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Tips
Playback: Good quality playback in Media Center is largely the function of the MPEG decoder used. Vista ships with a MPEG-2 decoder specifically for use with Media Center. However, you may prefer the quality of the decoders you've been used to using (e.g. Nvidia, Elecard, etc). To change Media Center's preferred decoder, use the "DirectShow" dialog from the R5000-HD Options menu. Checking the box will allow you to see what preferred decoder (if any) is set. The pull-down list allows you to view what video decoders are available on your system. Choose the one you want to use with Media Center and click "OK". Note: when the checkbox is activated, the decoder used for the R5000-HD preview is not changed.

Bear in mind that some of the decoders listed may not be suitable for Media Center usage. If you see an error screen that video can't be rendered, change the decoder back to the default. Media Center will need to be restarted for the changes to take effect.

Besides picture quality, the MPEG-2 decoder can affect things like channel changing times and transitions to new streams. It can also affect overall performance depending on how efficiently it uses system resources. There is some evidence to suggest that the MPEG-2 decoder shipped with Vista is not as well optimized as some third party filters. Furthermore, it seems to handle transitions to new streams poorly, sometimes starting off with jerky, halting video.

System Resources: All things being equal (CPU, memory, HDD speed, etc), Media Center on XP seems to perform noticeably better than Vista. Especially problematic is the tendency to block excessively on transfers to the receiver service, for example, when navigating the Media Center user interface. This can be checked on the R5000-HD "MCE" buffering indicator which should normally hover at approximately 1/8 scale. Excessive blocking (e.g. the inability of the downstream filters to process the data immediately) will cause the buffer to fill up as the samples backup. At this time (July 2008) it has not been determined whether more memory, CPU power or video resources are required for Vista setups.

H.264 (MPEG-4) To record H.264 content (e.g. many of the HD channels on Dish Network) in Media Center, use the option from the R5000-HD to "simultaneously create ts file". The directory can be set to one of the folders imported into "My Videos", so they will show up in Media Center (they cannot be viewed from "Recorded TV" as these files will most likely only contain audio). If you have one the H.264 playback solutions (like PowerDVD Ultra) installed on your system, there is a very good chance Media Center will playback these transport stream files without a problem.

Troubleshooting
Media Center should always display video, regardless of the state of the DVR app or set top box connection. In the event that the DVR is not running you will see a static image with the message "Not Connected...Please start the R5000-HD DVR." If your STB is turned off, tuned off-channel or the DVR is in the "stopped" mode, you'll see a different message alerting you that there is no signal present. These are different from the Media Center generated error screens and can actually be customized by the user.

Diagnostic Utility: From the "Utilities" menu there will be a new entry for "MCE Checkup Utility." Its purpose is to diagnose any problems that may prevent the R5000-HD from working properly with Media Center.

Note for Vista users - Problems can potentially be created by the access control mechanisms built into Windows Vista. Make sure that the various directories and files described here are freely accessible by the R5000-HD application and/or installer package.

No channel control: In the event that you have no set top box control, e.g. when changing channels in Media Center, nothing happens on the set top box. First make sure the STB control panel works from the DVR app (utilities menu->STB control panel). If it does, you may have a problem with one of the components required to hook into the Media Center notifications pump. Check your R5000-HD "mce" directory (usually "c:\program files\r5000hd\mce") for the files "r5kmce.dll" and "interop.userxplib.dll". If they are in place then make sure the dll is registered. Open a command window and change the directory to the folder containing the dll, and at the command prompt type:

"c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\regasm r5kmce.dll /codebase /verbose"

Note: you may need to change the windows directory from "c:\windows" if you have Windows installed in a different location or substitute the environmental variable "%WINDIR%"

If the command fails because the registration utility (regasm.exe) is not found, make sure that the .NET framework is installed and the appropriate directories are present. If the registration is successful, a reboot is usually required for it to take effect. You can try opening the Services panel (Start->run: services.msc) and stop all the Media Center related services.

Tuner not found or other setup errors: When the Virtual tuner is installed, Media Center should automatically detect it when the receiver service restarts. Try exiting Media Center and stopping the service manually. Then restart media Center and try to setup TV. Open up your registry editor (Start->run: "regedit") and navigate to the following key:

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners"

There will be a few sub-keys but we are only interested in the one with the following GUID: "{A799A800-A46D-11D0-A18C-00A02401DCD4}". Whenever Media Center finds a new NTSC tuner/capture device it assigns it a random GUID under this sub-key. A typical entry looks something like this:

Note that the "DevName" entry is set to "VirtualTuner TvTuner" which matches the R5000-HD driver. The encoder ("PrefEncoder" entry) is also correct. If the key for the tuner device is not found open the Device Manager and expand the "Sound, video and game controllers" tree. Make sure there is a single entry for "VirtualTuner, WDM Video Capture" and it does not have any warning or error icons on it. Open the properties dialog and verify that the manufacture is "Nextcom, LLC" and the device is "working properly." If everything appears to be OK, try rebooting the PC and see if Media Center now correctly finds the tuner. If the "PrefEncoder" entry is missing or incorrect make sure that the multiplexer dll (r5kmpx.ax) is found in the mce directory under the R5000-HD install path. If it is present, make sure it is registered by running the Windows registration utility. From a command prompt type:

regsvr32 "c:\program files\r5000hd\mce\r5kmpx.ax"

Once again, substituting your installation directory above if it differs from the default shown. If the registration fails, try stopping the Media Center receiver service by running "services.msc" as described above. Restart Media Center and look for the tuner again.

The DVR Can't find the scheduling file: This will naturally happen if the DVR is running as a remote server on a non-MCE PC. Ignore the warning. If this is reported when the DVR is running on the Media Center machine it could be that the scheduling file is located in an unexpected location. The default path is:

%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\eHome\Recording

where "%SYSTEDRIVE%" expands to the root drive where Windows is installed. Check this folder for the file "recordings.xml". If it does not exist it could be that Media Center has not yet created it because it hasn't been setup to make any recordings. If you know that the file is at a different location, you can specify the path to use in the DVR configuration file (named <device serial#>.cfg, found in the R5000 install directory). Edit the file to add the following entry after the last, but before the "end" token:

MCEScheduleDir: <path to recordings.xml file>

Pay attention to copy the entry exactly with the colon and space. Do not put your path string in quotes.

Additional Debug Logs: Two additional logs are created by the MCE version DVR. The log file "mce_log.txt" contains a log of events related to the interaction of the DVR with Media Center. For example, upcoming events and status messages received from the Media Center shell. The other file "mpx_log" contains events and comments related to the signal path, e.g. the transfer of MPEG data to the receiver service. Both files are located in the "mce" directory of the R5000-HD install path (c:\program files\r5000hd\mce). Some entries may seem cryptic to the user since the files are mainly meant to be passed along to technical support to help diagnose problems.

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