- March 7, 2008
- 38
- 1
Folks,
I'm planning my first ever HTPC build around MediaPortal, XP Pro SP2 and one of the new IGP's with UVD/PureVideo2 (AMD 780G, or nVidia 8200) for HD acceleration. My Harmony 880 in MCE emulation will be the remote, with HDMI out to a 720p HDTV for video and S/PDIF out to my Onkyo AVR for audio. My main requirements are playing back DivX/Xvid/H264 content off a NAS as well as Blu-Ray disc playback ... no need for PVR features or TV tuners.
I've scoured the forums here and elsewhere, but remain a little confused about a few issues around BD playback integration in Mediaportal, and getting UVD/PV2 acceleration to work for the H264 content off the NAS. So, without much further ado, here are the questions that have me bent out of shape:
Blu-Ray Playback: I gather pretty much the only path to HW accelerated BD playback at this time is Cyberlink's PowerDVD Ultra.
Accelerated MPEG2/Xvid/VC-1/H264 content playback: I'm operating under the assumption that, under XP, "if it plays under WMP, it'll play in MediaPortal." Given this,
All in all, I'm sure my needs are not atypical, and that others have run into --- and answered --- these questions for their deployments. So, please forgive me if these questions have been answered somewhere that I've missed in my search.
cheers.
I'm planning my first ever HTPC build around MediaPortal, XP Pro SP2 and one of the new IGP's with UVD/PureVideo2 (AMD 780G, or nVidia 8200) for HD acceleration. My Harmony 880 in MCE emulation will be the remote, with HDMI out to a 720p HDTV for video and S/PDIF out to my Onkyo AVR for audio. My main requirements are playing back DivX/Xvid/H264 content off a NAS as well as Blu-Ray disc playback ... no need for PVR features or TV tuners.
I've scoured the forums here and elsewhere, but remain a little confused about a few issues around BD playback integration in Mediaportal, and getting UVD/PV2 acceleration to work for the H264 content off the NAS. So, without much further ado, here are the questions that have me bent out of shape:
Blu-Ray Playback: I gather pretty much the only path to HW accelerated BD playback at this time is Cyberlink's PowerDVD Ultra.
- How well does PDVD integrate with MediaPortal? Are we limited to designating it as an 'external' player in MediaPortal config? Or is there a way to integrate it seamlessly (like regular DVD playback in MediaPortal)?
- If PDVD must be launched using the 'external player' setting, how MCE remote friendly is it? Can all the player functions (play/pause/FF/RW/eject/etc) be controlled easily with an MCE remote? Is the shift to and from PDVD from within MediaPortal seamless for someone using just a remote?
Accelerated MPEG2/Xvid/VC-1/H264 content playback: I'm operating under the assumption that, under XP, "if it plays under WMP, it'll play in MediaPortal." Given this,
- I understand that neither nVidia nor ATI provide DirecShow filters to drive PV2 or Avivo/UVD respectively; however, I hear Cyberlink ships a hardware accelerated H264/AVC filter with PDVD. Is this filter usable outside the PDVD application? In other words, with PDVD installed, can one playback accelerated H264 content in WMP (and, by implication, MediaPortal)?
- If the answer to the last question is 'yes', do Cyberlink's filters co-exist peacefully with ffdshow? (I'm planning to use ffdshow/Haali splitter for handling Matroska containers and other non HD content).
- If the answer to (1) is 'no', and we are limited to software decoding only, will ffdshow/CoreAVC interfere with PDVD's BD playback capabilities? ... in other words, will one have to deal with the infamous 'codec hell', hand tweaking 'merits', etc.?
All in all, I'm sure my needs are not atypical, and that others have run into --- and answered --- these questions for their deployments. So, please forgive me if these questions have been answered somewhere that I've missed in my search.
cheers.