December 2005 - Posts
Sometimes things aren't as difficult as they seem...
After some extra reading, and searching on gathering.tweakers.net, I found that everything I had done was correct. The only uncertainty was my graphics card. I went out and bought me a faster one (a Radeon 9550) and everything works well! As I am typing this, the same machine is playing a sweet K's Choice song and recording a TV show, while displaying media center on my TV without any problems. Me likey.
I'm glad I got this thing to work within my holiday. I don't wanna think what could have happened if it didn't work and I had to go back to work again... ;)
Ramon's tips helped me a bit further, because they enabled me to test some of the settings and try where the problem is.
I now encounter a very nice but weird phenomenon: when I use DualView on my NVidia card, I can drag Media Center to my TV. This works and shows up properly. When I maximize Media Center the image is all garbled up. But: when I open another window (this can be anything: notepad, display properties or the DirectX Control Panel (By the way: thanks for that one Ramon!)) and give this other window the focus, my Media Center display perfect. As soon as Media Center gets the focus, its image garbles up.
So: when it doesn't have focus, it displays properly but I can't use it. When it has focus, I can use it, but I can't see what I'm doing... Nice.
I'l keep on going till this thing works!
It's been a while since I've been blogging, because my project has been extremely hectic. Now I'm enjoying a week off, so I've got time for toys now... ;)
One of these toys was going to be Windows XP Media Center Edition. I installed it, bought a compatible TV card together with a MCE remote and yep: everything is working fine. At least, as long as I am watching it on my monitor. As soon as I switch to TV (through the TV Out on my GeForce Ti4800 SE) there's trouble. I found that when Media Center is not maximized, it shows up on my TV. But when I try to maximize it, it garbles up the image up to a point where you cannot even recognize Media Center in it. It feels like the TV doesn't support the refresh rate or something, but I can't alter that in my NVidia driver.
I've tried a different TV format, DualView, SingleView on the TV only, Clone, but every time Media Center is maximized on the TV, it's bye bye sharp image. I'm thinking the not-so-new TV I've got might be the problem, or maybe the TV Out on my GeForce is not up to par. Anyway: I still got a few days to figure this out, and when I do I'll let you know. If you've got some pointers: let me know.
[EDIT]
Ramon asked me what kind of connection I'm using: I use an s-video cable to connect my PC to my TV. The Media Center is set to use this kind of connection.