sam9s HTPC Project! powered by XBMC!!

[sam9s]

Could you please write down step by step instructions which you followed for configuring the Media Centre?

I will give you something to start then its up to you, how you want to configure the appearance and behavior for your XBMC. I can guide you per your needs.

1. To start its pretty easy, download the windows version from HERE.

2. Make sure that all your movies are renamed to "name of the movie.<<extension>>" eg terminator.mkv.Each movie should have its own folder. (All movies in one folder would not work) and each folder is also named exactly like the movie itself. For example folder for terminator.mkv would be named as terminator. Put the subtitle in the same folder as well.

3. Thats it. Now install XBMC, Go to movies/video, and under add source point XBMC to the path of your movie folders. Make sure library mode is turned off and you have internet connected.

4. Once the path is added XBMC provides certain options to choose from like in the snap below ....

5. You have to set the content and tell XBMC what this path contain. Click on the drop down arrow to select Movies. Then select the source for the information.
IMDB would not be there for you at present like my pic shows coz that is the result of a plugin I installed.
But never mine TheMovieDB works as good as any movie info site. Check all the other options per my pic and click OK.

You can also click on "Settings" tab to add few more settings .....

ONce the movie source/path is in XBMC will scan the content and for 90% of the movies will download the cover, fan art and information. And you can start browsing your collection from there on ....

NOTE :: Make sure you turn ON the library mode .....

 

[venkatcr]

TMT 5.x bitstreams DTS-Master Audio well, but seems to struggle with Dolby TrueHD. Whatever I tried, I got only Multichannel Audio or regular Dolby Digital. I think they are yet facing issues with Dolby TrueHD.

I tried Grease, Dark Knight, and The International all of which have Dolby TrueHD. I tweaked around with the settings, and all I could get were either Dolby Digital or MultiChannel.

Cheers

 

[sam9s]

Nope ... Something wrong, No issues what so ever here. The screen shot I have taken of my receiver for DD True HD is while playing The Dark Knight itself. I will research in to this and see if I can find any specific reason for this behavior ......

 

[cmsajith]

Sam, Thanks for the instructions. Can you list down the steps you followed to convert a win7 to have the exact look and feel of a media player right from the booting?

 

[baijuxavior]

Sam, Thanks for the instructions. Can you list down the steps you followed to convert a win7 to have the exact look and feel of a media player right from the booting?

HOW-TO make Windows boot directly to XBMC (as a shell) - XBMC

 

[AMITNOIDA]

@Sam,

I am presently using Media Player Classic. It works fine with DTS / AC3. If I switch over to XBMC, whether there will be any improvement in PQ or SQ. Ofcourse XBMC has very vivid and striking menu and has the ability to use cover art etc. as you explained in your earlier post.

Thanx

 

[sam9s]

HOW-TO make Windows boot directly to XBMC (as a shell) - XBMC

Thats not what I have used actually ..... . Infact the procedure I followed, I knew it already as that is something related to MMC and we are regular user of MMC when we deal with server 2008.

EDIT ::: I just checked the link and my method is also shows somewhere at the end of the page ....

Anyway below are the steps

Process is simple if you have win 7 ultimate or Professional as only those support MMC. The process is as follows ..

Log in as administrator.
1. Open the start menu, and type in the search box "mmc"
2. Choose File --> Add/Remove Snap-in....
3. Select Group Policy Object Editor under "snap-in and click Add.
4. The moment you do that a new "welcome to group policy wizard" window will appear.
5. Click Browse, go to tab Users and select your user account then click OK.
6. Make sure that the checkbox that says "Allow the focus of the group....blah blah ...." in the wizard is Unchecked. Click Finish
7. Click OK and close the Add/Remove Snap ins window.
8. Under "Console Root" Click on "Local Computer\<<user name>> policy. The moment you do that you can see "Software settings, Windows settings, Administrative Settings"
9. Click on Administrative Settings then system folder (Make sure that you click on system folder and not just the arrow.
10. In the right side window under system and settings .... double click on "Costume user Interface"
11. Check "Enable" and put the complete path of the XBMC exe file along with any parameters you wanna pass. Usually its "C:\Program Files (x86)\XBMC\XBMC.exe"
12 Put xbmc under interface name and click ok
13. Thats it ... . Now when you boot, explorer would not be loaded and you directly would be taken in to XBMC.

Now the catch is, how do you load windows if you want to change or do something ...... Simple .....Hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE. open Task Manager, then go to File and New Task (RUN) put explorer.exe hit enter and your windows is loaded.....

Simple and Neat ....

Sam, Thanks for the instructions. Can you list down the steps you followed to convert a win7 to have the exact look and feel of a media player right from the booting?

Above are the steps ... ...

But tell me more details, like what is your hardware and all, how are you gonna connect your HTPC ....etc etc ..... put some spice in to information and the thread man.... ...

@Sam,

I am presently using Media Player Classic. It works fine with DTS / AC3. If I switch over to XBMC, whether there will be any improvement in PQ or SQ. Ofcourse XBMC has very vivid and striking menu and has the ability to use cover art etc. as you explained in your earlier post.

Thanx

Nope A/V quality is more or less same, but yes, with external player you do get HD Audio. But my main purpose was to built a neat HTPC very much in the lines of a media player. With stunning interface and YAMJ, XBMC excels in that department, plus plays all the content thrown at it, ofcourse no HD audio yet, but as I said developers are working on it and pretty soon we would have HD audio natively supported in XBMC. Till then use external player, Works pretty well if you ask me .....

 

[AMITNOIDA]

Nope A/V quality is more or less same, but yes, with external player you do get HD Audio. But my main purpose was to built a neat HTPC very much in the lines of a media player. With stunning interface and YAMJ, XBMC excels in that department, plus plays all the content thrown at it, ofcourse no HD audio yet, but as I said developers are working on it and pretty soon we would have HD audio natively supported in XBMC. Till then use external player, Works pretty well if you ask me .....

Thanx Sam. I am more conversant with MPC, specially it has very handy 'Filter' to change the Audio language and Subtitle.

 

[sam9s]

^^ Well audio language and subtitle can also be changes via XBMC on the fly that is not something special of MPC. The actual thing that is good about MPC HC or WMP is to be able to use CORE AVC codec with nVidia CUDA technology, that somewhat improves video quality .... which XBMC does not support. But overall for any mkv bd rips there is hardly any difference if you play with MPC or XBMC.

 

[reignofchaos]

If you are on a recent nvidia card with a hardware decoder, the best way to go is Lav CUVID as the decoder and madVR as the renderer if you go the MPC-HC way. Its the best image quality by a country mile.

Core AVC is an antique codec - its best avoided. Even the inbuilt decoder of MPC-HC is better than coreAVC.

 

[sam9s]

^^ mmmm I am gonna try these for sure, but saying that internal MPC codes are better than CoreAVC is going a bit too far ......though I agree they might be a bit old ....

 

[jsanand]

Great job Sam...the whole thread is inspiring to have a second look at my WDTV Live and see if the vacant shelf space can be used for an HTPC.

Again congratulations for building such a neat piece of equipment.

 

[akhil7j]

@Sam,

I am presently using Media Player Classic. It works fine with DTS / AC3. If I switch over to XBMC, whether there will be any improvement in PQ or SQ. Ofcourse XBMC has very vivid and striking menu and has the ability to use cover art etc. as you explained in your earlier post.

Thanx

Amit Ji,

MPC-HC I find best for Audio Video quality. I would suggest Core AVC Professional 2.0 codec for Video decoding and ffdshow audio decoder for Audio.

With CoreAVC you will find better Video and if you have Nvidia card, just enable Cuda Core in CoreAVC and see the improvement.

ffdshow does bitstreaming very well. All your audio will be decoded by Marantz AVR. Just these two filters are enough for best audio/video.

TMT5 is good but as per reviews the audio quality is not that great.


Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

 

[sam9s]

With CoreAVC you will find better Video and if you have Nvidia card, just enable Cuda Core in CoreAVC and see the improvement.

ffdshow does bitstreaming very well. All your audio will be decoded by Marantz AVR. Just these two filters are enough for best audio/video.

TMT5 is good but as per reviews the audio quality is not that great.

I defy that claim, TMT5 audio quality is as good as MPC with ffdshow, yes with coreAVC I can say the picture was bit sharp but, that too only on my 24" Del display, on my 47" even the video quality looked same ......

 

[spirovious]

I defy that claim, TMT5 audio quality is as good as MPC with ffdshow, yes with coreAVC I can say the picture was bit sharp but, that too only on my 24" Del display, on my 47" even the video quality looked same ......

Some videos with MPc has frames drop problem.ie jaggies can be seen,but not with PDVD(same clips)

 

[ValueBuyer]

I defy that claim, TMT5 audio quality is as good as MPC with ffdshow, yes with coreAVC I can say the picture was bit sharp but, that too only on my 24" Del display, on my 47" even the video quality looked same ......

Hi sam you already own POHD media player what do you think about convenience,picture & audio quality between HTPC,Media player.

 

[venkatcr]

TMT5 is good but as per reviews the audio quality is not that great.

Audio quality is defined more by hardware/drivers/filters than by a software such as TMT, PowerDVD or MPC. If you are decoding the codec within the PC, it is the quality of the sound card / drivers that will come into effect. If you are bit-streaming, the software has no control over the audio.

Cheers

 

[ValueBuyer]

Audio quality is defined more by hardware/drivers/filters than by a software such as TMT, PowerDVD or MPC. If you are decoding the codec within the PC, it is the quality of the sound card / drivers that will come into effect. If you are bit-streaming, the software has no control over the audio.

Cheers

What about video quality either process within the pc or bitstream which one is better choice,what about processing video in receiver and tv.

 

[venkatcr]

What about video quality either process within the pc or bitstream which one is better choice,what about processing video in receiver and tv.

This depends on a number of things. At the barest minimum, it depends upon the capability and quality of processing of the GPU and the AVR. Software such as TMT, PowerDVD etc., do have video processing capabilities and they use either the CPU or the GPU, for what is called hardware acceleration.

I have personal experience with ATI's 5770 GPU and it does a commendable job with video. I have constantly compared that with the Onkyo's Reon-HQV HD video scaling, and it is very difficult to make out a difference. In some movies, particularly when a close up of the face is shown, the pixelation is handled slightly better by Reon as compared to 5770. But otherwise, both perform equally well.

Remember, when you want the external AVR to do video processing, you must send the video untouched to it. Of course, when you are playing a Blu-Ray, the best is not to do any video processing.

BTW, the term 'bit streaming' is used only for audio.

Cheers

 

[sam9s]

Hi sam you already own POHD media player what do you think about convenience,picture & audio quality between HTPC,Media player.

What about video quality either process within the pc or bitstream which one is better choice,what about processing video in receiver and tv.

well this is what I feel ........ Better the bitrate, or in other sense higher the quality of a movie better it is played on HTPC ... say a 6+GB file with 15+mbps bitrate ....... HTPC will play it far better than any media player ........ ISO is the best example .... POHD played my ISO like S*IT ... all jagged image and poor color resolution .... HTPC plays it absolute fine ....... infact POHD was not even able to play it on my LAN coz of the high bandwidth ...... the only way I was able to play it was putting the ISO on the internal HDD of POHD. With HTPC I dont know I was able to stream ISO on my LAN just fine.
On the other hand a simple divx DVD rip would not make any difference on any player .....
But HTPC with XBMC is a whole new world, you just love to browse your media library. It gives you a sense of completeness AFA Media Player goes ...... I would recommend HTPC with any decent library like XBMC or Media Portal over the current gen Media Players ....... with ofcourse the condition that you are ok to do some configurations and all. Its not an OUT of THE Box solution you know. ......