Windows 7 - Good, W7 Media Center - Um...

[CX23882-19]

Due to some unexplained "corruption after sleep" issues I've been experiencing for the past week, I decided now was the time to upgrade to Windows 7 on my main HTPC. After a nice quick installation, I'm up and running. Windows 7 runs very smoothly, and even the AMD SB600 runs in AHCI mode with Microsoft's msahci.sys driver and without a massive CPU penalty or poor performance. I have no complaints with Windows 7 as an operating system.

But Windows Media Center - what a complete mess. I don't know where to start. The idea of build-in codecs sounds great, but unless you're using the native WTV format, video playback is very problematic. AVI, MPG, TS, MP4, MKV - every single format has one or more issues.

AVI files are very hit or miss as to whether or not they'll play back properly. AC3 in AVI is a no-go, so you'll need to install 3rd party decoders for that. But it seems that even MP3 presents problems to the new Media Foundation decoders. I presume that it's due to using VBR MP3, and you'll say it's my fault for using VBR, but the same files play back in every other player I've tried - VLC, MPC-HC, XP MCE2005, Vista Media Center etc. Only Windows 7 Media Center (and Media Player) have problems. Maybe I'm crazy enough to use VBR in AVI, but I'm not crazy enough to re-encode from the original discs so they play on one piece of software!

But it seems that even MPEG2 (MPEG2 video, MPEG Layer 2 audio in MPEG PS) is asking too much. I have a few music videos recorded from the TV, and attempting to play these on Windows 7 is seemingly asking too much. They start playing fine, and a couple of seconds in, they start playing again. With a film or TV episode it's mildly annoying, with a music video or a music video playlist it makes it useless.

Media Center still can't remember the play position when maximising or restoring the window, but that's always been broken to some extent. This is probably the same reason as standby support being broken - if your monitor goes to sleep expect to find any paused video start playing whilst you're away from the PC.

Next, TV in Media Center. Hybrid tuner support - check. MHEG-5 support - check. Working aspect ratio support - fail. It seems that if you have a 16:10 monitor, you'll have to watch vertically stretched video after tuning to a new channel.

What a shame that Microsoft could do such a great job with Windows 7, but once again they're let down by the Media Center team. This was to be expected, since they've still not fixed the ehplayer bug that they introduced into Vista MC earlier this year and know the existence of. Going from past experience, I doubt they'll manage to fix all of these bugs, they'll break more things releasing partially-functional hotfixes and "Media Center Cumulative Updates". This may come across as a rant, but it isn't. I'm not angry, just very disappointed in Media Center and the fact it manages to be flashy and pretty, but fails to accomplish it's intended task satisfactorily.

I'll let them off the hook for certain issues - the most prominent being the extended spinning circle when starting video playback and the accompanying jerky mouse cursor. This only appears on my ATI Radeon HD 3650-equipped system whereas my other system with an nVidia GeForce 8800GT functions correctly in that respect.

I'm undecided now - go back to Vista with a working Media Center, or stick with Windows 7 and hope they fix these annoying bugs.

[ecac]

Sounds annoying. Probably a dumb question since I'm not 7 literate yet (I'm still on XP personally until I get off my backside and sort out some new gear for an HTPC), but can you stick with 7 but use third party codecs and media centre software that are more tried and tested? I'm guessing the codecs are likely to be the most dodgy part of that plan...
Given 7 seems to be well regarded as better than Vista in many ways, it might be worth sticking with it if possible.

[=assassin=]

See if VLC media player works on windows 7, that usually has alot of codecs built-in with it.

[format]

VLC works perfectly but it;'s not really a media center program...

[badass]

Check your drivers. Often you are better off using Vista drivers than the built in newer Windows 7 ones.
I use the W7 media player with all kinds of media and it's far better than the Vista Media center! I've had no codec type problems at all so far!

[Phage]

I've used the Shark 007 codec pack in Vista, and there's now a W7 pack as well. This may help.
http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html

[shaithis]

I use the shark codec pack on Windows 7 and find everything plays back perfectly in Media Center with the sole exceptions being oddities from playing ISO files through My Movies, which is a 3rd-party addon and therefore not a W7 issue.

So far I have been very impressed by W7MC.

[dangel]

I've used the Shark 007 codec pack in Vista, and there's now a W7 pack as well. This may help.
http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html

I use the shark codec pack on Windows 7 and find everything plays back perfectly in Media Center with the sole exceptions being oddities from playing ISO files through My Movies, which is a 3rd-party addon and therefore not a W7 issue.

So far I have been very impressed by W7MC.

What they said - shark's pack sorts everything out for you

Also consider the media browser plugin - although I will warn you they've yet to update it fully for 7 it is a work of evil genius:

http://www.mediabrowser.tv/forum/vie...php?f=5&t=3796 I expect they'll be releasing a new beta soon to properly cover 7.

Use this fix: http://www.mediabrowser.tv/forum/vie...hp?f=11&t=3657 to enable the menu item which is missing under 7 otherwise.

Use this wonderful too to automatically grab art/synopsis/actor info: http://www.mediacentermaster.com/ (works brilliantly with media browser)


Also: I would say one thing I've learnt - video drivers are all important - a lot of issues i've had over the years (ATI and nVidia) have been down to a driver revision - and yep, it does have an impact on MC too..

[CX23882-19]

Unfortunately, Shark007's codec pack didn't fix the problems. That was something I've already tried. It does add support for missing formats, but doesn't fix the issues with the built-in decoders. One problem is that it appears that the Microsoft MP2 and MP3 decoders must be used, or else both Media Player and Media Center output garbled sound. This rules out third party decoders such as ffdshow or AC3Filter. Disabling the Media Foundation decoders simply breaks Media Center playback completely.

As for the ATI problems, I've had to disable H264 and MPEG2 acceleration (HWUVD_DisableH264 and HWUVD_DisableMPEG2) to stop the jerky mouse problem. It was a mild annoyance in that it only occurs for a few seconds when opening a video (with DXVA acceleration) but on two occasions now I've had the machine lock up completely. Unfortunately this problems appears in both the drivers presented by Windows Update, and the latest Catalyst 9.9 from the AMD web site. I would blame it on a broken graphics card hardware if not for the fact that DXVA acceleration is working fine on Vista. I'd blame it on Windows 7 if not for the fact that it works fine with the GeForce 8800GT!

I'm already using MediaBrowser, and I agree that it's a great plugin. If not for MB, I would still be using XBMC. I've been using a version on MB I compiled from the SVN trunk because the previous beta was rather buggy, but I see that they've now officially released the new version.

[shaithis]

Very odd then, I can only presume it is a hardware issue or a clean install of Windows is needed

Running my HTPC with an ATI 4550 supplying both video and audio over HDMI in Windows 7 and it's silky smooth.....have had both catalyst 9.8 and 9.9s on it without issue as well.....and have all acceleration features enabled.

I have played just about everything without issue as well: Audio CD, MP3, DIVX, MKV, WMV, TS, DVD etc.....and I have also played the majority of formats in standard and high def....including audio upto 192Khz, 24bit.

[dangel]

Have to echo shaithis - i've had W7 on two different sets of hardware for MC and it's all worked flawlessly. I've certainly never needed to use 'built in' codecs (or even worry about it) to get sound to work..

[CX23882-19]

Thank-you for all your replies.

Still no luck with my main HTPC. Even a fresh Windows 7 installation falls over with respect to acceleration of h.264 and MPEG2. Most of the time, it's just jerky mouse and high CPU for a few seconds before playback starts, but other times it locks up the whole system at that point. Maybe something is broken specifically with the HD 3650, but the same drivers work fine on the same hardware, with acceleration enabled, on Vista. It's not just the Microsoft decoders either - MPC-HC exhibits the same jerkyness on open with DXVA enabled. Those of you with ATI cards, and no problems with MKV/h.264 - what model card do you have, and does your card have working PowerPlay that clocks down at idle?

My other PC, a Dell Dimension E521 seems to be going better. I'm not impressed with Shark007's codec pack, so for now I've installed Haali Splitter and AC3Filter and it seems to be working correctly (i.e. audio and video are staying in sync). AC3Filter is not something I've ever needed before, and it doesn't appear to be replacing the Microsoft decoders, it's just sitting between the decoders and the sound card. I'm guessing that AC3Filter is being used as the reference clock for playback. I'm still not entirely convinced it's resolved though.

And the problem with MPEG2 recorded TV (not DVR-MS and WTV - just MPEG2 PS with .mpg extension) double-starting is still present. I have no idea what's causing that, but it happens every time in Media Center (Media Player is fine).

My last problem is with ripped DVD in VIDEO_TS folders. Every time I start playback of those from Media Browser, I get the default ding sound several times. Not a huge issue, because I'll turn off Windows sounds, but I'm curious as to what is actually making the ding - no errors or messages appear.

[shaithis]

I am using a cheap and passively-cooled Sapphire HD4550

Not sure about PowerPlay and clock-down - I haven't changed anything in the driver defaults.

[nightkhaos]

Regarding Shark007 codecs not helping, are you running 64 bit, and if so, did you install the x64 package as well as the Win7Codecs package? Windows 7 opens WMC and WMP in 64 bit mode, so you need 64 bit codecs.

[CX23882-19]

32-bit.

[dangel]

I'm at a loss as to what's wrong with your system - you've tried different video drivers as per my previous post? For a [very] long time I was forced to stick with a particular nVidia drive on Vista for my MC as later drivers really borked up all sorts of things (and not just playback).

Certainly evidence points towards this being something perculiar with your system given other's experience with 7 MC and shark's pack (which i've always found to be excellent on both Vista and 7).