MEDIA PORTAL. THE ULTIMATE HTPC FRONT END

S

SciDoctor

New member
For those seriously fedup/lost with the ATI MMC and run W2Ksp4 or XPsp2 then you should try MEDIAPORTAL. .NET 2.x has to be installed.

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/showthread.php?t=11531

Open source,daily updates if you wish Better than MCE or CMC.Friendly and helpful FORUM

XP has to have sp2 installed for the latest streambuffer engine.

W2ksp4 needs the files sbe.dll, sbeio.dll and wmvcore2.dll added to system32 folder then run 'regsvr32 sbe.dll' and 'regsvr32 wmvcore2.dll' to upgrade to the stream buffer engine.

ATI drivers.

CCC isn't required so you can use the control panel if desired .
(Remember the CATALYST package is three basic parts DRIVER,WDM and CCC they can be instaled independantly)

6.5 driver is probably the best to use as later version have severe problems with many programs .

6.5 driver is the best and last to use with pre9500 ATI cards.

You can use later than 6.5 driver with post 9500 cards if desired but be aware that there may be problems .

WHICH WDM TO use ?

For pre 9500 cards then use the WDM NSP drivers found with 6.2 - 6.4 catalyst package.

All ATI WDM drivers need to be release 6.14.10.6325 in the device manager.

For certain AIW like the 9000 you will need to manualy force the instal of the NSP drivers as the basic ATI auto instal will not.

Post 9500 cards use the latest T-200 driver which should instal without any problems.


MPEG encoding the analog stream?

This is required from the ATI 6.6 encoder package or the latest 6.8 package .

The important file is the ATIMCENC.dll in the system32 folder ('regsvr32.dll atimcenc.dll' if you manualy copy this file)

This will now give you the three ATI Media Center filters required for MPEGstream encoding. All cards will also now work with MMC9.15 if desired!? and MCE )

Leting MediaPortal now how to handle your card and filters?

Media Portal uses a filter graph construct to enable TV cards to be recognised and feed the required MPEG2 stream to the MP engine (at the moment based on the MS streambuffer encoder engine)

More details are over at the MP Forums but the basisc graphs are as follows.
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/forumdisplay.php?f=54

For T-200 drivers post 9500 cards.

<capturecard commercialname="ATI All-in-Wonder X series (Analogue)" capturename="ATI T200 AVStream Analog Capture" devid="ntativrv01">
<capabilities tv="true" radio="true" mpeg2="true" mce="false" sw="false" bda="false"/>
<tv>
<interface cat="mux" video="" audio="" mpeg2="0"/>
<filters>
<filter cat="tvtuner" name="ATI T200 AVStream Analog Tuner" checkdevice="false"/>
<filter cat="tvaudio" name="ATI T200 AVStream Analog TV Audio" checkdevice="false"/>
<filter cat="crossbar" name="ATI T200 AVStream Analog Xbar" checkdevice="true"/>
<filter cat="capture" name="ATI T200 AVStream Analog Capture" checkdevice="true"/>
<filter cat="videncoder" name="ATI Media Center Video Encoder" checkdevice="false"/>
<filter cat="audencoder" name="ATI Media Center Audio Encoder" checkdevice="false"/>
<filter cat="mux" name="ATI Media Center Multiplexer" checkdevice="false"/>
</filters>
<connections>
<connection sourcefilter="tvtuner" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="crossbar" sinkpin="%tvtuner%"/>
<connection sourcefilter="tvtuner" sourcepin="1" sinkfilter="tvaudio" sinkpin="0"/>
<connection sourcefilter="tvaudio" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="crossbar" sinkpin="%audiotuner%"/>
<connection sourcefilter="crossbar" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="capture" sinkpin="0"/>
<connection sourcefilter="crossbar" sourcepin="1" sinkfilter="capture" sinkpin="1"/>
<connection sourcefilter="capture" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="videncoder" sinkpin="0"/>
<connection sourcefilter="capture" sourcepin="4" sinkfilter="audencoder" sinkpin="0"/>
<connection sourcefilter="videncoder" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="mux" sinkpin="1"/>
<connection sourcefilter="audencoder" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="mux" sinkpin="0"/>
</connections>
</tv>
</capturecard>


For WDM NSP drivers and pre 9500 cards.

capturecard commercialname="ATI AIW 9200 Cards or earlier" capturename="ATI Rage Theater Video Capture" devid="ntativrv35">
<capabilities tv="true" radio="false" mpeg2="true" mce="false" sw="false" bda="false"/>
<tv>
<interface cat="mux" video="" audio="" mpeg2="0"/>
<filters>
<filter cat="tvtuner" name="ATI TV Tuner" checkdevice="true"/>
<filter cat="tvaudio" name="ATI TV Audio" checkdevice="true"/>
<filter cat="crossbaraudio" name="ATI TV Audio Crossbar" checkdevice="true"/>
<filter cat="crossbarvideo" name="ATI Rage Theater Video Crossbar" checkdevice="true"/>
<filter cat="capture" name="ATI Rage Theater Video Capture" checkdevice="true"/>
<filter cat="videncoder" name="ATI Media Center Video Encoder" checkdevice="false"/>
<filter cat="audencoder" name="ATI Media Center Audio Encoder" checkdevice="false"/>
<filter cat="mux" name="ATI Media Center Multiplexer" checkdevice="false"/>
</filters>
<connections>
<connection sourcefilter="tvtuner" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="crossbaraudio" sinkpin="%tvtuner%"/>
<connection sourcefilter="tvtuner" sourcepin="1" sinkfilter="tvaudio" sinkpin="0"/>
<connection sourcefilter="tvaudio" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="crossbaraudio" sinkpin="%audiotuner%"/>
<connection sourcefilter="crossbaraudio" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="crossbarvideo" sinkpin="0"/>
<connection sourcefilter="crossbaraudio" sourcepin="1" sinkfilter="crossbarvideo" sinkpin="2"/>
<connection sourcefilter="crossbaraudio" sourcepin="2" sinkfilter="crossbarvideo" sinkpin="1"/>
<connection sourcefilter="crossbaraudio" sourcepin="3" sinkfilter="capture" sinkpin="1"/>
<connection sourcefilter="crossbarvideo" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="capture" sinkpin="0"/>
<connection sourcefilter="capture" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="videncoder" sinkpin="0"/>
<connection sourcefilter="capture" sourcepin="4" sinkfilter="audencoder" sinkpin="0"/>
<connection sourcefilter="videncoder" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="mux" sinkpin="1"/>
<connection sourcefilter="audencoder" sourcepin="0" sinkfilter="mux" sinkpin="0"/>
</connections>
</tv>
</capturecard>


PROBLEMS.

Most problems are due to different hardware specs of the TV cards specific to the user, this means that the 'pin' in/outs may be different on certain filters and need changing. See the MP hardware forums for more help and the use of GRAPHEDIT to find details.

Also the devid="ntativrv"?? where ?? mathces the filter specific to your cards .
 
Last edited:
zob said:
I tryed MEDIAPORTAL with AIW x1900 & CCC 6.9 Program see's no tv tuner card.
Click to expand...


Did you post on the MEDIA PORTAL hardware forum for help?

Problems like these can normaly be sorted quickly with a little help with graphedit and checking you have the correct filters installed and which pins are present with respect to your card.

A filter graph construct is then added to the required xml file and then all should work fine.

Head over to the MP forum for help .
 
Whoah! Thanks SciDoctor!

I wish I knew about this thing earlier... I've been doing a ton of work with XLobby (ripping movies) and had just adandoned any kind of TV/tuner capability using ATI hardware.

I'm gonna play with this as it looks like a LOT less work than I've been putting into XLobby (which I've been digging totally).

Sidenote- do you know off the top of your head if anyone has made a RW plug-in or similar for this beastie? I'm gonna dig into this neato looking open source software in the next few weeks. :)
 
Well, I spent about an hour gacking with MediaPortal. Nice toy so far. :)

I have one question though.. I see you referencing "6.6 encoder" alot.. which version is this? 9.13/9.14/9.15? The encoders on ATI's site jump from 6_5..encoder.exe to 6_8..encoder.exe. (I manually plunked an atimcenc.dll from the 6_8 one from 9.15 and this seems to work, but planning on doing a fresh re-install WITHOUT MMC on the HTPC in the living room).

So far I've got all the TV tuner stuff working but quality looks pretty... poor by comparison to ATI's TV or other TV tuner apps. Of course I also had the audio sync issue but choosing different audio renderers, I found one much closer to being in-sync.

A lot of promise! I'll have to dig into TV-guide/program info. next as there doesn't seem to be any drop-in help for us Yanks' here in California. Given how extensible and configurable this thing is, it should be trivial at best to make my own plug-ins for it. This is definately something I'll be using. :)
 
6.5, 6.6 (came on an ATi CD) and 6.8 ecoders all work.

There is very little difference between them . The important issue is geting ATIMCENC.dll registerd for the ATI Media Center filters as you have found and which ATI try to stop being installed on alot of their cards.

Odd you find TV quality poor; I find my 9800 and 9000 and 7000pci (all THEATRE 200 based) give much better PQ in MP than any other app espeacialy compared to the MMC 9.09-9.15 which force TOD.

I still prefer the Cyberlink ATI filters with thte ATI cards and audio sync seems to be a problem with some setups unless you choose default direct sound.

There is native X10 support for the RW inbuilt into MP, you need to turn it on in the config. If running native you will need to disable the ATI RW software as youwill now get duplicated responses.
There was a RW ammo plugin but it is no a little out of date, seee the RW plugin website.
 
Thanks again SciDoctor! I got the X10/ATI flavor working with the remote and still pluggin' away.

This thing blows MMC away in just about every way.

The TV/IQ thing is mainly since it's being blown up to a 50+" HDTV at 720p. Believe it or not, DVD-High even on MMC 9.15 looked pretty good as we have a strong analog signal + 25dba booster on the house feed. It seems to be more the scaling that's the problem as MMC's TV would zoom/scale it up to better fit the 16:9 screen, but it's boxed in MediaPortal and going wide adds all sorts of scaling artifact's ATI's doesn't.

I think we're going to just toss the whole AIW line and try going with an HDTV Wonder or Hauppauge. We've got a UHF antenna the size of New Jersey on the roof we're gonna see if it picks up OTA HD UHF signals as we're about 8 miles from an OTA HD broadcast point/clear shot with no big trees or buildings. I'm definately going to stick with this MediaPortal though as it's something I've been looking for.

Thanks man! I'm gonna dig into tv-guide listings this week. Looks like it feeds from an XML file, which I'm sure I can likely massage Titan-TV feeds to XML with a simple program. :)
 
I had some trouble getting this to run. I followed all the instructions and finally found one method, actually 2, that worked for my ATI AIW X800 XT.

First, good luck finding the 6-3_encoder unless you managed to download it prior to the AMD Convoluted mess they call a website. I used:
6-4_encoder_31959 from MMC 9.13.

I edited the "CaptureCardDefinitions.xml" to include the 3 definitions for the X-Series boards. They are all commented out.

When I setup MP it showed the ATI board but nothing worked so I selected it and then deleted it and then clicked on add. It will find the board and then you need to set it up for the correct broadcast standard. It defaults to PAL!

Now I can play to see if I like this!
 
Yeah, I really liked MediaPortal, its so good that you can’t help thinking to yourself “This it FREE!?! OMG!!!”

I ran MP some time ago on an ATI TV Wonder VE (never really got sound working right) and later on a Theater 550 Pro (everything worked great!).

As I recall setting up XMTV listings seemed a bit difficult but it really wasn’t, in fact it was actually very easy. There was a good guide for setting up listings (complete with pix) and if I can find it I’ll post it.

I don’t use MP because I moved on to MCE before I actually tried MP and I like MCE better but they were really doing some great things with MP,…. its really good software.
 
Pretends to be Nero and Crashes

Pretends to be Nero and Crashes

Can't see what you people are so excited about. The configuration tool crashes aready at the page trying to find tv channels. It pops up a window with the title "Nero" and complains that it can't find a dll which I actually have on my system.
 
krutknut said:
Can't see what you people are so excited about. The configuration tool crashes aready at the page trying to find tv channels. It pops up a window with the title "Nero" and complains that it can't find a dll which I actually have on my system.
Click to expand...

If you have problems then use the MediaPortal forums where you will find a lot of help.

As I have no basic problems using MP on w2ksp4, XPsp2 and VISTA 32bit with a lot of ATI hardware then your viewpoint is a little odd.

In future post a little more info if you want help espeacialy when you post on the MP forums; their guide gives in detail what is helpful to include for forum users and devs to help debug your problems.

There is also logs produced in th MP directory that can help with pinpointing errors with your setup.

A little patience and you could have yourself a very good HTPC application running.
 
Thanks for the lead!

Thanks for the lead!

Just installed my TV Wonder 650 last night and decided to skip ATI software altogether and went straight to MediaPortal 0.2.2.0. Other than a crash during setup when scanning channels, and a known bug which causes problems switching between windowed and fullscreen (just choose to start fullscreen in config and you'll have no problem) all is great!

Here's a link to help people in North America setup their EPG: Mediaportal XMLTV Setup - North America

And here's one for a free CODEC installer / viewer utility to help you figure out what you need / have.

I previously purchased Cyberlink's PowerDVD 6 and I find that chaning the video CODEC to the CyberLink Video/SP Decoder results in better looking TV (or seems to).
 
With ATI hardware the Cyberlink ATI decoders do offer the best performance and so they should as they are optimised.

In the config you can also adjust the (any) decoders atributes if you choose post processing.

With respect to the resizing bug, a workaround is to ensure you have NO video playing and you are in the HOME screen and then Direct x crashes are very rare.
 
WarlorD721 said:
This not compatible with my 8500 AIW :cry:
Click to expand...

The problem is that the RAGE theatre drivers aren't pin compatable with the ATI MEDIA CENTER filters. MediaPortal like MCE relies on the software mpeg encoding of the video stream done by these filters.

Only Theatre 200 chipset AIW are supported.
 
Hey SciDoc. I was actually searching through the Media Portal forums to see why my AIW 9800 Pro wouldn't work and saw you were a poster there. :D

Can you offter any assistance as to why it says it can't find a tv tuner? :)
 
Which TV engine version of MediaPortal are you using.

TVe2 is the standard version and should worl fine with the AIW with either T200 drivers or the WMD-sp/nsp.

The newer TVe3 (the TV service ) is not compatable with many software based TV cards like the AIW or TV wonder and majors in the DVB-T,-S, etc digital broadcasts.

Post your MP logs in the thread over at MP Forums and I will have a look at them and see what the problem is.

My AIW 9000 (with WDM-NSP drivers and CATS 7.1)and AIW 9800 (either T200 or WDM-NSP drivers) works fine with standard MP.
 
Does anyone know how the 2600xt/pro cards work with Media Portal? Does MP make use of the gpu hardware acceleration?
 
D3xx said:
Does anyone know how the 2600xt/pro cards work with Media Portal? Does MP make use of the gpu hardware acceleration?
Click to expand...


As the hardware accleration features are part of the DSHOW filters and codecs then MP shouldn't pose any problems as it builds the GRAHPS form the desired filters.

ATM there does seem to be the usual ATI/AMD driver problems with these new cards, some peple are resorting to editing the REG to get features that should work, working.

A couple of CAT releases should see the problems ironed out .
 
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