WANTED: magic combo for mini-ITX

[Rizak the Really Horrible]

Ok, I know there is probably a metric tonne of threads on this particular subject, but it has been frustrating me for quite a while and I'm sick of sorting the wheat from the chaff.

EQUIPMENT

I have MCE 2005 loaded and the NVidia decoder. I've specified the NVidia decoder as the required file where necessary.

I am using the onboard video which isn't fantastic and can't add any other cards as the mobo only allows one (which has the 500MCE decoder card in it). This is a 1.2 Ghz processor, but the decoding is supposed to be taken care of on the card, freeing up the processor.

I can't use MCE because the onboard video chip doesn't pass inspection and returns an error.

I haven't tried the DVD settings yet.

When I tried to scan for FM channels, it went through the entire spectrum but didn't select any. I manually chose one as it was slowly cycling through them and it stuck, otherwise no love.

I loaded GBPVR and got it fairly well set up, except for a couple of things.

1) There is an awful stuttering in live tv. The sound is fine, but the video cuts and jumps.

2) I have the Microsoft remote and can't get it to change the channels. I've specified this remote on the proper page, but no love. Also, is there a way to reprogram it so that the START button runs this program instead of the Media Center?

3) Would it be worth my time to downgrade to XP Pro instead of MCE2005?

[reboot]

...but the decoding is supposed to be taken care of on the card, freeing up the processor.

You're mistaken. The card does the ENcoding, the Nvidia decoder you have, does the DEcoding, thus relying on CPU power.

1) This could be a combination of your video card, and hard drive. If the drive is busy doing other things, then stuttering can occur. Sometimes you can improve things by trying different playback codecs, but Nvidia is considered the best.

2) Sorry, don't know about this.

3) If you disable ALL the MCE services, you basically have XP. You could do a clean install of only the first disk, and not install the MCE disk.

[sub]

I loaded GBPVR and got it fairly well set up, except for a couple of things.

1) There is an awful stuttering in live tv. The sound is fine, but the video cuts and jumps.

Those mini-itx processors are really really slows, and for some reason the MII-12000 is slower with video than the M-10000. Probably the best you'll do is installation a software decoder that can take advantage of the MPEG2 accelleration features of the mini-itx chipset (ie the Cyberlink decoder which is included in PowerDVD)

2) I have the Microsoft remote and can't get it to change the channels. I've specified this remote on the proper page, but no love.

It should work. Do any buttons do anything?

Also, is there a way to reprogram it so that the START button runs this program instead of the Media Center?

Not that I've found.

3) Would it be worth my time to downgrade to XP Pro instead of MCE2005?

I dont personally think it would make any difference.

[sub]

When I tried to scan for FM channels, it went through the entire spectrum but didn't select any. I manually chose one as it was slowly cycling through them and it stuck, otherwise no love.

I've talked to Hauppauge about this. Apparently some models of tuner they use will not report a signal is present via the standand method (IAMTVTuner->SignalPresent). Without being able to rely on this, there is nothing I can do. For those users that have one of these tuners, you'll have to use the 'add' button and manually specify the station frequency.

They use a private method for checking the signal status in their own radio application, which unfortunately is not available to third party developers.