Recall, recall, recall...

Well, it is not a problem with the memory - I ran MemTest for 4 hours and not one error resulted. So what can it be that is causing my PC to freeze and on reboot give me the access violation blue screen of death? I have to do more investigating... But, I've managed to boot up into Vista without the bluescreen and reboot, so that's something...

In the meantime, I've been reading up on speeding up Vista and all the googles return talk about Readyboost, so I've ordered two 4Gb USB sticks off Play.com which are Readyboost ready! One to use as the Readyboost memory cache, and the other as a buffer for MediaPortal's TVServer (for it to buffer TV to, instead of writting to the HDD). We will see how this goes...

I've also ordered two 1Gb memory sticks to raise the memory in the HTPC from 3Gb to 4Gb. I am also thinking about getting a controllable 120mm case fan (or a 120 to 80mm adaptor), as I think it might be the heat that is causing my PC problems. Currently I do not have the case's two fans plugged in due to the noise they make!

Working Blu-ray but not Vista!!

So I sent away the BD-ROM drive back to Scan to get a replacement. It cost me £6.70 to post it to be signed for and insured, and within a couple of days I got a new drive back.

I fitted this back into my HTPC (now with Vista Ultimate installed) and TMT3 could play the Blu-ray movies I (eventually) got from Amazon! This was an unexpected result - it looks like the previous drive was dodgy - refusing to play the discs and wanting to update the AAC keys which did not succeed. Well, I wasn't going to declare success with Blu-ray playback until I had a chance to test it with PowerDVD. This weekend I had the chance, and installed PowerDVD 9, and low and be hold... it worked. PDVD9 could playback the Blu-ray discs it had complained about before. Great!

Unfortunately, not so great on the Vista front. I've now solved my display blanking out half way through watching a video - I had to turn off alsorts of power saving features in Vista, and the clincher was disabling the GPU's power saving mode. I thought all my problems were solved until, while watching a movie, the HTPC froze! On reboot, I get a bluescreen 'access violation' of death and the machine reboots again... :( (Now I have to solve this problem!)

Vista Media Center

So with all the Blu-ray shenanigans I took the chance to scrub the HDD and installed Vista Ultimate and try out Vista Media Center.


The first problem is that it could not play some of my AVI files properly - it could play the sound but did not show the picture! After much messing around with installing codec packs (Vista Codec Pack and CCCP) and changing the settings - with the help of Media Player and MPC I did manage it in the end (having solved jerky playback in Media Player and MPC first).

The first impression of VMC is that it is slow (on this P4 machine)! And some actions lead to a blank screen or freeze (of the HTPC!) so not very good. I installed the iMON software and controlling VMC by the remote, and it works but I have to learn how to control it properly. The good thing about VMC and the iMON display is that it seems to work (unlike with MediaPortal).

But an odd thing about the Vista and VMC is the power saving features... you would think that when playing a video in VMC that the power saving routines would be disabled - but no! I've had this a few times now, first with Media Player and then with VMC - after a period of watching a movie - the screen blanks but the sound keeps going - then a lot of fuss to get the picture back, as you can't just wake the PC!

Say no to Blu-ray on your HTPC!

So with the past month's experiences of getting Blu-ray on my HTPC, the conclusion is that it is not worth it!

I've spent the weekend trying to get the playback of Blu-ray movies on my HTPC and not succeeding. I question this facility at the start of the build and I wish some had advised me against it. Since the price of Blu-ray players have dropped significantly, it is simpler to buy a CE device and place it under the TV than configure a PC for Blu-ray playback. The main problem being the copy protection - without a working version of AnyDVD - playback simply does not work! (I've tried various software that claims Blu-ray support and playback, PowerDVD, WinDVD, and TotalMedia Theatre, and none of them can deal with the AAC protection, producing errors of some sort...

Whereas, a CE Blu-ray player will simply play the discs without a hitch! I even installed my recent purchase of Vista Ultimate, which recognise Blu-ray media, but still presents the copy protection problems. I have decided to return my superficially damaged BD-ROM drive and keep to one side or put it on eBay, and return to Blu-ray playback on the HTPC when the has completely product matured.

Meanwhile, the playback of 2001 and Bladerunner on my Blu-ray player was superb. Although these two transfer did beat broadcast HD, it all depends on which movie you purchase on Blu-ray to be wowed. Unless you are a real film enthusiast and one who likes picking specify titles to buy and watch, you are not missing out on HD on Blu-ray if you only have broadcast HD to watch.

Blu-ray Player

So after contacting Amazon again to query about my disc not arriving, they have actually sent me them now. I have the two Blu-ray discs sitting on my desk now!

In the meantime I contacted Scan about return my BD-ROM drive, which unfortunately turns out that I am unable to for a refund. Since it arrived damaged, I could return it on that basis, but unfortunately, they only give 48hrs for you to contact them. The only thing I can do now is to return it under my Scansure insurance, which will replace the superficially damaged drive and not for a refund.

I still have to decide whether it is worth returning, as the damage is superficial and the drive works with the fascia off inside the HTPC case. The only problem is that the eject button does not work, as the external case button can not touch the internal ROM drive button. I will have to pay postage for the return to Scan for a replacement - effectively paying £5 for a new fascia...

I've been having problems with playing Blu-ray disc on the HTPC, but I when I've got it to play, I wasn't very 'overwhelmed' by the PQ of Blu-ray. Admittedly the Amadeus transfer to Blu-ray is not the best but I had expected it to be of better quality than broadcast HD pictures on Freesat.

So thinking maybe it was my GPU/HTPC and PowerDVD that could pump out the PQ of the Blu-ray movie, I went and spent £100 on an end of line Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player. I watched Amadeus from start to finish on this device (had not done this on the HTPC) and noticed that certain scenes were good, I concluded that the PQ was as good as the HTPC, but was still not overwhelmed by the PQ over broadcast HD.

Admittedly, the Samsung BDP isn't the top of the range device, and that the Amadeus movie PQ is top notch, I will try out Bladerunner and 2001 on both the player and the HTPC and then tell you whether it is worth getting Blu-ray or not...

EDIT: I have found a Blu-ray plug-in for MediaPortal: ArcSoft Player

Manual recording with MP

I made my first recording last night with MP. I started a manual record of Torchwood on BBC HD at 9:02pm and left it to record. I set WinOFF (an auto shutdown program) to turn off at 10:05pm and left my HTPC recording...

In the morning I checked to see if it had recorded OK. I booted the HTPC and started MP, and found it was still recording! Well it seemed to have kicked off recording where it left off, so I made a manual stop, and yes, it only recorded a minute. I looked in my recordings list to find two recordings:

The times indicating the length of the newest recording was fine, but the Torchwood recording showed 21:02-21:02! I quickly checked to see if it had made the full recording... and fast forwarded to the end - and it seemed fine and complete.

So I posted on the MediaPortal forum, to find out that this how it behaves if the recording was cut short (like if WinOFF has turned off the HTPC), and the only way of fixing this is to edit the database entry for this recording! (read this post). So the lesson is to learn how to schedule timers within MP, or use ForTheRecord to make my recordings...

Anyway back to the Blu-ray playback. Well I uninstalled AnyDVD, and tested PowerDVD8 on the Blu-ray disc check - and unfortunately this fails. There is still this bug in PDVD and so its use for playing Blu-ray must be inconjunction with AnyDVD. I also noticed that the BD-ROM drive seems to be whirling all the time now (whereas with PDVD9 it would stop after a while).

My other Blu-ray movies still have not arrived! It's been over 7 (working) days since the 3 were posted. I contacted Amazon and ask them where the other two were and got a reply saying to wait for another week incase it is slow in the post! Well, I can't see why one would arrive and not the other two, so I am suspicious that two of them are lost...

Nein Danke!

No thanks to PowerDVD 9! I think this is the cause of all my HTPC problems - the freezing and non-working of BBC HD... So I uninstalled PDVD9 and re-installed PowerDVD8 and upgraded it to the Ultra edition.

I made a quick test and it can play the (one) Blu-ray movie I have, and I think it might work without AnyDVD as well, as it managed to update itself 'now and again' to obtain the code to play the disc... I will uninstall AnyDVD and test this theory out...

I tuned into BBC HD, after reconfiguring MediaPortal to use the PDVD8 codecs for SD and HD decoding, and this works just fine.

I hope this stops my PC from freezing; this happened again last night after watching a DivX movie, and I had to powercycle - only to get the blue screen freeze again.

Power Freeze with PowerDVD9 Ultra

Last night I had another play of Amadeus, now that the PC seems to be OK, and it was doing just fine - I left the movie to play while I watched a recording using my Humax HDR... Near to about 2 hours later I checked out the PC and it seems fine - not frozen... so all well and good.

Unfortunately, I right-clicked on the movie playback and tried some options in PowerDVD9 and then it froze! :( The application froze and the PC froze too - just indicating that it must have been PowerDVD9 that froze the PC the first time (and not anything else).

Well as for tonight's happenings... I downloaded the SteamedMP skin and installed it. When I started MP after this install and tuned into the TV, a pop-up appeared complaining about CoreAVC trial missing a serial number! I couldn't dismiss the pop-up and then MP froze! So spent all afternood, finding out how to remove coreAVCdecoder.ax...

Using GraphStudio I tracked down the codec and deleted it and unregistered it using GraphStudio... I had hoped this did the trick - which has stopped MP from freezing but now I can't get BBC HD to work using PowerDVD9's H.264/AVC codec - getting a black screen and then freezing MP! What is going on?!!

It seems like the new PowerDVD9 Ultra edition's codec is affecting the playback of BBC HD.

Blu-ray: Amadeus

So one of my Blu-ray movie orders came through yesterday: Amadeus. I could not wait to see the PQ and have the Blu-ray experience on my HTPC... so I duly put the disc in the new Liteon BD-ROM drive... and disappointedly, found PowerDVD9 Deluxe edition could not play the disc!

PowerDVD wanted me to upgrade to the Ultra edition, which support Blu-ray playback! Well what a pain. So instead of this, I downloaded a trial version of PowerDVD9 to try out the Blu-ray playback. Unfortunately, more problems as the software complained about needing to update now and again to be able to play Blu-ray movies! You then accept this and allow PowerDVD to update, but nothing happens and you are returned to the same prompt of updating when you press play again! Arggghhh!!

A Google revealled that this is a known bug in PowerDVD, and a solution can be found using AnyDVD. Fortunately, you are able to download a trial version of AnyDVD, and I so did. Trying it out seems to work - but then after 10 mins or so of Amadeus playback froze my HTPC!!! Arrrrrgggghhhh! Worst still, after a hard powercycle of the PC, it refused to come back, freezing on boot after the Windows logo on a blue screen! Oh no! I tried several hard powercycle and this occured each time... I then had enough and switch everything off and went to bed!

Today, I got up and powered on the HTPC, and it seems OK, getting passed the frozen blue screen achieved yesterday, and it booted into Windows OK. I did not try to do anything else on the PC before heading off to work - hopefully everything is OK with the box.

Conclusion: first Blu-ray experience: very poor. I was not too impressed with the PQ of Amadeus - what little of it I saw, either... :(

Disaster's MP Install

So I've done a complete uninstall of MediaPortal, downloaded 1.0.2 and Disaster's version of this and installed MP and Disaster's over the top... It seems to have gone all OK. Brought up MP portal and the interface looks quite basic compared to the StreamedMP skin - so will have to install this next.

There were some slight problems... the fact that the CoreAVC codec expired made pop-ups occur in the TVServer configuration that caused it to freeze. After removing the expired CoreAVC and using a reg cleaner, and rebooting, and re-installing... did it start to behave.

But not sure what happened here... was using PowerDVD 9 to watch a DVD (unfortunately no BD movies have arrived yet) and just a quarter of the way through the movie, the HTPC turned off - without any warning!! The movie went a bit stuttery, and then just disappeared. Not sure what happened, but a power up of the HTPC, froze when Windows XP reached the taskbar stage... It then took a few hard powercycles before the PC would boot properly... Weird!