Maybe this will help you.
The problem:
I got everything working, so that I could use the media center. My setup (the relevant parts):
- ATI X1950 GT graphics card
- Hauppauge Nova T-500 DVB-T tuner card
- Bog standard box running Vista Home Premium
- JVC widescreen CRT TV
- ATI card connected to TV via S-Video cable
It turns out it's quite simple:
- Tasks -> Settings -> TV -> Configure Your TV or Monitor
- Go through the wizard. When it asks 'Identify Your Display Type', choose Monitor.
- Now here comes the wierd part. On the next screen, choose 'DVI, VGA, or HDMI', even though you are using S-Video.
- On the next screen, choose 'Widescreen (16:9)'.
- Then choose 576i as your screen resolution.
- From there on in, do what the nice wizard says.
CAVEAT: Don't know yet what happens after a suspend or a reboot. Will update when I've got results.
A few more Media Center Tips:
- MCE Standby Tool will help solve your standby problems. However, do not enable the regular reboots. These seemed to get afoul of my dodgy Vista drivers, so things wouldn't start up correctly.
- Don’t let Windows Update reboot the machine. Every time my machine reboots, something goes wrong. Do this manually, when nothing is recording and you are sitting there to make sure it is happy.
7 comments:
I am having troubles with the same issue and I have 2 more question to you before I run out and buy the same card as yours:
1. Does the card natively support widescreen settings for the s-video output? What resolution do you choose in windows (or do you do it from within mce)?
2. Does it work after reset/reboot?
Thanks.
1. Apparently, widescreen isn't something you can support natively over an s-video link. All s-video widescreen is done by stretching the image to widescreen, and then modifying the output appropriately. What this means is that everything is done from within MCE. You windows desktop will operate normally/stretched.
2. Yes. Everything is fine after reboots. Early versions of my motherboard/sound drivers had to reinstall on every reboot, but that seems to have been fixed.
Yes, I got to the same result yesterday (not what I hoped for :-( ).
I think I will try the road other have succeeded with (VGA->Scart cable + Powerstrip) and hope for the best.
Thanks.
I've got a standard tv connected via svideo but vista media center is leaving a one inch black "margin" around the picture. Any idea how to get the tv image to fill the tube?
The only think I can think of for this one (sorry about the late reply) is that the graphics cards sometimes let you adjust the edges, as do some TVs.
Note: My ATI card goes into black and white mode (??) whenever I adjust the screen that way. I have to reinstall the driver to fix it!
Since i posted in January I gave up on having native widescreen out through s-video. Luckily enough the video card built in my meda center (a Siemens Scaleo E) at least has a good driver able to tune margins correctly without having to reinstall anything. Soon enough we will upgrade to an LCD or plasma television and the whole problem will disappear, but until then it is really frustrating that it doesn't exist any graphic card that handles s-video output correctly. Few weeks ago I bought a cheap DVD (as well as DIVX, WMA, pictures and music) player to my daugther (approx. 50 USD) which can easily handle widescreen correctly :-( So it's not impossible nor expensive to do it.
(Owen Lam is my other name) I've now also upgraded my TV to a plasma (very happy with my Panasonic). Since the card has DVI output, I've purchased a cable and reconfigured. With everything in beautiful 1080p, my MCE pc has decided to die. I'm currently in communication with ASUS about the problem, but I suspect the PC is a loss. Not sure I'm going to replace it because, frankly, MCE is finicky, crashes a lot (especially the ATI drivers). On the other hand, it was nice to have Freeview channels on two tuners.
My one recommendation: Don't use the PC for playing DVD's. The quality is poor.
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