Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater HTPC - Finally! (but have some issues)

OK...just got my very first PC built. Two days of trying to get my X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card to work, we finally ripped it out, and are running optical directly off the mb (Intel D975X BX2) into the receiver. Sounds GREAT.

With great anticipation, I put in my very first Blu-Ray disc ('Kingdom of Heaven'). The big red FBI warning was the biggest, sharpest, clearest I've ever seen! Wow. Then the "play", "setup", and various other menu buttons came up, but they were almost translucent with the same red FBI background. ??? Rather strange bug, but regardless, we charged forward, and clicked 'play'.

The 20th Century Fox logo comes up, again, big and bright - impressive, but I did notice obvious aliasing on the edge of the logo. Is that normal? I was hoping for virtually alias free images with 1080p Blu-Ray. Is that expecting too much? (<- legit question, I'm not being sarcastic)

Then the movie starts...again wow. The falling snow looked almost three dimensional. Very, very impressive! But (yeah, another 'but'), whenever the image pans or moves the image stutters. Not horribly, but it's noticable, and rather distracting. It's not ghosting, but rather seems to be almost skipping frames.

I spared few expenses when building this machine, so I'm wondering why I'm having trouble playing back Blu-Ray.

Here's my specs...any ideas what I can do to resolve these issues? I'm guessing it's something easy, that I just don't know about.

Thanks in advance.

motherboard: Intel D975X-BX2
cpu: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
RAM: 2GB Corsair XMS DDR2
HD: Western Digital 500GB
Video: EVGA Nvidia 8800 GTS
TV: Sony KDS-60A2000

DVI to HDMI cable connection between video card and TV
Playing back Blu-Ray with the PowerDVD 6.6 BD (came with the blu-ray drive). Is it worth the $99 to step up to version 7.0? Is there something better than PowerDVD?

Thanks!

What kind of processor? Check the Task Manager to see how loaded it is while you're playing the movie.

oops. edited.

What resolution and refresh rate settings are you using for your video card properties? Normally, you want to set the video resolution to match 1:1 of your projector or tv. For example, my projector is a native 720p projector, so I have my nvidia card set to 1280 x 720. Also, I can't if your using a projector or not, but most times you have to use 60hz for them.....good luck

I'm set at 1920x1080 60hz...matching the display.

Are you running some flavor of Vista? I have heard that 4GB of RAM is the 'sweet spot' for Vista. 2GB might not be enough...

Looks like a great system I can’t see how your hardware is holding you up. I’m looking to put together a system very similar to what you have and would like to see you work this out painlessly. From what I’ve read researching you might try the following if you already haven’t.

Try some other Blu-Ray disks to see if they all have this problem.
Check your CPU utilization when this is happening.
Make sure you have all the latest drivers for all your hardware.
Make sure hardware acceleration is on and set to full.

Are you using Winblows Vista or XP. Most recommendations I’m seeing say to stick with XP for now if you are making an HD HTPC. There seems to be many problems with Vista right now especially with drivers. I have read several posts in other forums where people said they had perfectly working MCE system that stutters when they upgraded to Vista.

Just a few thoughts. The more I look at it there seems to so many things that could cause this it’s disconcerting.

Nice. The Intel E6600 is in my opinion the best price/performance processor out there. It performs within a few % points of and even bests some recent "flagship" processors from both Intel and AMD and holds its own against current "flagship" procs. And for a song, relatively.

Your hardware should be enough to play BR without dropping frames. The E6600 is by itself is almost enough to do the job on its own. Your video card should easily offer enough acceleration to do the trick with no problems.

Anandtech BR Playback Ratings

Have you installed all the latest patches & drivers from Cyberlink & Nvidia?

I'll be trying the latest version of PowerDVD today. I also noticed there's a new driver for the video card available as well.

Is PureVideo something built in to the Nvidia cards, or is that something you need to purchase extra??

Downloaded and installed the latest driver for my 8800 card, as well as the latest version of PowerDVD. The it looks worse than ever now. There's no way that's an 1080p image I'm seeing. Also, the 2.35:1 image from Kingdom of Heaven rests at the bottom of the screen rather than being centered. I put in a standared def dvd to see what that looked like, and it too was awful. Clearly no deinterlacing was being done...it was a mess.

On another note...my desktop is too large for the screen. I have cut off both top/bottom as well as right/left. The Nvidia driver has a utility to resize your desktop. Though no matter what setting I adjust it to, the desktop doesn't resize.

I knew there'd be some growing pains involved, but this is starting to get frustrating. I've had the machine built for a week, and I still don't have either video or sound working as they should. bleck.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!

Not that this is any help, but I use TheaterTek DVD software and have no issues. My 6600GT nvidia based card worked great right out of the box. However, recently I tried upgrading the drivers to the latest nforce version online. Sorry, I don't remember the version off hand, just came back from the bars with some buddy's from work.

Anyway, with the latest nforce drivers I had problems vertically stretching 2.35 movies, which is the prerequisite of my anamorphic lens to get rid of black bars.

I had to roll-back my drivers to their default, and I am fine now.

I'm a Nvidia fanboy and I think Vista is great... but right now those two don't mix well. Nvidia has CRAPPY drivers for Vista at the moment and they haven't been able to get the bugs out of any of their 8800 drivers either (Vista or XP).

The latest Nvidia driver for my card simply won't playback blu-ray properly. They also haven't fixed the "overscan" bug yet. My tv has considerable overscan, which I've been told is easily fixed with most video card software. Nvidia has the software, but it doesn't work with the 8800 series cards yet. bleck.

I wish I knew more about this. HTPC isn't as straight forward as I'd hoped (and I'm not even using this thing as a DVR!)

I don't have much to compare to, but thus far I've been far from impressed with DVD and Blu-Ray playback. I suspect it's possibly a combination of the nvidia driver, and my lack of knowledge on how to properly tweak the settings in both the video card and powerdvd software.

I finally gave up all hope of getting my sound card to work. After a week of installing, and uninstalling both the card and software, I've come to the conclusion that is simply isn't going to work. I ordered a new card (the original was bought used). If that doesn't work, I'll start pulling what little hair I have left out.

Anyone want to come to LA and give a htpc newb some lessons?

That really sux cause my HTPC with an A64 3000 1G RAM, 7300GT and onboard sound works perfectly for any multimedia task I throw at it (cept next gen DVDs). TV (DVR) and DVD playback are supurb for me under MCE. But be warned... this is not my first HTPC, I've made MANY and I learned a lot each time. 'HTPC' unless purchased from a vendor preconfigured, is a hobby.

Don't get too discouraged about the Blu ray issues, its pretty new stuff and you sir, are an early adopter there. I can't speak to the sound card issues as a long time ago I abandoned using "high end" soundcards. I'm a gamer but I still don't see the point as the motherboards I've used have always seemed to serve me well enough (spdif). Plus Creative and their history of poor driver support really pushed me over the edge, I will never again buy ANYTHING with their name on it, ever... Lastly the 8800 really seems to be a pain from what I've read. It has insane potential but everything I've read says Nvidia has dropped the ball on it's drivers (as well as Vista drivers overall). It's really hard to believe too as I've had probably a dozen (or more) Nvidia powered video cards over the years as well as a few from ATI and there never was any doubt who made the better drivers pre-8800.

Which HTPC software did you end up going with? I'm curious to know... do you duck out of that software to fire up the Blu ray software or does it work inside of the other?

If it weren't for EAX and the new lossless audio formats with Blu-Ray and HD DVD, I too would simply use the onboard audio as well. It works fine. I'm hoping the used card I purchased was dead, as I bought a new one this week. If that too doesn't work, it's going back.

As far as Nvidia goes...oye. It would figure that I'd buy the first card they've sold in the last umpteen years that they botch. I guess I just need to keep waiting for more driver releases.

I'm not using my machine as a DVR, so I'm simply running XP and using PowerDVD for Blu-Ray and DVD playback. I'm using Window Media Player for CD and MP3 playback.

Should I be doing something else?

IMO, the biggest benifit to HTPC's over other hardware is the various HTPC interfaces. I'm a total MCE fanboy. I love XP's MCE (Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005) interface and Vista's (Vista Home Premium or Ultimate) is even better. There are other good ones that just install on XP (and Vista I'd assume) like Sage, BeyondTV, etc.

Having a remote that drives 99.9% of my computer is just plain nice (because of the interface). If you have never seen MCE in action you may not know what you are missing, or other HTPC software(s). It's true most HTPC software IS geared for DVR functionality but I like MCE the best because of how it handles ALL of my multimedia. I would not want to go without my music library or videos, or pictures, or movies (MyMovies plugin for MCE). And of course having the DVD player built into the interface as well.

Basically my computer has blended into working just like any other stand alone DVD player or DVR/CableBox or CD Player, etc. I do have the keyboard for when I want to go above and beyond, like browsing the Internet or playing a game.

Toss in one other goodie for MCE, extenders. The Xbox 360 is a generation 2 Media Extender. You attach it via your home network to your main MCE machine and it gives you the same interface and ability to play all the same multimedia content you have on another TV elsewhere in your home. I have several friends that have a 360 just for that. I am planing on getting one this summer.

That is why I love HTPC's so much.

Don't forget about playing online streaming content, like Netflix, on a big screen. I'm getting 18 hours a month in addition to the 3 at-a-time mailed DVDs. The selection is slim now, but you know it will eventually pick up. So far all of the movies have played smoothly.

Huh... how's that streaming work? Install some of their software on your PC? If they had a plugin for MCE I'd be interested, always thought things like that should be a no brainer.

Quote:

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Huh... how's that streaming work?

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Okay, poorly worded. I'm hoping that Netflix will eventually have other options for "viewing plugins" beyond their current one, but for now it'll work.

OK...watched 'Kingdom of Heaven' all the way through the other night.

I'm still not convinced.

1) hiccups at chapter breaks
2) occasional digital drop outs (3-5x over the course of the movie)
3) still not convinced I'm seeing full 1080p as discovery channel HD looks better, and that's quite compressed. It looks good, but I'm not wowed at all.

A bit of good news though...I finally got sound without using the optical output from my mainboard. (though I don't think my sub is receiving it's signal)

blah...the joy for me in HT is the viewing/listening, not the friggin' around with wires, configurations, and software.

From everything I have read, you don't want to build your own HTPC unless you do enjoy playing around with the wires and software as well. It turns into a hobby all its own, with some of the tweaking that goes on.

I'm holding out for the ones with cablecard built in, because I really want it to record HD more then anything. It looks like those can still only be purchased OEM. While I would probably prefer to build myself, I'd consider just buying a HTPC if the price was right.

What's agravating is that I can't find any good info. No one seems to be able to tell me what's going wrong. Not Nvidia, not Cyberlink, no one on the message boards. The software that comes bundled with the video driver has a zillion and one settings, but no documentation explaining what any of the settings do, or how they should be adjusted. There's a basic "what they are" in the help file, but no practical info on how they should be used/set. Same goes for the PowerDVD software.

grr.

spiffnme,

I've heard horror stories about Nvidia drivers and vista. Most of them go like this:

"Hey...this game works...but I can't set this setting or it will go poof...or...this video works, but it doesn't display right"

I just built a Vista machine for someone and would NOT allow them to buy a Nvidia card. Had to go with ATI.

Since the Blue Ray stuff is so darned...well...complicated and fresh and new, I can't say that anyone knows what the problem is.

But, if I could pick one thing that would probably fix it, it would be getting an ATI card. It's worth a shot. If you still get the same errors, sell it on some hardware enthusiast forum (like hardforum.com) for a little less than what you got it for.

I mean, it sucks, but with the way things are going right now, ATI and Vista are the way to go. I'm running vista right now (got it free from my school...hehe) and it's running flawlessly with my ATI card. No hiccups, glitches, or freezes yet.

It sucks man, I know the feeling. I HATE having computer problems like that. Every time you pop in a movie you get that little queezy feeling in your stomach.

My PC is an HTPC of sorts...so if you have any questions I'll try to help you out. On top of that, I'm on Vista too.

Ya, having a HDDVD or Blu-ray in a HTPC is pretty cutting edge right now.

Have you been focusing your research efforts on Vista+8800 driver issues? That's probably where I'd be putting my efforts into. Do you have any other video cards in the house you could try for a while? I find my 7300GT works perfect for my HTPC. I've had a 6600 in there too which was flawless. And I watch/record HDTV on my box. Looks like a 7600GT is the min for next gen DVD playback thou.

One of the reason's I nested with MCE was the "just works" principle (of course the hardware has to be working). Years ago I played the game of running this software, and that software on my "HTPC" of the time. If you are running Vista Home Premium or Ultimate, you can simply fire up the MCE interface as it's built in.

Oh one other thing, how does the box do everything else? Put the Blu-ray on hold for a moment and make sure everything else works the way you want.

RE: CableCard. I can't stress it enough to anyone looking at those... be sure to check and see what your local cable company has planned for their networks. Time Warner for instance (not my cable co, but my friends) is putting everything new on 'switched video' which means cable card PC's and Tivo and TV's won't work with it. You don't want to drop 2-3 grand on a OEM HTPC to have it work for a year. At least I don't. I've been a bit of a broken record on that, but I'm pretty pissed about the whole cable card thing and want to make sure everyone that is looking at them knows about 'switched video'.

When you talk about 'switched video' are you talking about this ?

I'm trying to get up to speed with current cable practices.

And how would I find out if my cable company (Comcast) is going to be doing this. I don't trust just calling a support person and asking them.

sound
Got the soundcard working. The only issue left with sound is that I can't seem to listen in anything in simple 2.1. Even when playing back a simple mp3 file, I'm getting it split up through all my speakers. I need to actually change my audio card settings to 2 speakers to get 2 channel sound. That's not normal is it? Using the analog output, movies sound GREAT!

DVD Still not happy with standard dvd playback. The gamma seems a little out of whack. Blacks seem overly crushed. Colors get blotchy quit often. De-interlacing...what's the secret to this? If I select "enable hardware acceleration" in the cyberlink powerDVD settings, things look much, much worse. If I take my 8800 card out of the mix, then use the powerlink dvd to handle the de-interlacing, it looks better, but still not as good my old dvd player did. When I do a search in the Nvidia help file for de-interlacing I get nothing. ??? As I've said before, one of the major reasons, if not the biggest reason for building this HTPC was to get the very best standard def dvd picture possible. From all fronts, this is the one thing everybody in the htpc world seemed to agree on. Standard def DVD playback on a htpc is supposed to be better than just about any dvd player you can buy. Nvidia's "PureVideo" technology...is that all built into the card, or is there something else I'm supposed to be downloading/installing? Because thus far, the Nvidia card just plain sucks.

Blu-Ray I just watched "Casino Royale" on blu-ray last night, and just about pee'd myself. Now THAT is what I've been expecting. Sound and picture were just about as perfect as I could possibly hope for. I did have 2 or 3 moments of dropped frames/skipping during the movie. Frustrating. If I'm not mistaken though, the PowerDVD settings for last night's viewing still had "enable hardware acceleration" disabled. That means I was playing back blu-ray without the help of my video cards power. I'll have to do some comparisons with Blu-Ray with acceleration both on and off. But so far it seems all my movie playback issues stem from that stupid friggin' card. (or my complete lack of understanding how it's supposed to be setup)

misc
Did I mention that my cordless mouse has a range of about 3'? I need to sit on the floor in front of my tv to get everything set up. Bleck. A guy here a work has a differnt mouse that's getting about a 20' range. I guess it's time for a new mouse.

Overscan is still an pain in the butt. Nvidia says they may have a workaround with their next driver. We'll see.