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Thank, but I think I’m OK for now.  I was having audio issues but it turns out that I had the wrong setting in my sound setup in Control Panel.  Once I switched it from 7.1 to stereo everything started working correctly.

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1.  Verizon FIOS

2.  Howard Co., MD

3.  Everything copy freely AFAIK (I dropped all premium channels)

4.  No

5.  Yes

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I found this deal posted at slickdeals.net.  CannonPC is offering the InfiniTV4 for $269 when you use the code DISCOUNT at checkout.  The deal is supposed to be valid until 6/30/11.

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Have you installed Win 7 Service Pack 1?  I had all sorts of BSOD issues before I updated to SP1.  Now my system is considerably more stable with no BSODs.

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They haven’t dropped it officially yet, but I suspect they will.  If they don’t, the original vendors won’t be able to compete with the SD HDHR Prime’s pricing.  The fact that the vendors listed in the above post can sell it for a much lower cost tells me the markup on this item is probably close to 100%, if not more.  I doubt that they’d be selling it at a loss just to generate sales.

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That’s what I get for not looking at the replies to the topic first.  I went ahead and bought the one on ebay and then saw I could have gotten it cheaper elsewhere.  In any case, I just canceled my pre-order with Newegg for the SD HDHR Prime.  Even at the ebay price, it’s still a great deal.  Thanks for posting the info. 

I figured Ceton had to drop their price once they started getting some competition.  They can probably afford to do it now that they’ve gotten the first few production runs sold.  I’d be curious to learn how many units they’ve sold to date.

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I have tried opening PDVD10 from within Media Center as well as a standalone app on my desktop.  I just select the movie from within Media Browser and it automounts the image and then prompts me for which playback app I’d like to use.  I’ve also tried it from the Pictures and Videos listing as I have my server linked to both listings. 

The only media I’ve played since reinstalling PDVD10 have been Blu-Ray rips from my server.  I rarely use it for anything but Blu-Ray playback.  I have tried numerous Blu-Ray iso’s and the option for selecting the HD audio is simply not there.  I never had any problems setting it up on previous occasions.  It showed up right away in both PDVD11 and TMT5 so I can only assume I have all the right drivers installed.  It’s one of those things that will drive a person bonkers trying to figure out what’s going on.

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I bought one of these almost a year ago and didn’t care for the button layout.  As always with remotes, YMMV.  I found the transport button layout too easy to hit the wrong button.  I also use the DVR portion of my HTPC more than anything else so having the transport buttons near the top of the remote made it a bit cumbersome to use.  I’m actually using a smaller Rosewill MC remote (model RRC-126) that fits in my hand a little better and allows me to operate the transport buttons with my thumb without having to readjust the remote in my hand.  Overall, though, it’s not a bad little remote.

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I know what you mean. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve gone through the 60+ update mess after reinstalling Win 7 Pro and then all of the subsequent updates that followed.  One trick I learned was to only install the barebones drivers for the mainboard hardware and LAN before running the updates.  Once Windows was updated I began installing components and software one item at a time with reboots in between to make sure everything was settled down before trying to toss something new into the mix.

SP1 should take care of the vast majority of updates that have occurred since the initial release of Win 7.  When I installed the version that included SP1 I only had one or two new updates to install afterwards to bring it up to date.

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You might need a faster PC.  Clown_BD tytplically takes about 40 minutes or so to process a Blu-Ray movie rip for me.  I generally rip the movie to my hard drive as an iso first and then strip it while mounted in VirtualCloneDrive.

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If anyone’s interested, here’s the latest chapter in my HTPC saga.  Since my last post I have replaced the motherboard with an Intel DH55HC ATX  and 8GB of Crucial memory.  I have replaced the CPU with an Intel CORE i3-550. I replaced the main hard drive containing the OS with a Crucial 60GB SSD. I also replaced the PSU with a Corsair 550W model I had onhand.

Symptoms:  The HTPC would record with no problems, mainly because there’s very little load on the CPU for this process (it’s just dumping the data stream from the tuner to the hard drive).  If I tried watching TV or use an extender, it would reboot without warning or display a BSOD with a variety of errors. This would happen quite often, much to the chagrin of the spouse and family members wanting to use the extender in the family room. 

Attempted fixes:  This has been going on for a while now, which is what prompted me to swap out all of the hardware.  I rolled back the Ceton drivers to version 17 and it seemed to help, but even that was short-lived.  After installing the new CPU, the PC refused to boot.  The display would hang and never display the prompts to enter BIOS setup.  I reflashed the BIOS several times using the emergency recovery method and it would appear to work initially but would hang on any subsequent reboot. 

I finally decided to play it smart and disconnect everything from the HTPC except for a barebones setup (motherboard, memory, CPU, PSU, keyboard, mouse, boot drive, and monitor).  The system booted up fine with this setup so I’d shut it down, add the 2nd drive and boot it again.  Still no problems so I added the DVD-ROM.  Still no problem so I connected the ethernet cable and it hung on bootup.  Seriously!  A stinking ethernet cable was giving me such a headache?  I replaced the cable and everything continued to function normally.

One thing I had not done was try a different set of drivers for my HP USB tuners so I installed an older set I still had.  I had previously uninstalled all four tuners from Device Manager (all Analog, Audio, and Digital entries in the list).  Everything seemed to be going fine until I got another BSOD.  This time I noticed the name of the file that was causing the problem.  It was one of the drivers I just installed for the HP tuners.  FYI – The driver is the same as that used for the Hauppauge HVR-950Q.  I uninstalled the drivers and removed the tuners from the system.  I had a pair of Hauppauge HVR-2250’s that weren’t being used so I installed them and repeated Media Center setup.

For the icing on the cake, I got the dreaded PlayReady update failure when trying to reconfigure Media Center with the new tuners.  I jumped through all the hoops with every workaround I could find, but still no luck. 

I decided to bite the bullet and reinstall everything from scratch.  So far, everything seems to be running smoothly.  I’d like to reinstall the i5-660 CPU, buit I’m almost afraid to touch it at this point.

The main point of the story is, before you start replacing hardware, strip the system down to the bare essentials and reinstall everything one piece at a time until it breaks.

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Are you talking about digital cable or digital OTA as in ATSC?  There are several ATSC/NTSC dual tuner devices available.  Here’s a list of what’s out there:

http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com/index.html

If you’re referring to digital cable, then Mike already discussed the available options.

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I’ll have to check the BIOS version when I get home from work.  I was thinking about upgrading it but I think the 8GB of Mushkin memory is going to work out.  If it continues to work I probably won’t do anything with the BIOS if I can avoid it.

I had tried to run MemTest86 with the Mushkin installed but it hung up right away.  I was originally using version MemTest86 version 3.5 and I found that there was a newer version 3.5a posted the day after I initially downloaded it.  Unfortunately, I got the same results using 3.5a with both the single CPU setup and the experimental multiple CPU options.

I noticed on the memTest86 main menu that there was an option to run the older version 3.4 so I decided to give it a try.  This time it ran without a problem, at least up through test 06 where I had to terminate it to get the extenders back online.  This makes me think the latest versions of MemTest86 still have a few bugs.  Either that or it doesn’t like my motherboard and memory combination.

In any case I seem to be back up and running.  I’ll let you know it goes after the weekend.

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I just installed 8GB of Muskin DDR3 1333 DIMMs and the first thing I did was run MemTest86.  The test hung at the 4% mark of the first test.  Either this motherboard is super picky about the memory you use or the board itself is bad.  Media Center is running fine for the moment with the new RAM but the real test will come on Sunday when I’m watching the football games.  Lots of live action seems to tax the system the most.  I’m just not sure if I’m willing to sit through another Sunday of consrtant hangups and reboots during the Ravens game.

FWIW, the two 1GB sticks of Corsair memory I was using had been working flawlessly and they both passed MemTest86 with flying colors.  The bad news is that I kept getting low memory errors with Media Center running.  2GB is definitely insufficient for my setup.  Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that getting another pair of 1GB DIMMs would work based on problems using DIMMs from a different production run.

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Update:  I received two more 2x2GB Corsair DIMMs the same as the ones I was trying to use previously.  Unfortunately, I ended up with the exact same result as before.  The two new DIMMs failed MemTest86 at exactly the same spot as the previous pair.  When I tried to install just the 2x2GB DIMMs by themselves, MemTest86 would cause the PC to reboot right after starting the first test.

I checked the Corsair website and they suggested trying to run the DIMMs at a lower speed so I tried it at the 8X multiplier instead of the default 10X setting.  No luck at 8X so I then tried 6X.  This time I totally lost video and was literally flying blind.  After much trial and error I realized I could set the CMOS jumper to the Configuration setting and I finally got video.  I reset the memory clock setting to 10X and rebooted.  I have since removed the 2x2GB DIMMs and will probably send them back to Newegg.

Newegg had a sale on a pair of 4GB Mushkin DIMMs that appear to be compatible so I ordered a set.  I’m hoping this time I’ll get things working as they should.  If not, I may have to consider replacing the motherboard.  One other option is to reinstall the original MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard I was using and try to find some larger DIMMs for that setup.  I really don’t want to go that route because I saw a definite improvement in playback with the Intel setup.  I had far less pixelation in the recordings and live TV.

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