For those of us who've been using Media Center for a while, it's hard to understate how huge of a shift Windows7 was. CODECs became built in, and while most of us still "tweak" for many, the fact that they were built in meant easy access to almost all content. But as Media Center has grown, the community has developed tons of plugins, tools, etc. to do everything that they want.
Some of us use Home Server to store all of our information on (see my review also here) but one thing was lacking: how do we make our Media Centers real HD machines?
Two years ago AMD put out the first platform with native, hardware decoding of Bluray in an onboard chipset (780G) with minimal processor, decoding BD became smooth. And thanks to several products (Arcsoft's TMT, or PowerDVD, your preference) playing BD within Media Center became possible. But what the 780G (and later 785G) couldn't do was stream either LPCM or full-format bitstream to a receiver.
Last year, AMD introduced the ATI4xxx series cards, which became the first to pass full 7.1 LPCM channel audio to a receiver. Close! Then, at the end of last year, ATI Introduced the 5XXX series cards, and Intel introduced Clarksdale (i3/i5 on H55/H57 platform) chips which allowed for full bitstream audio of DTS-MA / DD-HD.
We haven't had a ton of real HTPC discussion hear because of guidelines, but in the last few weeks, Windows 7, through PDVD, became only the second outlet certified for 3D Bluray specification compliance.
So, I'm going to start this ongoing thread and try to keep it updated, and include pictures, guides, etc. on "tweaking out" a Windows Media Center.
Some of us use Home Server to store all of our information on (see my review also here) but one thing was lacking: how do we make our Media Centers real HD machines?
Two years ago AMD put out the first platform with native, hardware decoding of Bluray in an onboard chipset (780G) with minimal processor, decoding BD became smooth. And thanks to several products (Arcsoft's TMT, or PowerDVD, your preference) playing BD within Media Center became possible. But what the 780G (and later 785G) couldn't do was stream either LPCM or full-format bitstream to a receiver.
Last year, AMD introduced the ATI4xxx series cards, which became the first to pass full 7.1 LPCM channel audio to a receiver. Close! Then, at the end of last year, ATI Introduced the 5XXX series cards, and Intel introduced Clarksdale (i3/i5 on H55/H57 platform) chips which allowed for full bitstream audio of DTS-MA / DD-HD.
We haven't had a ton of real HTPC discussion hear because of guidelines, but in the last few weeks, Windows 7, through PDVD, became only the second outlet certified for 3D Bluray specification compliance.
So, I'm going to start this ongoing thread and try to keep it updated, and include pictures, guides, etc. on "tweaking out" a Windows Media Center.