Guides

In my current Home Theater setup, I find myself switching between a direct DVI connection from my HTPC to the Pioneer Elite PRO-141FD 60″ Plasma Monitor and an HDMI connection through the Pioneer Elite SC-07 AV Receiver depending on whether I'm watching TV or a Blu-ray disc (BD) movie. I do this because when listening to music or watching sports,  I use the S/PDIF Zone 1 & 2 outputs on the SC-07 to run audio to the other amplifiers in the house (I pulled Optical S/PDIF along side Cat 6 when wiring the house).  Unfortunately, the SC-07 does not down-convert HDMI audio to S/PDIF or analog--I don't think many receivers do--even for non copy-protected streams.  But, obviously, I want to use HDMI for BD bit streamed playback and usually do not care about the BD soundtrack in the rest of the house. (BTW: I don't recommend using an HTPC for your primary BD player, but that subject deserves it's own separate posting)

If you are a true home theater nut like I am then, without a doubt, you will have some form of a universal remote control in your home theater setup. Over the years, I have amassed a sizable collection of Harmony remotes. I probably have every single model of Harmony remotes besides the RF based Harmony remotes. One of many things I do is constantly fiddle with the settings, tweaking them to add new button queues and screens. Recently, I've been getting into home automation and light control in my theater room. Right now I've got a Lutron Grafik Eye controlling my multiple light zones. I am also getting into Z-wave lighting control but we'll dive deeper into that subject at a later date.

The Lutron lighting control allows me to control it via IR commands from almost any remote. I've added the Lutron lighting as a device in my Harmony setup and then created a sequence so that when I hit play it will dim my lights and start playing the movie. Then, I added a second sequence that when I pause the movie it brightens up the lights and pauses at the same time.

Below are the steps to create a sequence in the Logitech Harmony setup software.

1. Click on Customize Buttons for whatever activity you want to add the sequence to.

 2.  Click on Add Sequence

 3.  Give the Sequence a name

 4.  Select the device( s ) and the commands that will be part of the Sequence

This tip is as much a friendly reminder as one that even the best technical people will forget--Don't Assume the obvious has been done!

Case in point, I was troubleshooting a friend's TV setup. She has AT&T U-Verse TV which is connected via HDMI passthrough to her Onkyo stereo receiver and claimed that her dog sat on her remotes and then suddenly lost all audio. I looked through all the settings on the receiver and it looked OK. Swapped inputs on the AVR and tested her Blu-ray player, and that worked correct with audio. I then went into AT&T's setup and tried messing with the audio settings. After adjusting some cables and moving things around, I was ready to GIVE UP!

Then it hit me and I asked her, "Have you power cycled your cable box?" Of course the answer was "NO," and of course, that RESOLVED the issue. In my effort of trying to think about all the complicated ways she could have lost audio I missed the most basic troubleshooting step to simply reboot the device.

So there you have it, never assume that the most basic steps of troubleshooting will not fix the problem.

This tip probably seems rather obvious, but sometimes the obvious can be forgotten or neglected. I was recently called into action to diagnose a system that was running warmer and creating more fan noise than usual. Upon opening the case, this is what I saw:

How would you like to gain almost 1GB of space on your system drive? If you've installed Windows 7 SP1, you should be aware that Windows retains a backup of the system files to allow for the uninstallation of SP1. If you're happy with SP1 on your system, you can safely delete the backup in a few simple steps. Keep in mind that after performing this procedure, there's no turning back from SP1.

Welcome to the Beginner's Guide to HTPC Software. This will be an in-depth look at the software options available to you to build your HTPC. If you haven't already, make sure you read our Beginner's Guide to HTPCs for other topics.

We're going to cover only full home theater PC applications which can handle the following tasks:

1. Music
2. Videos
3. Movies
4. TV (optional)
5. Photos

First let's take a look at the operating system options you have and a brief overview:

• Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, 7
• Apple Mac OSX
• Linux

Each one of these has their pros and cons. If you are using Mac OSX, you don't have many choices beyond Front Row, XBMC and Plex (below). If you're using Linux, honestly you're probably not reading this guide due to limited options as well--MythTV (below as well). So that leaves Windows users . This is at least 90% of you out there, and most likely what everyone reading this is interested in.

Before we begin, this guide assumes you know what the Digital Cable Advisor (DCA) is and have it installed already. If you do not, please refer to MCE: Digital Cable Advisor Tool Available Now before continuing.

OverrideDigitalCableAdvisor does not remove the need to have DCA installed. What it does is tell DCA to skip the tests and consider it a PASS. I do NOT recommend using OverrideDigitalCableAdvisor to get around under powered hardware. I am providing OverrideDigitalCableAdvisor for two basic scenarios (though there may be more) that I believe the DCA fails to take into account.

1. Virtual Media Center

   I've had a virtual Windows Media Center running under Hyper-V for several years (since Vista SP1) that has acted as my primary recording HTPC.  I did this for several reasons: 1- To reduce energy consumption.  At the time my primary HTPC was left on 24\7 to ensure it was always available for Media Center Extenders.  Virtualizing it allowed me to change my power policy on the HTPC to be in standby most of the time; 2- I setup two virtual HTPCs. One dedicated to recording and another for my Media Center Extenders (MCX) to allow me to test various MCX work-arounds without potentially lowering the stability of my recordings.

   This worked great for years with my Silicon Dust HDHomeRun (x3)...until Comcast made ClearQAM next to worthless in Houston.

We hope you've been enjoying our series of Beginner's Guides for HTPC and Home Theater. As part of the series, we’ve previously discussed video resolutions and how video information is displayed on a screen for a frame of video in our guide, Video Resolutions for Beginners. What we didn’t delve into much was the rate at which video frames are captured, or, in other words, the video frame rate. This guide will cover the basics of frame rates and how displays deal with the frame rates. We’ll try to cut through the marketing buzzwords like 120Hz, 240Hz, 600Hz sub-field drive, etc. so that you can make a more informed decision when purchasing your next display and how to insure an optimal viewing experience.

In continuation of our Beginners guide series, this guide is all about controlling your HTPC. One thing that sets a “computer connected to your big screen” and it being a HTPC is how we interface with the system. Controlling your HTPC is all about the hardware and software combination you are using. Depending on if you are using the plethora of HTPC software front ends whether it be Windows Media Center, Sage TV, Beyond TV, Myth TV, Boxee, XBMC, you name it they all require hardware to interface with it to control how it works. For more information on the aforementioned software stay tuned for the Beginners guide to HTPC software.

Now that you have read what a HTPC is and what it entails now the fun begins in how to integrate it into your entertainment setup, and how to control it out seamlessly. There are many ways to control a HTPC, it is as simple as using a traditional keyboard and mouse to as crazy and sophisticated as using home automation software and integrating TCP/IP commands to control your entire setup, stay tuned for the Beginners guide to home automation also see the HD Sports Bar setup. In this guide we will cover every aspect of HTPC controls to allow you to make the best possible decision on how you personally want to control your HTPC setup.

Codecs? File types? Oh my! If you have ever tried to watch a video you downloaded from the internet only to find it unable to be played (or maybe just audio but no video), then this is the guide for you! We're going to try to do our best to cover most of the more common file types that are out there, and what they mean to you and your home theater experience.

Before we get into the details, let's cover the basics of the terminology. Codec is an acronym for compressing\decompressing. This technology is used to execute an algorithm to compress or decompress video or audio. An example of this is playback of your PVR recordings on your HTPC; when the file plays back your PC is decompressing, or decoding,  the MPEG-2 or H.264 video and MPEG-Audio or AC-3 audio contained in the file. 

• Decoding usually refers to "playback" of a certain file.

• Encoding refers to taking a raw or uncompressed signal and converting to a compressed format (i.e recording a TV stream to MPEG-2)

• Transcoding refers to changing compressed audio and/or video formats (i.e. converting MPEG-2 to H.264)

Let’s start out with some of the formats used to encode audio & video . I won't go into a lot of detail but the common ones will be covered.  To playback these formats a decoder or transform component is required, when using DirectShow this is called a filter.

We have good news, and we have some bad news. The good news is that Ceton has graciously allowed MissingRemote.com to publish a guide to Tuner Sharing with the Ceton InfiniTV beta firmware.  The bad news is that it is still in beta. 

What does that mean to you? Unless you are already part of the beta program you will not be able to utilize the HTPC bliss that is shared Digital Cable tuners. Before anyone starts scouring the Internet for the beta firmware, your InfiniTV serial numbers needs to be registered as part of the beta program for the firmware to install, don’t waste your time.

Assuming the bad news has not completely discouraged you, read on to see what we have in store.