Thoughts on my PVR box?

chottoED · Post by **chottoED** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:19 pm

I'm building a MCE 2005 PVR box for the first time... any of you guys have experience building them to be used in conjunction w/ either satellite or digital cable service?
Any comments and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Wish me luck

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor
CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit
Maxtor MaXLine Plus III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
NEC Black IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner Model ND-3550A
AOpen XC CUBE EZ482 AMD Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 FX/Athlon 64/Sempron ATI RS482 Barebone
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE-Kit Personal Video Recorder with NTSC TV Tuner
Windows MCE 2005

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 4:37 pm

I've built two. I use them with Comcast cable, directly connected to the cable for the 70+ or so basic non-digital channels.

You can also connect it through the box and have MCE change the channels on the box if you buy the Microsoft MCE remote (which I recommend you buy anyway, it's the best remote). The remote receiver has two IR transmitter "bugs" you and tape to the from of your cable box(es) to have MCE control them. Never tried it though. I'd rather not tie up my cable box.

There's lot's of gotchas with MCE. Worst issue is that certain types of hardware do not work properly together. I would STONGLY recommend that you use an ATI Radeon card and not an NVidia card.There's lot's of known issues with NVidia cards and certain chipsets causing a Black Screen of Death problem in MCE (VIA, SiS and ironically even NVidia chipset mobos). No one seems to have any problems with ATI. I had the problem myself and it was aggravating. Switching to a Radeon 9550 solved all my problems.

Ideally stay with hardware that's on the Microsoft MCE compatibility list and you'll have less headaches: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/medi ... ctory.mspx

You want to be sure to install the MCE version of any drivers (video, audio, chipset) if there's a seperate MCE version available.

PVR 500 might be a waste of money if you're using a cable/sat box. The PVR500 is a dual tunner and if you're using a box you won't be using the 2nd tuner (both tuners MUST be connected to the same type of source - you can't mix a inputs with different channel assignments so you'd need two boxes to use dual tuners). The PVR150 MCE is an inexpensive alternative at half the price (I use one in both my MCEs) which is a single channel PVR card.

MCE doesn't come with an MPEG2 driver - you need to supply one by installing a DVD player or download a generic codec. Almost none of the MPEG2 codecs, however, work properly with MCE. Keep in mind this is NOT just for DVDs - the recorder won't work without an MPEG2 codec either. The only codec that works properly is the one that comes with NvDVD. It's the only one I've found that allows TRUE fast forward/rewind of MCE recordings. Most of the others won't do it at all, or lockup.

Lots of real useful info on the GreenButton forums: http://www.thegreenbutton.com

chottoED · Post by **chottoED** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:16 pm

Thanks for the input FP!
I planned on using the onboard S-Video->component on the barebone - if I need something better later on, I'll order it.
Guess I'm going to PVR150 on the tuner then - thanks for the info on the input source.
I was planning on using PowerDVD on the system. Would that work okay for the MPEG2 driver?

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:13 pm

If that onboard video card is anything other than a Radeon or Geforce it probably won't work with MCE. MCE has very strict hardware requirements. It wants video cards that are certified for MCE or you'll get a certification warning every time you run MCE (you can disable the warning, but you may still have issues with the video).

MCE requires a DirectX9 hardware complaint video card with a whopping 128 Mb of Ram. Anything else is not likely to work. You MIGHT still be able to get away with it if you disable the 3D animated background in MCE but you may still have issues with video playback.

Minimum Radeon on the certified list is a 9550 although I have heard of people having success with lower models. Geforce FX5200 is the low end for NVidia cards.

chottoED · Post by **chottoED** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:46 pm

I read the comments on the AOpen barebone and saw someone in there was running MCE 2005 w/ the onboard. I'll see how it behaves after install and purchase a card if it doesn't behave.

Jim Z · Post by **Jim Z** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:56 am

MCE doesn't come with an MPEG2 driver - you need to supply one by installing a DVD player or download a generic codec. Almost none of the MPEG2 codecs, however, work properly with MCE. Keep in mind this is NOT just for DVDs - the recorder won't work without an MPEG2 codec either.

IIRC the hauppauge PVR cards install a software MPEG2 decoder, but I don't know how well it works. I assume that since they offer specific "MCE" versions of the cards, that it works well enough.