United States of America
I have seen quite a bit of discussion about attempts to use Media Portal on one PC in two locations. I have a setup which works pretty well for this, so I thought I might share some of what I have learned by trial and error. I have a HTPC in my basement home theatre setup with a 100" screen powered by a NEC projector, surround sound and stadium seating. Upstairs in the living room I have a 50" Sony SXRD.
When I built the HTPC I wanted to be able to enjoy the media content upstairs and downstairs simultaneously. The simple solution would of course be to just build 2 HTPC's, one for each location and connect both to the network. However, I am cheap and I did not want to build 2 and I am trying to be a little bit greener so I also did not want to have 2 PC's on all the time. So I built one I would be really happy with.
Here are some system specs:
- Intel media series motherboard DG33TL 1333 MHz fsb G33 chipset
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 – 3.0 GHz x 2 – 1333 MHz – 4mb cache
- Corsair XMS2 - 2 GB matched dual channel PC6400 (800 MHz) DDR2 CL5
- Maxtor Green Power 500 GB 7200 RPM 32MB SATA - System disc
- 2TB (2 1TB drives in RAID) Maxtor GP 7200 RPM 16MB SATA – Media storage
- Gigabit LAN to access other network storage array (2 TB)
- Sapphire HD 3870 Toxic edition with vapor chamber cooling (whisper quiet)
- Antec NEO HE 550 watt Modular power supply (Variable speed fan so it is quiet)
- Samsung SH-S203B super multi optical drive SATA
- Sound Blaster LIVE External 24 Bit sound card.
- Gyration Ultra 30ft wireless mouse & keyboard (downstairs)
- MCE remote (upstairs)
It is still a work in progress but here is my current working configuration:
One DVI (HD 3870) output goes directly to the NEC Projector downstairs. The audio to go with the downstairs monitor is output via a separate external Sound Blaster LIVE 24 bit sound card; although you could use pretty much any card even integrated. That card passes 5.1 Channels via optical SPDIF to the multi-channel amp.
The other output (HD 3870) goes to HDMI WITH AUDIO through the use of the included adapter to the HDMI input of the TV upstairs. The HD 2400, 2600, 2900, 3800, 4800 series cards from ATI are the only ones I know of that have on board hardware HD video and audio decoding and can output digital audio and video over a single HDMI cable.
In display settings I use an extended desktop (instead of clone etc.) scheme and have Media Portal automatically startup at Windows login maximized on the secondary monitor (the upstairs HDMI TV). That is handled in Media Portal settings. Also in Media Portal configuration settings in the Movies and Music categories I just select the audio output device that is to be used by the internal player of Media Portal. In my case I select ATI HD Audio Direct as the device.
I control the upstairs TV and MP with a Media Center remote. I just bought a long USB extension and an externally powered hub for the receiver which sits below the TV on the shelf. Downstairs I just use the mouse & keyboard.
This allows me to do two different things in two locations from the same PC and Media Portal is always available upstairs for everything Media Portal can do. I have over 200 movies in MKV format HD, 44,000 mp3’s, 12,000 pix, and 900 episodes of various TV series. I love being able to access all of that from the TV on my butt with a remote. Media Portal is great.
There are a few things I would like to improve upon with this setup and I hope someone on this forum might have some helpful suggestions.
#1 – Remote / Mouse Focus issues
On the rare occasions when I am downstairs using the computer and my wife is upstairs watching something on the Media Portal we have had brief conflict. When you push a button on the remote Media Portal becomes the active window and gains “focus” so input from the remote is directed to act on Media Portal rather than another opened window. This window focus change temporarily deactivates the mouse and keyboard. As soon as you use the mouse again however it gains focus back. This is a minor issue but once, for example, I was typing downstairs and did not know that she was selecting content to watch upstairs. So we were in competition for the current focused window. In our case it is usually upstairs or downstairs, not both, so it is mostly a non issue. It would be nice, however, if the remote would always be locked and focused to the Media Portal window and the mouse Keyboard would be locked to the primary monitor by default.
#2 – Can only have one instance of Media Portal running
I like Media Portal a lot – So much that I would like to have it on the upstairs and the downstairs monitor simultaneously. You might say, well just move the Media Portal window to whichever monitor you want to use at a given time. However, the settings for upstairs are 1080p widescreen, and as mentioned before all audio is directed to the HDMI port which is connected to that TV. The downstairs projector is at a different resolution and a different aspect ratio to boot and that system uses a completely different sound card. I would have to change too many things to simply move it. I have tried and tried to create a separate instance of Media Portal to run downstairs with different settings or maybe even another profile but I have had no luck.
It is purely a software issue. The machine is more than capable of playing back two different things at once. To test this I played a 1080p HD MKV upstairs in MP and another one downstairs with Core Media Player at the same time. I currently access the same media downstairs just without the nice media center interface. Remember, the sound device for Media Portal is selected in the MP settings. The default sound card for the rest of the system is the Sound Blaster card. So I can hear anything else downstairs in any other media player I am using without a problem. Perhaps I could somehow use the MP server program. I have not really looked at that yet.
As I said this setup is a working work in progress. It works pretty well but with a few minor gripes. Of course Media Portal itself is a work in progress but it is already leaps and bounds ahead of other options out there - Score another for open source software. Please let me know if you have any insight on this.
A few more notes.
- I use a program called UltraMon to customize the dual desktop stuff.
- I have CCCP (combined community codec pack) installed to decode varied content.
These add some extra functionality.
When I built the HTPC I wanted to be able to enjoy the media content upstairs and downstairs simultaneously. The simple solution would of course be to just build 2 HTPC's, one for each location and connect both to the network. However, I am cheap and I did not want to build 2 and I am trying to be a little bit greener so I also did not want to have 2 PC's on all the time. So I built one I would be really happy with.
Here are some system specs:
- Intel media series motherboard DG33TL 1333 MHz fsb G33 chipset
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 – 3.0 GHz x 2 – 1333 MHz – 4mb cache
- Corsair XMS2 - 2 GB matched dual channel PC6400 (800 MHz) DDR2 CL5
- Maxtor Green Power 500 GB 7200 RPM 32MB SATA - System disc
- 2TB (2 1TB drives in RAID) Maxtor GP 7200 RPM 16MB SATA – Media storage
- Gigabit LAN to access other network storage array (2 TB)
- Sapphire HD 3870 Toxic edition with vapor chamber cooling (whisper quiet)
- Antec NEO HE 550 watt Modular power supply (Variable speed fan so it is quiet)
- Samsung SH-S203B super multi optical drive SATA
- Sound Blaster LIVE External 24 Bit sound card.
- Gyration Ultra 30ft wireless mouse & keyboard (downstairs)
- MCE remote (upstairs)
It is still a work in progress but here is my current working configuration:
One DVI (HD 3870) output goes directly to the NEC Projector downstairs. The audio to go with the downstairs monitor is output via a separate external Sound Blaster LIVE 24 bit sound card; although you could use pretty much any card even integrated. That card passes 5.1 Channels via optical SPDIF to the multi-channel amp.
The other output (HD 3870) goes to HDMI WITH AUDIO through the use of the included adapter to the HDMI input of the TV upstairs. The HD 2400, 2600, 2900, 3800, 4800 series cards from ATI are the only ones I know of that have on board hardware HD video and audio decoding and can output digital audio and video over a single HDMI cable.
In display settings I use an extended desktop (instead of clone etc.) scheme and have Media Portal automatically startup at Windows login maximized on the secondary monitor (the upstairs HDMI TV). That is handled in Media Portal settings. Also in Media Portal configuration settings in the Movies and Music categories I just select the audio output device that is to be used by the internal player of Media Portal. In my case I select ATI HD Audio Direct as the device.
I control the upstairs TV and MP with a Media Center remote. I just bought a long USB extension and an externally powered hub for the receiver which sits below the TV on the shelf. Downstairs I just use the mouse & keyboard.
This allows me to do two different things in two locations from the same PC and Media Portal is always available upstairs for everything Media Portal can do. I have over 200 movies in MKV format HD, 44,000 mp3’s, 12,000 pix, and 900 episodes of various TV series. I love being able to access all of that from the TV on my butt with a remote. Media Portal is great.
There are a few things I would like to improve upon with this setup and I hope someone on this forum might have some helpful suggestions.
#1 – Remote / Mouse Focus issues
On the rare occasions when I am downstairs using the computer and my wife is upstairs watching something on the Media Portal we have had brief conflict. When you push a button on the remote Media Portal becomes the active window and gains “focus” so input from the remote is directed to act on Media Portal rather than another opened window. This window focus change temporarily deactivates the mouse and keyboard. As soon as you use the mouse again however it gains focus back. This is a minor issue but once, for example, I was typing downstairs and did not know that she was selecting content to watch upstairs. So we were in competition for the current focused window. In our case it is usually upstairs or downstairs, not both, so it is mostly a non issue. It would be nice, however, if the remote would always be locked and focused to the Media Portal window and the mouse Keyboard would be locked to the primary monitor by default.
#2 – Can only have one instance of Media Portal running
I like Media Portal a lot – So much that I would like to have it on the upstairs and the downstairs monitor simultaneously. You might say, well just move the Media Portal window to whichever monitor you want to use at a given time. However, the settings for upstairs are 1080p widescreen, and as mentioned before all audio is directed to the HDMI port which is connected to that TV. The downstairs projector is at a different resolution and a different aspect ratio to boot and that system uses a completely different sound card. I would have to change too many things to simply move it. I have tried and tried to create a separate instance of Media Portal to run downstairs with different settings or maybe even another profile but I have had no luck.
It is purely a software issue. The machine is more than capable of playing back two different things at once. To test this I played a 1080p HD MKV upstairs in MP and another one downstairs with Core Media Player at the same time. I currently access the same media downstairs just without the nice media center interface. Remember, the sound device for Media Portal is selected in the MP settings. The default sound card for the rest of the system is the Sound Blaster card. So I can hear anything else downstairs in any other media player I am using without a problem. Perhaps I could somehow use the MP server program. I have not really looked at that yet.
As I said this setup is a working work in progress. It works pretty well but with a few minor gripes. Of course Media Portal itself is a work in progress but it is already leaps and bounds ahead of other options out there - Score another for open source software. Please let me know if you have any insight on this.
A few more notes.
- I use a program called UltraMon to customize the dual desktop stuff.
- I have CCCP (combined community codec pack) installed to decode varied content.
These add some extra functionality.