INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 15 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: stricko on February 01, 2011, 05:59:25 am
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Hi guys, I've been using MC14 for a long time, but it's starting to give me a few problems (another thread, no responses...)
I had a quick look at MC15 a long while back, but it didn't seem to give me anything new, so I didn't bother to upgrade. Now MC14 is starting to have problems, it's probably time for me to have another look at MC15, at least to see if the same problem I'm having on MC14 still persists.
But when I just downloaded and installed it, of course it says my evaluation period has expired... It's hard to tell now that MC15 has re-installed, but I'm pretty sure that I had deleted the older version. I thought that I had rebuilt the machine from scratch, but maybe that was before I tried MC15 the previous time.
Is there anyway around this?
Paul
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You could try it on a different machine.
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Thought of that, but it doesn't allow me to replicate the issues I'm having with MC14. this is predominantly to do with Theatre view messing up the screen image size after resume from standby. I'm outputting at full HD via HDMI to a plasma. ATI card (HD4200 I think), latest drivers (but the problem predates when these were installed). Sometimes it's OK, sometimes Theater View seems to try and display a much larger image, so that I see the top left 2 thirds of the screen. Sometimes this persists when you try and navigate, sometimes it resets back to normal. Once in a while I get a smaller than expected image, not filling the screen, with the desktop behind. Ctrl-1/Ctrl-4 to put it out of and back into theatre view fixes it.
I put this in an earlier post (under MC14) but didn't get much response. Strangely the problem seemed to coincide with playing a few 3D movie files (AVI or AVI) which have odd resolutions. May be a red herring, as these play OK and the problem is ceratinly not limited to when I've viewed 3D material. I've no other machine outputting via HDMI or at that resolution, and it would be a major pain to relocate another machine into the middle of my home cinema rig.
I presume that if I rebuild the machine (again) from windows up, I could re-install MC15. I'll have to check but the last image I took should include MC14, but not MC15. Don't want to do it, but if it's the only way.....
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I presume that if I rebuild the machine (again) from windows up, I could re-install MC15. I'll have to check but the last image I took should include MC14, but not MC15. Don't want to do it, but if it's the only way.....
I can't speak to whether it is the only way to do it (but Jim could, and so I think you have your answer). But, if you have an old hard drive lying around, the easiest thing would be to just restore an image to it and then boot (temporarily) to the "test drive".
I keep a "clean base image" drive for each of my main machines available for cases just like this. I have a pile of old 120GB SATA drives from an old RAID box long since disassembled that work perfectly. All I do is unplug the main system drives, plug in the "test drive" and then you can get whatever you need to done. It is a fantastic tool to have. It is also very nice for disaster recovery because I keep Acronis True Image installed on the test drives. That way if one of my main system drives dies, I can use a full-blown Windows 7 install as a "recovery environment" rather than a weird and slow-booting Acronis recovery disc. They also can come in very handy if you suspect a virus infection or something like that. It is just always nice to have a "known good" and "clean" configuration to be able to fall back to if something goes wrong.
For $40 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%20600003270&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Order=PRICE&PageSize=20), there's no reason not to just have one of these for every system you use regularly.
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I assume you are using an overscan option in you video card's control panel or the Border Size in Theater View options.
If your TV has a "Fit Screen" or similar setting use that instead of overscan. That is what I am using and it is more reliable
than overscan.
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One note for the record... This (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=62115.msg416527#msg416527).
If you do just splurge and buy it now, you get MC15 now and MC16 thrown in for "free" when it's ready.
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The thought wasn't lost on me....