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[wrreisen]

Hi,

I live in the UK and want to watch digital terrestrial broadcast tv through my Original Xbox which is networked to a MCE XP 2005 PC.
I have a modded  (cheapmod) Pal UK Xbox (not 360) with a 100Mbit wired connection to a 2005 XP Media Center Edition PC 2.8Ghz P4, 1Gb Ram, 2x Hauppauge Nova-T 909 tuner cards,  Asus P4S800 motherboard, I have the WinDVD installed for the mpeg2 decoder. I have got the Media Center Extender kit which was only sold in the US. When I watch Live TV through the Xbox it is  jerky. Has anyone got the PAL UK Xbox to work with this Media Center Extender software without jerking watching live TV or Recorded TV? It jumps every 3-5 seconds. It shows more when there is a zoom movement or a lot of movement in the TV camera's picture. When the picture is more static you don't notice it. Thanks. I have the MCE patched right up to date with the most up to date rollup and have put the roll up 1 on the Xbox hard drive. (TV is fine when played back through the PC)

Is this an unsolvable PAL NTSC incompatibility?

Or may my 2.8Ghz PC not be quite powerful enough to deliver smooth video to an extender?

Or does the fact that it jerks when there is more camera movement onscreen point to the fact that it may just be my network not keeping up when the data rate of the tv video through the network not being able to keep up. I did find that the network adapter on the Asus motherboard wouldn't work with certain switches I plugged it into. Seems to work okay with the one I've got it plugged into for normal PC to PC file access (I'm not sending files whilst testing the TV though).

Thanks for any advice.

[Chunk_1970]

Hi, I dont have MCE so I cant really comment on that. I personally use XBMC as my Xbox media centre and that will handle streaming DVD from PC to Xbox without any slowdown so I doubt if the network link is the problem and I only have AMD XP 2700 cpu and its very mooth. I think that XBMC does handle streaming live TV from the PC and there are alot of people in the "Xbox Media Centre" forums that have setup similar or would certainly be able to guide you in this process..

Are you playing HD material as I do know that this can cause problems as the Xbox processor has alot of work todo.

[The Zep Man]

QUOTE(wrreisen @ Jul 7 2006, 11:06 AM)

Is this an unsolvable PAL NTSC incompatibility?

Well, in the UK they use PAL, your video capture card uses PAL and your Xbox uses PAL. Question: do you have PAL60-support enabled in MS Dashboard? Try disabling it. Then boot into MCE and check if it is still jerky.

[wrreisen]

QUOTE(The Zep Man @ Jul 7 2006, 12:47 PM)

Well, in the UK they use PAL, your video capture card uses PAL and your Xbox uses PAL. Question: do you have PAL60-support enabled in MS Dashboard? Try disabling it. Then boot into MCE and check if it is still jerky.

I'm using XBMC as my Dashboard. I have the MCE extender as one of my programs running off the hard-disk. Can you change the PAL60-support in the XMBC settings? Or do I need the Enigmah video
mode switchdisk?

Its not HD material just freeview digital terrestrial PAL channels and recorded freeview  digital terrestrial PAL programs. I have got XBMC to stream PAL DVD's off the PC's hard disk without stuttering.

Could changing the Mpeg2 decoder on the PC help things? I've got Windvd installed for this. Someone who said they had no stuttering with a PAL Xbox running the extender what so ever said they had Nvidia purevideo installed.

[wrreisen]

switching to NTSC output on the Xbox didn't help.

I've tried switching to the pvr 150 mce hauppage card. As you say this works without stuttering. Unfortunately this only gives me 5 analogue channels as with the Nova-T digital broadcast cards I got 20. With the Nova-T the ITV channels didn't seem to stutter but the bbc ones did. Is there a digital TV card out there that doesn't give this stuttering with the Xbox extender or is it just the way that the individual TV companies choose to encode their signals. The analogue card perhaps works because it is encoding the analogue to mpeg2 itself which the digital cards don't.

[The Zep Man]

QUOTE(wrreisen @ Jul 7 2006, 03:53 PM)

I'm using XBMC as my Dashboard. I have the MCE extender as one of my programs running off the hard-disk. Can you change the PAL60-support in the XMBC settings? Or do I need the Enigmah video
mode switchdisk?

You are the victim of a bad mod. Get Slayers' and install MS Dashboard. You can change the PAL60-setting in MS Dashboard when your video output is set to PAL. Try disabling it.

QUOTE

Could changing the Mpeg2 decoder on the PC help things? I've got Windvd installed for this. Someone who said they had no stuttering with a PAL Xbox running the extender what so ever said they had Nvidia purevideo installed.

You always can try the trial version of the Nvidia PureVideo decoder to make sure if it does(n't) make your Xbox stutter. Make sure you uninstall WinDVD first.

QUOTE

I've tried switching to the pvr 150 mce hauppage card. As you say this works without stuttering. Unfortunately this only gives me 5 analogue channels as with the Nova-T digital broadcast cards I got 20. With the Nova-T the ITV channels didn't seem to stutter but the bbc ones did. Is there a digital TV card out there that doesn't give this stuttering with the Xbox extender or is it just the way that the individual TV companies choose to encode their signals. The analogue card perhaps works because it is encoding the analogue to mpeg2 itself which the digital cards don't.

Well, this is interesting. My above advice still stands: experiment with the decoders. I unfortunatly do not own an Xbox MCE Extender (have too much fun with XBMC and too little fun with what they broadcast on TV) so I can only give you advice from a technical point of view and not from any personal experience. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

[edit]
Blarg, VERY stupid typo.

This post has been edited by The Zep Man: Jul 8 2006, 09:25 PM