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Now, I'm pretty happy with the system. Blu-ray has always worked very well with pdvd 7.3. Freeview-HD Live-tv looks great in mediaportal, and music sounds great mixed to 5.1 via mediaportal. Dvd's show best using Powercinema 6, which also provides the HA h.264 codec for mediaportal. I use the imon software in conjunction with the logitech 525 for a smooth remote experience which works the same way in pdvd/mediaportal/powercinema. The only mediaportal plugin I use is OneButtonMusic, which is great for random evening listening. I use AC3Filter in mediaportal for 5.1 AC3 with HD TV.
I purposely tried to set up a system without a discrete video card, and my system seems to work fine in this respect. Not having to resort to the Nvidia tax for TV/blu-ray is nice. For those that care, Catalyst 9.7 works fine on my system, given three days of use. That said, 8.12, 9.1 and 9.5 all worked fine as well, given a capable codec.
Niggles remaining:
1. I tried S3 sleep mode for poweroff once. It seemed to cause an issue with mediaportal TVserver on wake-up, so now I pay the OS reboot tax. Low priority to fix, probably just a software config.
2. Signal issues from the aerial. Only fixable (if at all) with a new aerial or roof meter work. Medium priority, as issues are fairly rare, but a glitch in hidef is annoying. $$ required for aerial and/or technician wi meter.
3. Find a working solution for non-downsampled blu-ray audio for ALC889. PDVD9 should support this, but it doesn't work on my system. Medium priority, I want downsampling gone. $ for pdvd upgrade.
4. 1080p TV. High priority, $$$$ for new TV.
5. Backup software, to preserve the system to avoid terminal WAF damage. $ for TrueImage
6. Still no Prime on Freeview - Edit: Prime now on Freeview, 17 August 2009
All in all, the HTPC experience has been fun, and the result is great, but there are an awful lot of moving parts in the software solution. Having shelled out for Vista, I am very reluctant to buy Windows 7 to get a working freeviewhd windows media center, so it looks like I'll be on Mediaportal for a while.
Now, if I can just resist tinkering...
Trusted
