play them with. VERY nice indeed! The way that mame lets you assign buttons in any way you want on a game by game basis is a really nice feature!
I bought a DVI cable, and tried to get that to work last night, and went in circles for over an hour and just gave up for the night. It goes dirrectly from the DVI out on the card, to the "Input 5 DVI" on the back of the set. I will go back to it later and see if I can get it working. I couldnt get ANYTHING whatsoever to display on the TV, no scan lines, scrolling screen, nothing but a black screen displaying the onscreen "AV5". Have some readin up to do to try to figgure it all out.
I am happy with the case, though it is a bit larger than I immagined. It still fits in the entertainment center, and just looks like another piece of audio equiptment. I had to open it up a couple days ago, and was nicely supprised to note that the hard drives, and internal temp of the case was just slightly warm.
After you hook up the DVI, have you tried rebooting? My MCE machines won't switch to DVI unless I disconnect my monitor/svideo, and reboot so it can detect the DVI port as the primary output port. A big pain in the butt, but that's the only way it will work for me.
Hmmm I rebooted MANY times, but not with the monitor disconnected, will have to give that a try later. Getting ready to go to the South FLorida Fair right now. Havent been in a couple years, so a few beers, lots of fair food, and lots of rides. (NOT neccessarirly in that order
Thanks for the tip!
Thanks for the tip!
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
Hope John doesn’t mind me asking questions on his thread, but it relates to this topic. I am starting to gather parts for a Microsoft Media Center PC for our family room (main viewing TV area). I was thinking between getting the Hauppauge PVR-150 MCE bundle with the Nvidia DVD Decoder or go for the dual tuner PVR-500 MCE bundle.
I already have the MCE operating system.
I am a little confused on the "connection" methodology as I was thinking about getting a graphics card such as the GForce FX5200 which has TV output capability.
But, don't both Hauppauge cards also have TV output capability? Why would I need the TV output on the video card as well?
Could you possibly do something like pipe both TV outputs into separate inputs on your TV, then select which tuner can be displayed on which channel (in the case of the PVR-500) or can you possible select TV output and just regular PC mode (say for looking at TV guide or automation related items) as well?
The only advantage I see for the dual tuner is recording one show while watching another. Is there any other advantage? I'm sort of trying to justify the price difference between the two cards.
I already have the MCE operating system.
I am a little confused on the "connection" methodology as I was thinking about getting a graphics card such as the GForce FX5200 which has TV output capability.
But, don't both Hauppauge cards also have TV output capability? Why would I need the TV output on the video card as well?
Could you possibly do something like pipe both TV outputs into separate inputs on your TV, then select which tuner can be displayed on which channel (in the case of the PVR-500) or can you possible select TV output and just regular PC mode (say for looking at TV guide or automation related items) as well?
The only advantage I see for the dual tuner is recording one show while watching another. Is there any other advantage? I'm sort of trying to justify the price difference between the two cards.
WayneW
Senior Member
BSR,
The 150MCE is about $70, the 500MCE is about $165, so unless you are short of PCI slots, you could go with two 150MCE's for less money. Unless, there are other benefits that I am ignorant of. It would also let you get one 150MCE now and add one later if needed.
The 150MCE does NOT have output, so you do need a regular video card. Electron suggested the nVidia FX5200 to me and I have been happy with it so far for non MCE stuff. I got the 256 meg model by eVGA, it came with the nVidia DVD decoder. It is about $85 from newegg, gameve, or zipzoomfly. It came with the DVI-VGA converter, so I am using it for two monitors at the moment. Eventually I would imaginge one monitor and use the s-video output to a TV. The card you link to doesn't have DVI out, so it wouldn't support two monitors but it would work a TV and a monitor.
The 150MCE is about $70, the 500MCE is about $165, so unless you are short of PCI slots, you could go with two 150MCE's for less money. Unless, there are other benefits that I am ignorant of.
It would also let you get one 150MCE now and add one later if needed.The 150MCE does NOT have output, so you do need a regular video card. Electron suggested the nVidia FX5200 to me and I have been happy with it so far for non MCE stuff. I got the 256 meg model by eVGA, it came with the nVidia DVD decoder. It is about $85 from newegg, gameve, or zipzoomfly. It came with the DVI-VGA converter, so I am using it for two monitors at the moment. Eventually I would imaginge one monitor and use the s-video output to a TV. The card you link to doesn't have DVI out, so it wouldn't support two monitors but it would work a TV and a monitor.
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
Wayne:
Thanks for the reply. I see now that the PVR-150 doesn't have TV output .
But, if I were to get the PVR 500 with the TV output can you select what goes on what ouptut (between the PVR500 and the video output TV capabilities)?
This may indeed justify the cost difference.
Thanks for the reply. I see now that the PVR-150 doesn't have TV output
.But, if I were to get the PVR 500 with the TV output can you select what goes on what ouptut (between the PVR500 and the video output TV capabilities)?
This may indeed justify the cost difference.