Guides
While video quality is important, I find that it’s the audio that really transforms a good movie into an immersive experience. As challenging as it can be to get flawless video playback working on the HTPC, enabling proper lossless multi-channel audio playback adds another layer of difficultly into the mix. In this guide we will discuss the different options available […]
Read moreAntiPack was intended as a starting point in that it only includes high quality hardware accelerated codecs for the most popular A/V formats, but does not support everything. If you need more, ffdshow should be next on your list. It provides the most full featured software video and audio decoder of any OSS or free DirectShow filter; because of this […]
Read moreIt’s been quite a while since we released a system guide with our recommendations and price analysis on building your very own Home Theater PC, so we figured now is as good a time as any. We’ll start with the high end and next week will release the low end system. While some websites or magazines go pretty absorbant with […]
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Remember the feeling you had when you would pack for a nice long vacation, only to arrive at the hotel and realize you forgot your toothbrush? That feeling can be 100 times as bad when it comes to building out a Home Theater PC (HTPC) where components cost a lot more than $3, not to mention the effort involved with […]
Read moreYesterday when we discussed how to make your HTPC use S3 standby I pointed out that my preference is use fairly aggressive idle timers on my client and server PCs, the downside to this approach is that it can cause some undesirable side effects. Today’s topic is how to workaround some interesting design shortcommings in two popular applications to keep […]
Read moreMy main HTPC uses around 130 watts at idle, 7 watts in standby (S3), and 4 in hibernate (S4) so the case for having it take a nap whenever it can is quite clear. There was a time when getting S3 standby working properly was a black art involving careful motherboard and device selection, regsitry hacks, and some pixie dust. […]
Read moreEnabling Multi-Channel Audio for Other Audio Formats If you’re fortunate enough to have a PC with multi-channel LPCM output enabling full fidelity audio output is easy (and there’s not much point in reading the rest of this) but for those using a SPDIF or stereo only HDMI connection getting multi-channel audio working can be challenging. This guide intends to […]
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Did you know that there are more options to launching Windows Media Center in Windows 7 than just arriving at the start menu? Microsoft has tossed in a bunch of hidden switches (not sure why they’re called switches) that fellow Media Center MVP and MissingRemote contributor Andrew Cherry has discovered and passed along. The purpose of these is simple–say you […]
Read moreIn looking over the guides we have on this site, it came to my attention that sometimes we take for granted the technical pieces we know and overlook some critical items which would benefit readers of MissingRemote.com. I happened to already have written an article on this, so it seemed to make sense to update and post here for your […]
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See Windows 7 SP1 RTM update In honor of Windows7 hitting the big RTM (release to manufacturing) milestone, I figured it best to start fresh with this Guide and archive the old one . The process below has been confirmed working with the release version Windows7 Ultimate AND Professional, x86 & X64 build 7600.16385. Sorry Home Premium folks, nothing for […]
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