Parhelia and Media Center 2005

[Peter Aragon]

Hi

Anyone tried out Media Center 2005 with Parhelia and Hauppauge PVR 350? Or any succesfull installation of MCE2005 with Parhelia?

Tnx,
Peter

[lecter]

Hmm, this doesn't sound promising, I actually wanted to get this OS after reading the reviews...are there some major issues we should be aware of?

[Fluff]

Parhelia DXVA?

[Richh]

Originally posted by lecter
Hmm, this doesn't sound promising, I actually wanted to get this OS after reading the reviews...are there some major issues we should be aware of?

Maybe I'm missing something here, but as MCE2005 is basically WinXPSP2 with bells on, is there any particular reason to expect that the Parhelia should work any different to the way it does under XPSP2 - i.e. 100% correctly???

[lecter]

I know, it should, but the way Peter's post was worded, I thought that something might be amiss with this combination...Peter, care to enlighten us? Or was it just an innocent post and I went all paranoid here? Anyway, I hope to pick up a copy from the friendly people at the IT Center here today, one of them mentioned that it should be here in their latest MSDN pack.

[Peter Aragon]

Hi

Next time I will try to formulate my concerns better ;-)

As said, I want to try out MCE2005 from the MSDN account and am planning to buy the PVR350. I just wanted to know whether I can use my Parhelia with this combination or whether to throw away my 400Euro investment due to lack of support.

As far as I know Matrox never got it right with Hauppauge so that was my first concern. My second was if the TV-out would function correctly and if all the visual candy would work, as the G450 with 32 mb will not work.

I started a thread on the Matrox forums and was rather surprised Tech Support didn't bother to test it on MCE2005, although they could benefit from the good video-out quality people have had with Matrox [sarcasm]although people tend to forget over time...[/sarcasm]

I hope they didn't missed the boat on the impact MCE2005 can have on sales.

Hope that this clarifies it ;-)
Peter

ps. I'm getting the PVR350 today anyway I guess. Simple video cards with decent TV-OUT are cheap, expecially the ones performing the same as the Parhelia 3D-wise.

2nd ps I hope I don't offend people with my sarcasm, just that I was so disappointed about Matrox Support not testing their cards or updating their drivers if necessary with such a major Windows release. I know it's just XP Pro SP2 minus Domain support, but the Media Center layer adds some features that might not be supported if not addressed in the drivers.

[lecter]

I have a Parhelia and an ASUS TV/FM card, which also came with a USB remote unit very similar to what MS is selling. I'll post about my experience tonight after I install it.

[Peter Aragon]

Hi Lecter

Mind that you will need the Microsoft remote plus a tv card with hardware mpeg2 chip (that is being supported by Media Center).

I'll also post my findings.

Peter

[lecter]

OK, I took the plunge and installed it...here's the situation: my remote works fine, the capture drivers for my TV-Tuner card have also been installed and work, however both TV and FM capabilities are unaccesible, because it won't let me install the regular XP driver, no matter how hard I try. Frankly, I wouldn't mind it not working in the MCE interface as long as it would work at all, but unfortunately, it doesn't. Now, I use this card mostly for the capture capabilities, since I also have a TV attached to my computer so I guess I'll stick to MCE. Oh, and there seems to be no problem with my Parhelia, everything works fine with the latest Matrox drivers.

[dZeus]

btw it might not be worth to get the PVR350 for MCE. Well, it depends on whether you can use the PVR350 tvout for displaying the MCE interface itself if you use a TV as sole display device.

The PVR250 would therefor probably be a better option.

[lecter]

Dammit, I didn't check everything...videos cannot be displayed in the MCE interface with the Parhelia Weirdly enough, it displays the video thumbnails, but it will not play.

[dZeus]

A MS developer for MCE commented on some of the special features in MCE here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=4493633#post4493633

The 'special' TV out they're talking about (which I guess works like DVDMAX but can display the interface as well?) might require drivers which have features for this?

[Peter Aragon]

dZeus:

I would rather use the PVR250MCE because that one has radio, the standard PVR250 doesn't. I can't find a retailer selling those PVR250MCE's So that's why I choose the PVR350.

And about the PVR350's TV-output? I don't expect it to output the MCE user interface

Peter

Edit: I think I will wait for the PVR-500MCE :P A dual-channel receiver for recording one channel and viewing the other one at the same time, including radio support