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Use remote computer without disturbing local user

I have a Windows 7 computer that is acting as a Media Center so it is always on but not always in use.

I would like to be able to log in to this machine remotely and launch some scripts that take time to compute. If I use Remote Desktop I can get a view of the desktop and use it but the media center view gets blocked (I get the log in screen). If I use LogMeIn, the media center application closes (not compatible with remote use) and the both the remote and media center views are the same.

Is there a way to access the computer remotely to launch and monitor these scripts while not disturbing the media center users?

Play Apple Lossless (.m4a, ALAC) files in Windows 7 Media Player?

Is there a good plugin or codec that allows Media Player/Media Center on Windows 7 to play Apple Lossless (ALAC) encoded files? As the files are shared between multiple iTunes installations and one Media Center I don't want to transcode them. Bonus points for proper meta data parsing. :)

Is it possible to "preload" all thumbs.db files in a directory?

Kind of a weird question I guess :p Was just curious to if there is a way I can preload all thumbs.db files in directory (and its sub-directories) so that when I visit those folders later in explorer or media center, the thumbnails are already loaded.

Not so important for images, but would be handy to do once in a while for folders with lots of video files that seldom changes.

How do I associate my keyboard's media keys with VLC media player?

Note: I no longer have the laptop in question, so unfortunately I can't test the answers anymore. Thanks for your effort anyway. This was nearly 3 years ago, and now I feel like it's unfair to accept my own answer to my question which doesn't even provide an answer, so I deleted the answer.

I've got an ASUS K50AF series notebook with Windows 7 Home Premium x64. I'm using VLC media player, and I want to use media keys (play, pause, rewind, forward, stop) with it. Currently, it's associated with Windows Media Center.

I've tried MK2MP. Unfortunately, it didn't fix my problem, and crashed after restarting VLC media player.

Run time error 31
at line 559

Now, I can't even start MK2MP. Any ideas?

Update: I've disabled Media Center and Media Player. HIP now recognizes media keys, but the keys still don't do anything. :/

Update 2: It seems that when I try capturing that key, all programs (including HIP, Key Mapper and AutoHotkey) thinks I pressed the H key. Huh?

Display more lines in Windows Media Center TV guide

The TV guide in Windows Media Center only shows 7 lines. The font is massive and it is a real pain having to scroll so much to compare channels and see what is on.

Does anyone have a fix to change the font size and display more lines at once? If there was just the option to decrease the font size throughout Windows Media Center - I'd take it.

Windows Media Center HDMI Capture Cards

I'm working on a new software application that utilizes windows media center to play recorded TV shows in the center of the screen. We can get this to work with standard coax or RCA input TV Tuner/Capture cards. My question is this...

Are there any TV tuner / capture cards out there that allow you to use Windows Media Center with an HDMI input of some kind?

UPDATE...

At the end of the day, all I truly need is for there to be some kind of system that will allow me to record a TV feed from a set top box via HDMI or Component Cables to a PC in order to playback that file inside of a WPF application. Media Center recording isn't required...

Windows 7 Media Center: sometimes no sound on a TV channel

Problem
Sometimes, recorded TV shows have no sound. This is of course very annoying because the recorded show is worthless.
Also, when switching channels while watching live TV, sometimes a channel has no sound. This is always solved by switching channel again and then back (most often, once will do the trick). Media Center doesn't do this trick by itself when recording of course, so that's the bigger issue - but the cause is certainly the same.

Details

• The computer is running a newly installed Windows 7 and Windows Media Center.
• It has 2 different tuner-cards installed. Both are installed with signed and up-to-date Win7 drivers and appear OK in Device Manager.
• Both tuners get the same antenna signal, from a split cable from the wall. The cable delivers analog cable TV (40+ channels) and digital cable TV (4 channels) at the same time.
• Both tuners have been configured to receive both analog and digital channels.
• This only happens with analog channels.

How can I fix the no-sound problem?

Update:
I've now spent some time with the computer to try and pinpoint the problem, but I've had little success so far:

• I flipped through the channels until one didn't have sound, then I disconnected the antenna cable from one of the tuners. It was the right one because then the video also went away.
• I flipped lots more channels to see if the other card also would come up mute once but I never had a channel without sound. It might still be possible, I don't know.
• Then I disconnected the "good" tuner and connected the "bad" tuner and again flipped lots of channels but again I never had a channel without sound.
• It seems to me that the problem is erratic. It happens on any channel, and I haven't ruled out yet that it only happens on one tuner.

How to play AVI and MKV files in Windows Vista Media Center?

I've installed the DivX codec on my computer. I can play those files just fine in Windows Media Player. But when I tried it on Windows Media Center it crashes out. How can this problem be fixed?

NOTE: My OS is Vista Home Premium 64 bit (x64).

TV doesn't automatically show signal from Windows Media Center

I have Windows Media Center running on Win7 RTM with a GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard. The integrated video card is an ATI Radeon HD 3200.

It's connected to a Sony Bravia KDL-46XBR4 tv via HDMI cable.

When I turn both on at the same time, I get great sound and video.

The issue is that when I leave the computer on and turn off the TV, the TV does not display the video or audio signal when I turn the TV back on.

• The computer is set to never turn of the display.
• I've tried different HDMI cables - I have two, a brand-name and a no-name cable.
• I've tried different HDMI input ports - all have the same behavior.
• I've tried cycling the TV to switch to different inputs and back, no dice
• I've tried Ctrl+Alt+Delete - no dice.
• I can confirm that the computer is running by connecting via remote desktop.

Only two things seem to work:

• shutdown and startup
• sleeping the computer and starting up.

Neither of those "solutions" work well, as I'm looking for a pure couch potato solution.

Can I run Windows 7 virtualized for my HTPC?

I'm currently running Vista for my HTPC, and am planning on upgrading to Windows 7 soon. However, I've been considering installing it as a VM so that I can run Windows Server 2008 and/or Windows Home Server.

The single requirement is that the HTPC must boot up to Windows Media Center with absolutely no user intervention. I need to be able to hit the power button have it go. I've got this working currently, so I don't need to keep a keyboard or mouse plugged in - all I use is my remote.

If possible, I'd love to be able to do these other things:

• Use Win2k8 Server as a VM host for Windows 7 Pro and WHS. This also lets me run IIS7 for doing ASP.NET development
• Use WHS for all the wonderful things it does for a home network

Are either of the two optional things possible while meeting the WMC requirement?

How to diagnose and solve an erratic "HDCP Support Required"?

I am playing a digital tv broadcast on Windows Media Center for Windows 7. I built this system so it works with HDCP, and in fact I have been able to watch tv and bluray before with this same computer.

However, I suddenly started getting an "HDCP Support Required" error from WMC. The entire message is as follows:

HDCP Support Required

High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) may not be supported by the current video card. Use an HDCP-compliant display, video card, and video driver. Or, connect using an analog connection such as component or VGA.

Relevant specs are:

• CPU: Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770
• Motherboard: Asus P8H77-I
• Memory: 16GB DDR3-1600
• Graphics: Radeon HD 7850 (Driver by AMD, version 8.982.0.0 built on 2012/07/27)
• Display: Acer P243w connected by HDMI
• Sound: Roland Quad-Capture (It complains even when I use the bundled VIA HD Audio)
• TV Tuner: I-O Data GV-MC7/HZ3
• OS: Windows 7 Professional SP1, Windows Update enabled. All patched and up to date.

As you can see, there is nothing weird or old about my setup. I am also not doing anything strange, not doing any overclocking, weird system changes and so on.

One thing that does happen from time to time, is that the display goes black for a few seconds (sometimes when watching media contents, sometimes when just using photoshop or Visual Studio). This happened with my previous setup as well, so I'd be inclined to think it is a display or cable issue (apart from the BD drive, these are the only things I kept from my previous setup to this one). But being a digital transfer, as far as I know, these things either work or not. Never erratically or with decreased quality.

The thing is that sometimes I can watch the TV, sometimes not. This happens with recorded programs as well, so it's not a per-program thing. Sometimes rebooting helps, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes unplugging and plugging back the HDMI connector helps, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes doing so doesn't even turn the screen back on, so I have to reboot.

Unfortunately, WMC's error message is quite unhelpful. I'd like to know exactly where the problem is, so I can solve it. I don't want to buy a brand new display just to then find out it was a registry setting that was misconfigured.

I've tried looking at the system event viewer, but these errors don't show up at all in there. Other people who have this problem seem to have a setup that is not HDCP compliant, so I turn to you guys here.

Anybody knows how to diagnose this problem?

Edit: So I got the Cyberlink Blu-ray disc advisor. I ran it and told me everything was okay, except for the Video Connection Type, which showed as "Digital (without HDCP)".

I then proceeded to unplug the power cable from the monitor, plugged it in again, ran the tool again, and now it's "Digital (with HDCP)". Needless to say, I can watch my TV and recorded programs on WMP again.

I'm guessing that at some point, something may be slightly wrong with the HDCP setup, and Windows decides to reset the entire content protection path (which leads to the screen blanking out). Usually the reset succeeds, but sometimes it doesn't, so Windows defaults to turning HDCP off. There's no way to turn it back on, except by doing a hard reset of the display.

I really want to know what the exact error was, so I can fix it. Is it the cable? is it the display? is it the video card? the driver? Also, is there any other way to try and turn HDCP on again without having to hard reset the display?

Oh, questions, questions...

Why does Windows Media Center make http requests for watched folders on a network drive?

I have a Linux server on my home LAN that has a filesystem shared via Samba (/export), where I store some older recorded TV (under /export/Recorded\ TV). The system is also a web server, running a couple web apps. Apache vhosts:

VirtualHost configuration:
wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers:
*:80                   is a NameVirtualHost
         default server bucketwise. (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/bucketwise.conf:1)
         port 80 namevhost bucketwise. (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/bucketwise.conf:1)
         port 80 namevhost teamspeak.int.example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/teamspeak.conf:1)
Syntax OK

I have a laptop running Windows 7 RC1 set to search for media on the shared drive in Windows Media Center. However, it appears to be trying to access through the default vhost and is spamming up the log with http error 503. From the default vhost error log:

10.13.37.10 - - [27/Sep/2009:06:46:49 -0600] "PROPFIND /export/Recorded%20TV HTTP/1.1" 503 376 "-" "Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/6.1.7100"
10.13.37.10 - - [27/Sep/2009:06:46:51 -0600] "PROPFIND /export HTTP/1.1" 503 376 "-" "Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/6.1.7100"

This share is used infrequently, it was more of a temporary convenience, so I can certainly stop watching it through WMC on the laptop (and will). However, I'm curious why it would attempt to access through http via WebDav, rather than use the shared drive over the SMB connection.

How do I convert WTV (and DVR-MS) files into a smaller standard format?

The external hard drive on my HTPC is almost full and so I'm going to need to convert a large number of the films recorded from the television (in WTV format) into something smaller. At present, a 2 hour film is about 3-4GB.

I've tried converting the WTV file to DVR-MS (using the built in wtvconverter.exe) and then running it through handbrakecli with the following command line:

handbrakecli.exe --input "film.dvr-ms" --output "film.mp4" --encoder x264 --quality 20

In Handbrake, this would be by setting the output to MP4, the encoder to x264 and the quality to 20.

The problem is that the resulting MP4 is between 1.5 and 2GB which, whilst smaller than the original file, still seems insane for a 2 hour long SD film recorded off (a PAL) television! I would expect something like that to be 700-800MB, if not less.

Setting the quality to 19 degrades the picture to the point it's unwatchable.

Can anyone recommend settings for Handbrake (or handbrakecli) which will convert a DVR-MS file into a much smaller size?

(I'm not particularly precious about the codec or the container, but would prefer something reasonably standard to ensure it can be watched on a high number of computers and mobile devices)

UPDATE

It's probably not clear, but if you only know what the settings are to convert a file using the graphical version of Handbrake, then that is a perfectly good answer!

Media Centre on Windows 8

I am trying to install media centre on windows 8. I downloaded a key and installed it on my laptop with no problems.

When I try to install on it my desktop it informs me that the key checks out but then hits me with an error saying 'Something went wrong', 'Close this wizard and try again'.

After numerous reboots it always throws the same error.

Anybody have any idea why?

UPDATE:

2012-10-30 19:18:08, Error                 WAU    DoTransmogrify failed due to error 0x80070246.
2012-10-30 19:18:08, Error                 WAU    UpgradeSKU failed. Exiting.
2012-10-30 19:18:08, Error                 WAU    The worker process exited unexpectedly
2012-10-30 19:18:08, Error                 WAU    Something went wrong
2012-10-30 19:18:08, Error                 WAU    Close this wizard and try again.

UPDATE - CBS.log

2012-10-31 16:44:41, Info                  CBS    Exec: Processing complete.  Session: 30258995_853840040, Package: Microsoft-Windows-ProfessionalWMCEdition~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.2.9200.16384 [HRESULT = 0x80070246 - ERROR_ILLEGAL_CHARACTER]
2012-10-31 16:44:41, Error                 CBS    Failed to perform operation.  [HRESULT = 0x80070246 - ERROR_ILLEGAL_CHARACTER]
2012-10-31 16:44:41, Info                  CBS    Session: 30258995_853840040 finalized. Reboot required: yes [HRESULT = 0x80070246 - ERROR_ILLEGAL_CHARACTER]
2012-10-31 16:44:41, Info                  CBS    Failed to FinalizeEx using worker session [HRESULT = 0x80070246]

How to adjust Aspect Ratio in Windows Media Center

Is there any way of adjusting the aspect ratio of movies I view in Windows Media Center on Windows 7 RTM x64? Any hidden features? Any brilliant light weight plugins?

Using Shark007 Codecs, and otherwise just default Media Center and Media Player.

I know I could reprocess the videos, but that would probably ruin the already bad quality. I also know I could use VLC media player, but I really would like to find a solution that works in Media Center, since VLC media player isn't especially Remote Control and media collection friendly...

Update: By the way, I know I can Ctrl+Drag an edge of the media center in window mode and change the aspect ratio of the player, but that doesn't do anything to the video.