Linksys DMA2100/2200 Installation Tips and Tricks - Page 2

philzgr8 · **25th February 2008, 11:56 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by rmaisano

A couple of things I have learned from my experience.

for DVD I do exactly the same as philzgr8, with embedded AC3 5.1 sound. Works a treat, and bec. it's DVR-MS you can fast forward as fast as chapter to chapter searches.
I have yet been able to embed DTS 5.1 sound. The DVD Shrink part works fine, but VideRedo doesn't seem to recognise. (any ideas appreciated).

As for Live streaming. When Connected to a dedicated VMC all channels incl HD work perfectly, without fail. These are connected thru a 1GB switch.
I have an issue with the dedicated VMC and changed it to my notebook (running Vista Home Premium), and had the same Live problems philzgr8 had. Return back to my dedicated PC, again works a treat.

If we could only solve the DTS support from HDD this device is perfect.....well one problem, I can now hear the fan from my Plasma!!!

rdm

Well I haven't tried embedded DTS since DD 5.1 seems to be a more common format and I haven't yet found a DVD with DTS that doesn't also have DD 5.1. Frankly I can't tell the difference.

Unfortunately the Live TV issue is a real pain and I'm no closer to resolving it. I'll update this thread if I find a resolution.

logifuse · **25th February 2008, 04:05 PM**

I don't think DVR-MS supports DTS (AC3 or MPEG only).

Justin

philzgr8 · **26th February 2008, 07:33 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by logifuse

I don't think DVR-MS supports DTS (AC3 or MPEG only).

Justin

lol... That makes sense.

In the meanwhile I have updated my first post with a link to a shareware tool that provides advanced user management under Vista Home Premium. This may be handy for setting up logon scripts.

At this point I am finding nothing to help me with my power management problem whereby Vista freezes when it reaches the idle timeout. For now I have disabled the timeout but I might try uninstalling the latest MST beta and setting options with the older version which does not require installation. It's only a hunch but it's possible it might be linked to this problem.

philzgr8 · **28th February 2008, 07:07 AM**

OK here's the promised power management update (or at least an interim one.)

Last night I uninstalled MST and reverted to the older version which did not require installation. The main reason I had installed the new version was that I wanted more reliable idle detection since I was not 100% sure that my VMC box was completely reliable in going into standby. The upshot is that it seems the VMC box no longer freezes after the set idle time out although I have done very limited testing to prove this. This seems to be a major improvement but I'm not sure I am completely out of the woods yet. The fact is that when I woke up this morning the VMC box was awake and although not frozen it was very unresponsive. This was so bad that I found I had to reboot to get any semblance of reasonable response times out of it. To complicate matters a little more, unfortuntely I must admit that my practices at home are not quite what they ought to be since I had reinstalled SP1 as well after realising that it was not the cause of my freezing problems but it's possible that it is contributing to the slow response times. I will monitor this over the next few days and report my findings.

P.S. I noted that WOL is working fine.

saxnix · **28th February 2008, 10:13 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by philzgr8

Well this is very similar to what I'm doing except I use DVD shrink to rip the DVD to the hard disk (extracting only the main title and preferred audio stream) and then use VideoRedo to remux into a DVR-MS file. This seems to work fine for me although I haven't done mountains of testing at this stage.

Man, there is so much I don't know. Sorry this is a little OT, but this is the first I have heard about Video redo. Are you saying you can turn a backed up dvd into a DVR-MS file? If so, how does the file management of it work? What I mean is once the file has been converted to DVR-MS, can I leave it in the same folder (as the DVD - so it has folder art)? Or do you need to save it into the recorded TV folder so it will appear there? It would be great not to have to constantly transcode the movies the wife and boy watch over and over.

philzgr8 · **28th February 2008, 10:25 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by saxnix

Man, there is so much I don't know. Sorry this is a little OT, but this is the first I have heard about Video redo. Are you saying you can turn a backed up dvd into a DVR-MS file? If so, how does the file management of it work? What I mean is once the file has been converted to DVR-MS, can I leave it in the same folder (as the DVD - so it has folder art)? Or do you need to save it into the recorded TV folder so it will appear there? It would be great not to have to constantly transcode the movies the wife and boy watch over and over.

Yes you can. Personally I just delete the VIDEO_TS folder leaving the DVR-MS file there with all of the metadata and folder art. It works like a treat.

saxnix · **28th February 2008, 12:17 PM**

Thanks for that. I will give it a try and see how I go.

philzgr8 · **29th February 2008, 06:30 AM**

OK I haven't had lots of time to play with the Media Centre or the Extender this week but last night I did get time to uninstall MST, reset the power options and watch a bit of TV on the extender. Unfortunately all is not especially well with it. It seems that uninstalling MST has not really made much if any difference.

Firstly I find that with WOL enabled my VMC almost never seems to be able to sleep. If I force it into standby it sometimes wakes within a few minutes (even withjout other machines on the network being awake) and it seems that it is always awake when I get up in the morning. It's a bit hard to guage thus far but I'm suspecting that WOL in the end just isn't a great option.

The other issue is this freezing the I had found with the VMC box after using the extender beyond the standby timeout and it seems that this had nothing at all to do with MST. What I have discovered though is that it is not the entire machine that is frozen, it seems to be just the MCE front end. The only way I can do anything with it when this happens is to use the keyboard to bring up the task manager and then forcibly close the app or restart the machine. This is very odd behaviour and leaves me with not many options to test short of a clean install.

The good news in all of this is that none of it appears to affect the extender at all and I believe I have actually managed to resolve the live TV issues I was noticing. I found that I had typed in the wrong subnet when configuring the fixed IP and changing this to the correct value seems to have done the trick after a quick power cycle of all devices on the network including the router and switch.

logifuse · **29th February 2008, 06:44 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by philzgr8

Firstly I find that with WOL enabled my VMC almost never seems to be able to sleep. If I force it into standby it sometimes wakes within a few minutes (even withjout other machines on the network being awake) and it seems that it is always awake when I get up in the morning. It's a bit hard to guage thus far but I'm suspecting that WOL in the end just isn't a great option.

Hmm, WOL on my old mobo was hopeless - with it enabled the PC wouldn't even shut down. Maybe a higher end NIC is the answer?

Quote:

The other issue is this freezing the I had found with the VMC box after using the extender beyond the standby timeout and it seems that this had nothing at all to do with MST. What I have discovered though is that it is not the entire machine that is frozen, it seems to be just the MCE front end. The only way I can do anything with it when this happens is to use the keyboard to bring up the task manager and then forcibly close the app or restart the machine. This is very odd behaviour and leaves me with not many options to test short of a clean install.

Sounds like you have found out why there is the "when sharing media" setting in the power options.

Justin

philzgr8 · **29th February 2008, 06:50 AM**

To be fair, I don't think I've ever had heaps of success with WOL. It always seems to me that the slightest bit of activity on the network at all will wake the machine and then the question has to be asked as to why you would bother letting it sleep at all.

I have always had the "when sharing media" option turned off since it meant that my machine never went into standby. I'm not sure how this affects things but in the end it's pretty clear that Microsoft never expected a Media Center to be capable of going into S3 while configured with an extender. For the life of me though I can't see why the interface becomes unresponsive. I'm not even sure it has anything at all to do with power management.