Why do some television channels include black bars around the entire screen? If I use crop for aspect ratio, all the borders are removed but if the output signal changes, then it could be cutting some video off. Is there a setting to automatically crop SD signals, which appear to be the ones that need it the most.
There is no easy solution at this time. Perhaps a per-channel aspect ratio setting would ease the matter somewhat.
I recently setup television on several HTPCs and found an interesting issue. 1080i plays fine and looks amazing but 720p does not and stutters. Does this seem legitimate? It does seem normal but there is a tendency to think 1080 means more lines than 720.
Not sure. Could be a decoder issue.
The tuner system I'm using (HDHomeRun) has two tuners that are shared among all users. I can add another box for 2 more. How does Media Center handle multiple tuners? The critical question is that a tuner may be in use by another computer and if it is, MC doesn't give an error message but simply shows black video. On a channel scan, I have to select a tuner (0) or (1). If I scan on tuner 0 but not 1, does MC only use tuner 0? What if I scan on both? When I start a channel, there is no choice about which tuner to use.
There is currently no way for MC to determine that a tuner is being used by another machine.
You can scan for channels using either tuner. The result is saved in database and shared by all tuners. MC automatically choose a tuner during playback, by picking the first one that is suitable for the task. If both tuners are available, it picks one that is higher on list on settings window.
To reduce the chance of conflict between two computers, you can set tuner 0 above tuner 1 on computer A, and tuner 1 above tuner 0 on the computer B. This way, tuner 0 is most likely picked on computer A, and tuner 1 is likely picked on computer B. If you need recording one channel while watching another on a single computer, MC will need to use both tuners on that computer, and the second computer will not be able to use either (you need to buy more devices!
).
