Media Center Edition 2005 and ATI AIW: Works Fine.

thx rouge gamer, but ive been fooling around with the latter option littirally all day.... i still get a black screen in MMC while trying to use the SP drivers... interestingly enough though, if you go into the initialization wizard in MMC with the SP drivers, it will prompt you with setting up the audio settings (i.e. 'make sure you have connected a line to you sound card') and you can hear the sound, while the NSP drivers do not prompt you at all.

i think its clear that the only way to get the TV to work in either MMC or MC is with the NSP drivers for now (well, that is for us MCE users), and hope that they fix the SP drivers in the next release.
 
Oldbridge said:
Solved. Copied the latest powerdvd.sim from my Powerdvd folder and I got 2, 4, 6 and 8 channels. Great tip! Why can't ATI do this for us? One silly file!
Click to expand...

Well, somewhere between DVD 2.1.0.1 and now, Cyberlink or ATI changed the license to 2-channel downmix only. Cyberlink probably changed their pricing and ATI decided it was cost effective by going with the 2-channel version for mass distribution. That, and they are now selling a premium "home theatre" version of the drivers with the multichannel decoder. Guess what the only difference is?

The .sim file is a license file. By substituting the one from DVD 2.1.0.1 (or PowerDVD) you're installing a license file that allows multichannel. You could go legit by keeping the old DVD 2.1.0.1, but 2.1.0.1 doesn't support DTV or VMR rendering, so it has some issues with current applications. It's not so much cracking as it is mixing software versions for best performance. :p

The Cyberlink decoder uses the first .sim file it finds for the license, which is why you have to delete the CLAud.sim to make it see the multichannel powerdvd.sim.

Why you get a corrupted audio panel with ClaudRC.dll present and a working one when you delete that file is beyond me. :nuts: You'd think it would be the other way around.
 
Wikid:

I think MMC looks to see if the AIW Encoder is registered and tries to use it.

If you're not using MCE try running a
regsvr32 /u C:\Program Files\ATI Multimedia\main\atimcenc.dll

and then tell me if MMC works with the SP WDMs. If you unregister atimcenc.dll, also try setting registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ATI Technologies\Multimedia\Features\TV\Display\Use FmtConv to 0

If you have to use the NSP WDMs, you might want to try tweaking the registry value

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ATI Technologies\Multimedia\Features\TV\Video Capture\Capture Delay
 
I haven't tried out using MMC under MCE yet. But the audio tricks works for the DVD in MCE. Even though I can't get DTS working but at least I got 5.1 working.

Now does anyone know the shortcut keys for the "Play DVD" in MCE?
I found out the channel buttons becomes angle switching. Can't find anything on the MCE help. How to go to the root menu, audio of the DVD once it start playing?

Right now I am browsing through thegreenbutton.com, their search engines aren't so smart. I am still reading the header to look for info. I hope somone here can tell me how.
 
shakafell said:
MCE keyboard shortcuts=
I used keymaster to remap all the buttons on my remote wonder. Only things missing are previous channel and typing letters with the keypad.
Click to expand...

Care to tell us where we can find the program called "keymaster"? Thanks.
 
Thanks Shakafell for the links.


I wonder if anyone have tried to use Dscaler under MCE? Is it possible to use it so we can have a lag free video in? I still try to look for ways to have video in for MCE so I can play my PS2 using my monitor.

Hope some experts here can come up with some good solutions.
 
I may try Dscaler over the weekend, if I got any progress, I will post up here. In the meantime I am trying to solve my other problems with MCE.

I tried the lastest 5.3 Catalyst and when I check on the eventlog, the Catalyst Control Panel (CLI) is keep giving me constant errors since the day I installed. And everytime the Media Center crashed or hanged, there is no log about errors on Media Center but I found warning about CLI. I ended up uninstalling the CLI. I only tried out for 3 hours last night and so far only 1 major BLUE screen of death (as I expected after reinstalling of video driver) but no more Media Center crashed or hang.

About the Blue Screen of death, I wonder if anyone experienced it as I did. It happened everytime (from the first time I install or) I reinstalled the video driver and go in Media Center and do TV signal search, Media Center will reply that I have only 1 TV Turner and very soon it will crashed into Blue Screen. After reboot, Media Center will see 2 TV Turners and no more Blue Screen of death no matter how many times I do the signal search.
 
RichardK said:
I may try Dscaler over the weekend, if I got any progress, I will post up here. In the meantime I am trying to solve my other problems with MCE.

I tried the lastest 5.3 Catalyst and when I check on the eventlog, the Catalyst Control Panel (CLI) is keep giving me constant errors since the day I installed. And everytime the Media Center crashed or hanged, there is no log about errors on Media Center but I found warning about CLI. I ended up uninstalling the CLI. I only tried out for 3 hours last night and so far only 1 major BLUE screen of death (as I expected after reinstalling of video driver) but no more Media Center crashed or hang.

About the Blue Screen of death, I wonder if anyone experienced it as I did. It happened everytime (from the first time I install or) I reinstalled the video driver and go in Media Center and do TV signal search, Media Center will reply that I have only 1 TV Turner and very soon it will crashed into Blue Screen. After reboot, Media Center will see 2 TV Turners and no more Blue Screen of death no matter how many times I do the signal search.
Click to expand...

Never had that problem. What is your system spec?

Mine:

Windows XP MCE 2005
Asus P4P800 Deluxe Motherboard
2(2x256MB)OCZ PC-3200 DDR400 Enhanced Latency
P4 3GHZ
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
ATI X800Pro
Sapphire Theatrix Theatre 550 Pro TV Tuner

CATALYST 5.3 Windows XP Media Center Edition
THEATER 550 PRO TV Tuner Drivers - 6.14.10.52
Directx 9.0c
Most of the latest bios update for my Motherboard
 
People who are using the XP MCE 2005 here, what decoder are you using? I have try Powerdvd 6 and Windvd 6 and both seems to give me scan lines, interlace lines and very grainy effects and it's not very clear. I have no clue if it's my cable because there hardly any changes when trying to use an amplifier and without one. I even connect it straight to my tv tuner without splitting it and still I'm not getting very clear picture.

Just wanted to know what's the best decoder so far to use on my system.
 
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asia said:
Never had that problem. What is your system spec?
Click to expand...
Mine is:

Windows XP MCE 2005
THEATER 550 PRO TV Tuner Drivers (all the lastest from ATI)
CATALYST 5.3 AIW Driver (tried the MCE too same result)
MMC 9.06
Using the ATI DVD Decoder from ATI website

Asus P4C800 Deluxe Motherboard
2 Samsung (one that was recommend by Asus) 512Mb Ram (1024)
P4 3GHZ
Creative SB Live 5.1 Platinium
ATI AIW 9800 Pro
ATI TV Wonder Elite

My Problems:-
#1 - Blue screen of death after installing all the video drivers and signal searching - I believe it is due to the TV Turner in AIW cause it never got recognised in all my first search attempt (only Elite got found) and appears 2 turners after BSOD. (the reason why I know which card got found cause I have reinstalled many times with cable attached to both or either one card only) Btw, no more BSOD on signal search as long as I don't reinstall video drivers.
(having my finger crossed)

#2 - Constant warning and errors about CLI (Catalyst Control Panel) - not too sure when it started but after I updated the .net, I am sure it keeps showing up in eventlog every couple minutes especially when I move from Media Center to desktop. I tried to uninstall .net and reinstall it and it doesn't help. I ended up uninstalling CLI to avoid seeing more warnings

#3 - Media Center hangs while quiting - Once in a while my Media Center will hang when I quit while watching live TV. As long as I stopped Live TV before closing Media Center, I have not yet experienced any more application hang again while quiting. (having my finger crossed)

#4 - 20+ warning of ati2mtag in eventlog - It happened everytime I boot up the machine and there will be 20+ warning in system eventlog about ati2mtag, It didn't happen when I used the default one that comes with MCE. I am still figuring out how to avoid this warning messages.


So far I am quite happy with MCE, it is running pretty smoothly. The picture quality of live TV and DVD is very good. The TV is a bit blur and not vivid enough but no grainy effect or moire effect at all even at full screen. Consider stretching a 320x240 window to 1600x1200, it is in very good quality. I hope the ATI will have a new Plugin to adjust the sharpness of the images. The current ATI MCE Plugin to adjust brightness and contrast is not that useful as we all can adjust it from TV or monitor.
 
I understand that the 9.06 Catalyst has MCE support, and am going to dive in at another fresh install. But first I want to get a few things straight.

I have an ASUS P4PE, a P4 2.4, 512MB in PC2700 memory, Soundmax onboard digital sound, and the AIW 9880Pro and the HDTVW. All bios and ancillary drivers are up to date.

I know to install MCE and the HDTV rollup before tackling the drivers.
Do I need to install DX9 and .Net before installing the drivers, or is that tech included in MCE?

Do I need to clean up whatever MCE recognizes and installs regarding the AIW and/or HDTVW from a fresh install before installing Catalyst and MMC?

Do I need to remove the HDTVW card until the drivers are installed and the computer is restarted? If so, how much should be installed before I put the HDTVW cad back in? Catalyst, MMC, DVD Decoder, Remote?

If I install Catalyst [XP version], should I or should I not install 'hdtv-wonder-4-1024?'

I know to use the XP version, not the MCE version, but which iteration of that version of the Catalyst driver should I use? Just the Display Driver, just the Control Panel, just the CATALYST Control Center, just the WDM Integrated Driver? The combo the includes everything but the Control Center? The combo that includes all 4?

Am I correct in the understanding that I need to install MMC 9.06 as well?

I have the DVD Decoder that came with the cards on CD [purchased circa 12/04], the new CDWiz4-0 version, and the one in between. I also have WnDVD6 and NVidia Decover 1.00.67. Any input on which would be best would be appreciated.
 
Weekend of Nightmares

Weekend of Nightmares

During weeknights I only have the TV in Media Center on for an hour or two at most and it didn't seem to have any problems. But I have let it running most of the time during the weekend and lots of problems showed up.

BAD #1, Blue screen of death showed up when I stop and eject a DVD from Media Center. Giving an error about the driver irql is doing some illegal operation and then reboot. (It happened twice) It is alright if I close the Media Center before ejecting the DVD. Sounds very weird.

BAD #2, Blue screen of death after the lastest version of DScalar hang up. Didn't spend much time following up cause I have other issues to solve.

VERY VERY BAD #3, TV freezed and Media Center hang for no reason after a couple hours or switching channels too often or resizing. After the hang up, Media Center won't run properly anymore until after reboot. But all the TV recording running from background seems not affected. They still run smoothly at the background. The WORST part is Windows stopped at the screen of shutting down (waited about 3 to 5 min with no response) and I have to press the reset to reboot. It crashed more than 10 times like that over Friday night and Saturday.

On Sunday morning, I ended up uninstalling all ATI stuff and reinstalling Catalyst 5.3, DAO, DVD Decoder, and Theater 550 driver. This time I didn't install MMC, Media Center only saw my TV Elite and ignore my AIW Turner. I tried to scan, reboot and detect a couple more times from MC and still it can't see my AIW. Seems like MC needs something from ATI MMC to recognize the AIW Turner. I had the AIW Turner idle this time and let the Media Center TV running the whole day and suprisingly Media Center hasn't freezed or hang all day (yet). Still BSOD happened once while I stop playing DVD and eject DVD (mentioned before).

The only thing missing between Sunday and Saturday are MMC 9.06 and ATI Remote Wonder Plus. I don't know which one is causing the conflict and hang everything.

Other minor stuff still exist are the warnings of atim2tag and CLI constant warning.


Something good happend over the weekend too. I tried out Movie Maker and it can detect my Elite and let S-Video in. I tried out GT4 on PS2 and the delay is minimum but the window is too small, no comb filtering and there is no sound. The Nero ??? Express comes with my DVD writer can detect my AIW and runs in a small window with sound.
 
shakafell said:
At this point go ahead and configure all your control panels, driver settings, system settings the way you like.
NOW launch media center for the first time and it should see all of your tuners. In my case it didn't and I had to actually run ATI TV first. I suspect this is to register the filters and dlls for the mpeg encoder. In order to run ATI TV you must disable the 'ehrecvr.exe' process in task manager. Then launch ATI TV and go ahead and configure it to watch TV. This will also let you know everything is working. Reboot and run media center again. Now it should see all your tuners.

A tip. Media Center uses directx for its display. Make sure you have AA set to 'let application decide' in CCC. Otherwise with AA forced on you will get bugs in the display.
Click to expand...


I will check out my directx setting and try out running ATI TV first before I go to Media Center to discover my TV cards. I have left everything in the setting as default besides Fast Write (which hangs everything when I was using MMC before with XP).

I am crossing my fingers again. :)
 
Simplest install

Simplest install

Hello guys,



I have an AIW 9800 and an HDTV Wonder and MCE. What is the simplest install that is required? Do I really need to install MMC? I see that you say it is required - but what part is required? Can I just install the drivers (like KRAM's hack)? The less the better!



MCE and MMC sound scary to me. I tried it a few times ago and it was a serious mess.



So what are the absolute minimum steps that are required?

Can we install just drivers from the MMC install file (once it is unpacked)?



Thanks!
 
MCE needs something or other that MMC installs; if you don't install MMC, MCE won't detect your tuner. I know it's scary to install both but it's not a problem, I did it before with an AIW 9800.

Now the only question that remains for me is how can I play console games with MCE installed?
 
I've followed shakafell's advice and reinstall the drivers and MMC one more time. Maybe I am bad boy in front of TV, I like to do many channel switching. I still got the Media Center freezed problem.

On Monday night I uninstall ATI stuff and install everything (except remote). I did a test. I just turned on the LiveTV for about 10 seconds up to 10 min and close the Media Center down 10 times. I didn't have time to do extensive testing but 2 out of 10 times, I got Media Centre hang. Process "ehRecvr" can't be stopped or removed from task manager and my Windows got frozen while shutting down.

Last night, I uninstall all ATI stuff and reinstall all the drivers but not the MMC 9.06 and remote, my AIW Turner is idle while running Media Center. I did the similar test 10 times, and my Media Center didn't crashed. I will do more testing over the week.

Seems like for those who have HDTV paired with AIW doesn't seem to have my problems, Anyone out there using TV Wonder Elite as primary turner and AIW9800Pro as secondary turner on XP MCE 2005? I wonder do they experience my problems.



Followup - Wednesday result

Using the same settings and configuration as on Tuesday, I have installed the remote wonder plus last night. I did over 20+ opening and closing Media Center while watching TV, DVD, or recorded TV and my Media Center never freezed or hang.

I now have a feeling the Catalyst 5.3 for AIW maybe working alone under XP MCE but it may not be too stable to use along side with TV Wonder Elite under XP MCE 2005.
 
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MCE Hangs!!!

MCE Hangs!!!

Hello folks,

I have an Ai7 mobo and a 2,4GHZ CPU.
AIW 9800
AverMedia 1500 MCE
HDTV Wonder
1 GB Ram (2 modules)
I tried the 5.3 drivers and followed the directions. However MCE hangs!

It saw the tuners and I was able to record three things. I started watching a DVD and the bloody thing was awesome! Until I went back to the main menu and tried to push the TV button - that hung the rig. needed a cold boot to shut it down.

Is there anything wrong with the AI7 and AIW's MCE drivers? I had this same thing happen with KRAM's drivers.

Please help!!

 
raccah said:
Hello folks,
Is there anything wrong with the AI7 and AIW's MCE drivers? I had this same thing happen with KRAM's drivers.
Click to expand...

Welcome to the party. I have been experienced the same problem for the last 2 weeks. Seems like the AIW TV Turner driver randomly crash eshell and won't let the service to stop and windows to reboot properly.

HDTV wonder and TV Wonder Elite are MCE certified cards and AIW TV Turner has not yet been certified so there might be bugs. I don't have HDTV Wonder, so I don't know how the drivers there work. Does the HDTV and the analog TV on HDTV required MMC to run? If possible, try to disable AIW TV Turner for now and see how it works.

For me, I currently use only the TV Wonder Elite and by not installing the MMC so the AIW TV Turner is not recognized by MCE. No matter how many times I open and close LiveTV in Media Center, no matter how long I left it on, (4 days since I test with Elite driver only ), MC hasn't crashed once yet.

Good Luck :)
 
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