Hi All,

  Here are my experiences with my HTPC build using the following components:  These will probably equally apply to other mATX 8300 boards, as they may all be based on the same reference design.

*  Phenom x3 8650 with stock HSF
*  4GB DDR-2 1066Mhz Corsair RAM
*  Asus M3N78-EM AM2+ Motherboards with the Nvidia 8300 Chipset
*  Antec Fusion V2 HTPC case.
*  Windows 7 RC7100
*  Hauppauge WinTV Nova T 500 HD PCI Dual Tuner TV Receiver now substituted with an HVR-3000

  Hopefully will be helpful to someone contemplating the same kind of system.


1)  W7 on this motherboard with the Nova-T 500 JUST DOESN'T WORK.
-    You can install and use Windows 7 just fine without the card in.  However, as soon as you insert the card, it tries to unsuccessfully install the USB interface between the PCI slot and the two tuner chips over and over again. Usually this results in a BSOD.  The PC starts again, the PCI USB interface tries installing again - BSOD - rinse repeat.
  If you try installing Windows 7 with the card in place, it never completes the installaton.  It gets up to the point where the device drivers get installed and stalls there.  I know it is this point because the display drivers go in first and the screen blanks out for a second or two before continuing on.
  If you replace the card with a HVR-3000 (also PCI based), it runs just fine.

  Yes, Windows 7 does indeed have a BSOD!

2)  Don't be fooled by the extended periods of time the Windows 7 installation process takes doing nothing.  This will catch a lot of people out as they will think their system has stalled.  Once it gets up to the point where it starts copying system files it actually starts to move pretty quickly.  On a reasonable system you should get through the two slowest sections, waiting for the drive selection menu and the menu for the installation options, in about 15 minutes.  Have patience.
  This is going to catch a lot of people out, especially if they have experience installing other beta's or the RC in a Virtual Environement, as these delays do not occur there.
  MS really need to do something to show that the processes are running in the background, otherwise they are going to get a lot of people resetting their systems thinking it has stalled.

3)  Drivers to use.
-  Use the Asus Vista chipset drivers, but install them using the nvidia setup.exe from within the setup folder.  The Asus installation app erreroneously tells you that the drivers are incompatible with Windows 7 and premeturely terminates.  Run Windows Update afterwards to complete the process.

-  Nvidia have some v185 Windows 7 drivers which are compatible with the 8300.  Download and install these as they are stable and pretty good.

4)  The Nvidia 8300 chipset with the v185 drivers for Windows 7 can decode Freeview DVB-T signals onboard @ below 7% CPU utilisation.  Most of the time it is well below that, averaging between 3-4% .  No extra graphics card is required for decoding if this motherboard is used.

5)  The TV needs to be turned on before the PC starts.
-  If the computer starts before the TV, it defaults to either the DVI-D or the VGA output and you get no display on the screen. There doesn't seem to be a setting in the BIOS to set the default.
-  Resuming from sleep is fine, as Windows 7 is smart enough to just send the signal to the last functional output.  Overall this is a non-issue, as because it is a HTPC it will be be in Sleep mode about 99% of the time, and anytime it needs to get restarted, I'll be initiating the process anyway.

6)  Weirdness with MP3 playback.
-  If you play MP3s through your media library in MCE, stop the playback then swtich to using live TV, the pc is unable to gain access of the DVB-T card.  It sits there telling you the adapter is in use.  The only way of regaining TV functionality is by rebooting the box.

7)  The Phenom x3 8650 on this board and in this case is a very good combination.
-  It is reasonably powerful and there are a lot of combo deals available at various retailers for around $359+ including CPU, Mobo and 2Gb of RAM.  Plus you save the $100-130 or so on the graphics card, as all the DVB-T decoding is done onboard.
- Under load the CPU sits at around 35C with all the fans turned down low and very quiet.
-  The stock AMD HSF is pretty quiet, although to make it even quieter I will be looking for another 80mm PWM fan with FDB bearings to replace this one as a direct replacement.

8)  The iMon software which runs the VFD Display on the front of most Antec cases is good.
Once you have the new 7.6 version from the Soundgraph website which supports Windows 7, it works like a dream with very little configuration required.  All the appropriate info about the MCE screens you are in comes up on the display without any configuration necessary.

9)  The standard Hauppauge remote is not an Media Centre remote.
-  Forget any thoughts you may have about trying to get your bundled remote working with Media Centre (unless you've actually got a Hauppauge MCE remote, which is different from the standard one).  The standard remote won't work. There are Media Centre remotes available for as little as $35. Get one.
-  If you are going to be shelling out $35 for a remote anyway, why not spend an extra $30 and you can get a universal one which can replace a number of other remotes at the same time.  Most people have one or more of the following as well:  a Home Theatre, TV, DVD player, Blue Ray, AMP, CD Player. $65-80 will allow you just to carry one around instead of 3-4.

10)  Big Screen EPG and xmlTVNZ are essential for getting your 8 dayTV guide up and running in MCE.
-  After a donation to Reven at http://www.reven.co.nz/ you will be granted access to the beta version of xmlTVNZ.  This very handy tool downloads all the Program Guide information for all your channels from a number of sources then drops them into a TVGuide.xml file.  The www.reven.co.nz even has an automated command builder to help you with this process.
-  Sign up with www.bigscreenglobal.com and you can get access to the the .04 beta version of Big Screen EPG.  This picks up the tvguide.xml file you created with the previous tool and drops it into the MCE database to populate your 8 day Electronic Program Guide.  Just remember to make sure that when you set up the channnels in the configuration tool, that the channel names must match what you see in MCE EXACTLY, otherwise the data will not be imported correctly.


If anyone can tell me how I can set up both DVB-S nd DVB-T channels simultanouely in MCE I would appreciate it.  Every time I do a rescan on both, the DVB-S versions of the Freeview channels get knocked out and I get left with DVB-T Freeview and a crap load of unusuable aussie satelite channels.  You should be able to do it because you can set the preference in MCE for multiple sources.  Unless you can't and the multple sources need to be separate cards. . . . .

INSPECTOR GADGET