H.264 cracked in Vista Media Center?

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Mattv

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Topic # 26356 19-Sep-2008 16:43

I'm sure many of you have been following this on the Green Button but for those that have not, it seems they belive they have H.264 working in VMC again. I won't get a chance to try it until next week but would be very keen to know if someone in NZ can get it working!

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Reply # 165688 19-Sep-2008 17:26

Yes, I've been following this thread too. Fasinating seeing how it's been playing out over the past couple of weeks.

I've just downloaded the DLL, but am reluctant to try it out as my system is still on the unstable side at present. But I'm sure that people here will try it out before long.

RustyGonad did say that the beta version was a little flakey in the h.264 area though. Interested to have this expanded on a bit as it will influence the direction I decide to take.

geekiegeek

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Reply # 165691 19-Sep-2008 17:44

wow if this is cracked it would be pretty cool - just a question though, does VMC supprt the audio used by NZ freeview?

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My thoughts are my own and are in no way representative of my employer.

RustyGonad

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Reply # 165694 19-Sep-2008 18:12

Looks like it works - shame they didn't fix all the bugs while they were at it

Need to have more of a play to see if I can get it stable - however I'm not holding my breath...

Mattv

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Reply # 165698 19-Sep-2008 18:52

RustyGonad:
Looks like it works - shame they didn't fix all the bugs while they were at it

hmm, was afraid that may be the case.

dxp

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Reply # 165751 20-Sep-2008 01:38

RustyGonad:
Looks like it works - shame they didn't fix all the bugs while they were at it

Need to have more of a play to see if I can get it stable - however I'm not holding my breath...

Are you trying this with the Fiji beta or the TV Pack ? Does our HE-AAC LATM audio work with either or both of these? My understanding is that the TV Pack will not support internet derived EPG (i.e. xmlTVNZ/BladeRunner), so is there any solution to that? Can you elaborate on the bugs - is it just in playback or also in recording? Thanks for yor help.

sbiddle

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Reply # 165757 20-Sep-2008 08:35

AAC-LATM is supported in the update.

The real issue was the stability - when viewing H.264 content at times you would receive a message saying that no tuner was available when you changed channels or entered/exited live TV and from memory the only way to fix this was to reboot the PC.

The EPG format has changed and since NZ's MHEG5 isn't supported you can't use software such as BladeRunner Pro to import an EPG but I'm sure updates will be available.

RustyGonad

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Reply # 165773 20-Sep-2008 09:27

Yea - like sbiddle said - stability has always been the issue with the beta/beta.dll.

There are other ways to get the guide (thats the easy bit) everything here works ok - you can grab it from the DVB-S EIT Stream (over the air), and merge the channels, but unless you like walking around on tippy toes in your lounge hoping you don't knock anything, then I don't see the beta dll as a workable solution in NZ.

I believe some guys in oz will soon have a workable internet based guide updater as well. This should get around the issues with the Freeview DVB-S guide and TV Pack in NZ.

BUGS - when it works it works perfectly - better than anything else out there, including audio support (DD etc), recording goes just fine. However when you change channel it breaks most of the time. You cannot mix h.264 and non h.264 (ie Sky via DVBSBridge) without rebooting everytime.

I'll try a clean build later on to see if I can get some stability, but like I said earlier, knowing the state of h.264 in the beta, I'm not holding my breath. It appears that the NZ DVB-T streams are different enough from the european profiles to cause major instability. The guys in europe don't appear to have the issues we do. I suspect its something to do with our MHEG profile or something closely related to it, as unless you turn off MHEG it breaks out of the box.

Despite what the conspiracy theorists have said about MS, I suspect one of the main reasons that h.264 was pulled was that it wasn't ready for prime time (the PBDA being to immature to release properly). Anyone who has used the TV Pack will have noticed the number of "hidden features" ie BUGS.

Anyway Windows 7 beta looks like its only a couple of months away - I'd say that might provide a more stable place to start.

Mattv

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Reply # 165808 20-Sep-2008 12:35

Rusty, what graphics card do you use? If it is nvidia, have you ever tried the beta driver mentioned in the Green Button thread?

Does anyone know how much difference it makes with the overall reliability?

RustyGonad

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Reply # 165823 20-Sep-2008 14:25

Mattv: Rusty, what graphics card do you use? If it is nvidia, have you ever tried the beta driver mentioned in the Green Button thread?

Does anyone know how much difference it makes with the overall reliability?

Gonna try that out later on... Be interesting to see if it makes any difference.

Mattv

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Reply # 166048 21-Sep-2008 15:45

How do you get NZ DVB-T channels to scan? Obviously Rusty has managed but posts on the Green Button indicate they will not show up automatically and so far I have had no luck (admittably on my laptop with the TV Pack installed and modded but not on a clean Vista install). Is there some manual way of adding a channel or some sort of registry hack?

dxp

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Reply # 166055 21-Sep-2008 16:19

First of all, thanks sbiddle and RustyGonad for responding to my earlier questions.

At present I am using VMC, xmlTVNZ, BladeRunner with a Hauppauge PVR-500 tuner and watching it via a DMA2200 extender. I rarely watch through the computer directly. Also, I don’t get Sky.

A while back I purchased a Hauppauge Nova-T 500 to play around with the DVB-T/HD. If I use PowerCinema to record TV3 using the AC-3 option, then I can play back the resulting mpg file thyrough the DMA2200 (including sound) without problems!

So I’m only really interested in the VMC/TV Pack stability for recording Freeview. There are a few questions though;

1. Does the DMA2200 work with VMC/TV Pack? – I’m not sure if it needs fimware upgrade to know about the new WTV file format or if that is handled by VMC.

2. Can I get an EPG? (I don’t have dvb-s or even a dish).

3. Can you force VMC to choose AC-3 for TV3?

4. Would the DMA2200 play HE-AAC LATM audio when connected to VMC/TV Pack. Note: the DMA2200 specification says it supports “AAC-LC Stereo via Vista Media Center extension”. I have never been able to get a clear answer on what this means exactly. One answer I got from a Linksys support person certainly implied that the support came from VMC and not the firmware! It certainly can play AAC-LC, but not HE-AAC in my current configuration.

5. Failing that, is there a easy means of de-muxing, converting the audio, and re-muxing?

RustyGonad

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Reply # 166482 23-Sep-2008 10:43

Actually got it working almost perfectly - and I can change channels!!!!

You need to use DVBSBridge - which I use for Sky anyway, it gets around the channel tuning issues.

the beta NVidia drivers make a HUGE difference.

Just gotta get audio working properly and we are rocking!!! This may actually be useable after all.

I'll post up more detail later on...

Mattv

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Reply # 166484 23-Sep-2008 11:01

RustyGonad:
You need to use DVBSBridge

Typical, I have just (3 days ago) bought DVSBridge for ProgDVB but I assume you need DVBViewer and that version of DVBSBridge.

Does using DVSBridge limit you to one tuner at a time? If not can you mix tuners ie DVB-T and -S (for Sky) with watching and recording at the same time?

Bash69

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Reply # 166643 23-Sep-2008 22:43

Hi, I also manged to get Freeview work with dvbsbridge and dvbviewer for HD in vmc with Fiji, picture looks fantastic. Still have a few green screens when swapping chan. I have a problem with audio, no proper sound. Have you had any luck with sound yet?

Cheers
John

Mattv

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Reply # 166673 24-Sep-2008 09:05

Re the sound issues - Do you have the monogram audio codec installed? Don't know if VMC is able to use it tho.

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