Starting all over, help me get it all right (1 Viewer)

[Lotsofjazz]

It decodes the audio (mp3, wma, mpg, wav etc.) in a digital AC3 or PCM stream and sends this over the SPDIF to your Receiver, if the audio is allready AC3, DD or DTS, it can send it 'as is' over the SPDIF. Then the digital/analauge conversion into sound to your speakers takes place in your receiver. In Powerdvd setup, tab Audio, you must select SPDIF as the 'speaker setup'. Also in Mediaportal you must select the SPDIF as the speaker setup in the Directshow filters. Maybe also in your on board soundcard driver you must select some things, so it can be handled by your receiver. Your receiver must be set such that 5.1 streams are downmuxed into a stereo signal (you probably allready have it like this), otherwise you might get into the situation you only hear ambient noise and sound, but mis the dialogue from the center speaker.. I had this once, and is very odd. Also check if your receiver can handle DTS streams, then you also can leave DTS streams 'as is'. You just have to play a little with the options, to see what is best for you.

About Vista vs XP, in the beginning there were some anoying issues with Vista, true, but most of them are resolved now. Like the slow booting process, is hardly an issue now.. It also had to do with people trying to run vista on older systems, but with the hardware you have it should work fine.

lots

 

[hulkhaugen]

Thanks very much! You wouldn't happen to know a guide about what to remove and what to keep with vLite considering HTPC and MediaPortal use? I don't want UAC and Windows Media Center for instance, not sidebar either....

 

[Spragleknas]

Well, 1 000 NOK is "nok" for me to skip it

Regarding nLite, you might wanna have a look here -> https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/mediaportal-1-talk-45/howto-mediaportal-vista-25105/

 

[Lotsofjazz]

I turned off:

Windows indexing service, as this reduces harddrive activity enormously
All services related to Windows Media center, to prevent this from starting up when pressing the green button
Windows Defender, as I have a better application for that (Mcafee)

That's all I did tweaking Vista, everything else is default.

I kept the sidebar because it has a nice indicator for CPU activity and Memory usage, but you can turn that off.

One thing you NEED is keeping Vista Aero (the glassy standard Vista look) as it seems to do some thing essential to make certain video codecs work properly. Don't ask me why.

To make the MCE remote work properly with Mediaportal I installed a plugin called MPtray, this will make sure Mediaportal starts when you press the green button (was also needed in XP)

Lots

 

[mightysween]

This doesn't relate necessarily to an nLite version, but a great general guide for tweaking Vista (and other OSs) can be found here:

TweakHound - Tweak & Optimize Windows Vista

I have made DRASTIC improvements to all of my systems using these guides.