windows media center on x31

[daweitowalk]

Hi all,

Just installed vista home premium today. It is running just ok, not exciting though.

The only prolem encountered so far is that it does not seem to support Windows Media Center. When trying to play the sample video in Media Center, a window pups up saying
"VIDEO ERROR
Files needed to display video are not installed
or not working correctly. Please restart
Windows Media Center or restart the
computer."

Any idea about the cause of this problem?

Anyone have any success in using Media Center on X31?

Cheers,

[bobbarker]

I've tried XP MCE on my X31 in the past-- it's dismal. If you want a media center I'd go and try "GB-PVR". It's free and works good on the X31.

As far as the video error, you might need an MPEG-2 codec. Nvidia makes one of (if not the) best MPEG-2 codec out there.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html
It's free to try for a month but it ends up costing $20 after that. If you have real DVD software (PowerDVD or WinDVD) install those instead because those have MPEG-2 codecs themselves.

[daweitowalk]

I've tried XP MCE on my X31 in the past-- it's dismal. If you want a media center I'd go and try "GB-PVR". It's free and works good on the X31.

As far as the video error, you might need an MPEG-2 codec. Nvidia makes one of (if not the) best MPEG-2 codec out there.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html
It's free to try for a month but it ends up costing $20 after that. If you have real DVD software (PowerDVD or WinDVD) install those instead because those have MPEG-2 codecs themselves.

hey, so xp mce actually worked on your x31, no matter how dismal is was. did you try to record program. I guess recording would be much easier to achieve. did you need to install any extra thing for it to work? maybe xp mce just works better on x31 than vista mce.

I have tried both the decoder and dvd software, only to find out nothing has changed.

[bobbarker]

It was dismal. The animations were choppy and menus were slow. I was able to watch TV but I never tried recording anything because at the time I had the 4200RPM drive and I figured it would choke trying to do more than one stream.

As far as extras go I had XP MCE and the trial of the Nvidia MPEG2 codec and the drivers for my tuners. If you can I'd seriously try XP MCE. XP in general is lighter to run than Vista and leaves more resources to TV watching/recording.

And to your original problem...I'd google that specific thing and see what comes up. It's a fairly common problem and normally it's a lack of MPEG2 codec...but sometimes it isn't. Maybe since you installed DVD software and the Nvidia codec they're both fighting. Try uninstalling both completely and only try Nvidia one. To see which one is in use, start playing a DVD in Windows Media Player, click 'File' and somewhere there should be something that says 'Properties' and it should say what codec the current file is using.