After the frustration of trying to get any ATI card to work I gave up and threw in a Nvidia 8600 GTS Silent Pipe card I wasn't using.
Unbelievable, it all just worked. My Windows 7 (7100 the RC) now works perfectly with all TV channels, HD DVD and BluRay disks (and image ISOs), music, photos and videos.
The setup is;
• Windows 7 (7100)
• Nova DVB-T 500 dual tuner
• MyMovies 2 (database and brilliant add-in to MCE)
• Arcsoft TMT 3 Platinum as my BluRay and HD DVD player
• elby CloneDVD as my ISO image mounting drive (auto mounts handled by My Movies 2)
• Nvida 8600 GTS Silentpipe card
• Big Screen EPG
• Reven's Version 3 XMLTVNZ
I now get an 8 day EPG with all channels including TV3+1, TV logos, colour coding of content on the EPG (blue for movies etc), picture thumbnails from the EPG, (hover your mouse over CSI and up pops a image of the CSI team).
Recording works perfectly, one or two channels can be recorded simultaneously. All the live TV pause, fast forward, rewind etc works fantastically well, no stutter. Audio plays at 1.5 speed, then goes mute at 2, 4, 6 etc speed.
The kids know how to work the MCE and have all their favourite DVDs on my terabyte drive. My Movies 2 is great, it has the DVD cover and back, actors, crew, comments etc. My 26 GB HD DVD and BluRay ISOs autoload and autoplay inside MCE using My Movies 2 which automounts the image, launches TMT 3 in full screen, and close and ejects the virtual drive when finished. All done within MCE using the MCE remote control all the way through.
It works so well I no longer use my DSE Freeview box, CD player nor DVD player.
After years of being a Media Portal fan I just cannot see myself going back, it was easy getting all of this going and it works without the hassle of loading and linking PowerDVD codecs to get hardware acceleration etc.