moving from media center to media portal (1 Viewer)

[desmond]

So just to update. I got the a10 this weekend and installed the software and hardware. I'm amazed at how many missing drivers and things a fresh install of windows 7 has. It took best part of a day just getting all the drivers and stuff like net framework 4 what ever that is installed on the a10 and my existing e350 that I installed a Samsung 120gb pro ssd in. I did a complete new clean install on both machines.


I can say a ssd makes a HUGE difference to a machine. Its so much more responsive now. The new a10 also has the same ssd and the old 2tb hard disc installed for the media and as it has 16gb ram I set up a 8gb ram drive. The asrock motherboard actually comes with a programme called xram that does this at every boot up and I have the time shifting set to the ram drive.


The a10 really kicks butt and is so nice to use. It draws the same power as my e350 did at idle as I had the e350 setup never to clock back due to occasional jerking when a background task would use up the CPU. At Max the a10 seems to use about 30 watts more but I don't care. Its so much faster!


While building the a10 I needed some stuff in a hurry so I want to PC world and saw they had a PC USB t2 receiver on sale at 9.99 so I bought it.


So that's a tsb twin s2 card, a TBS twin usb T2, a PC nano twin dvb t and now another t2 USB receiver.


The PC nano twin USB dvbt reciever is being picked up as a dvbt and a dvbc receiver so I need to look into what's up there.


The a10 is running great! No problems at all with my sound over spdif to amp running fine. Picture quality seems better than the e350 on my 40 inch TV. The e350 is connected to my 30 ish inch TV in the bedroom. Both machines are on a GB LAN. The e350 is working great for everything apart from one issue. I have a a blue ray rip of avatar on my media folder. To me its a crap film but its good at testing hardware due to it's 30-40gb size and quality.


So it plays on the e350 100% smooth for like 30 seconds with less than 30% CPU then it starts stuttering and the sounds start and stop in time with the stuttering. CPU still less than 30%. Moving from full screen to window and back fixes the issue for like 30 seconds and it's back. Happens anywhere in the film. Any ideas were to look? This uses to play fine after tweaking codecs. The network is at like 2% so its not that and its not the CPU GPU? Its like a background service does something and messes with playback.


Other question is that if I record something from TV on one machine will it show up to watch on the other?


Thanks des

 

[CypherMK]

Maybe this can help:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/guide-perfect-playback-display-calibration.119610/

 

[porky996t]

Hi Des,

just a thought - when I was setting up my clients I found that built in wireless cards affected picture playback; so I just disabled them and it helped a lot. I also didn't need them due to the wired network.

 

[desmond]

Thanks guys. Nether machine has a WiFi card or connection so I don't know. I will try playing it direct from the hard disk in case its network related.

Anyhow I have bigger problems. I came home to find a dead a10 PC. It won't even put the power light on. Nothing seems loose so i need to talk to the place that I got the base machine from. It does light up a USB hub if I plug it in but nothing else. Don't know if that means the PSU is OK and the motherboard is dead. The last time i played with PC's was back in the 486dx2 days and they would bleep at you to give you a clue but these new machines don't even seem to have a bleeper...

 

[CypherMK]

That is too bad. Hope they can fix it.

 

[porky996t]

Any news on the A10 Des?

 

[desmond]

Some news. The PC suppliers recommended checking all power connection which I had done AND removing/refitting the CMOS battery. I was very sceptical the battery thing was worth doing but to my amazement it worked! PC starts up and was running fine. Then I turned off my TV and noticed the PC died. Total black screen job. It did boot up again but as it was late I left it to try tonight when I get home.

So I don't know what's going on. Fresh install of software and new hardware so its a odd one. Maybe some BIOS setting needs played with. Dam computers. I haven't messed with over clocking or anything so its just strange.

All power saving settings in windows and media portal are off so its not the PC sleeping.

The saga continues.... Thanks for the support guys.

 

[desmond]

Another update. So the a10 continued to randomly lock up and freeze. I had to remove the battery and reset the CMOS 3 times. Eventually I just got a screen with BIOS Ami details and couldn't even get into the BIOS. In desperation I tried removing the ram one card at a time and refitting it. So I seem to have a faulty ram card as the computer has been 100% OK with no issues for 4 days now. The faulty ram card will have to go back and get exchanged.

I haven't bothered trying to resolve the skipping playback of avatar on the e350 yet. I'm just enjoying mediaportal and the PC working. Sorta fed up of messing with the computers. But I'm impressed with mediaportal, and I'm sticking with it.

Thanks guys.