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Author Topic: HDMI CEC control for Media Center  (Read 18246 times)

6233638

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HDMI CEC control for Media Center
« on: May 13, 2014, 04:25:49 pm »

A while back, Hendrik wrote a simple tray application for the Pulse-Eight CEC adapters, which would control the TV when Windows put the display to sleep, rather than the TV just showing "no input".
This was enough for me to buy another one of these adapters (I had tried one before but couldn't get it working with MC) as this is a small change but it really improves the integration of the HTPC and the TV.
 
But with CEC, it should be possible to control the HTPC via the remote.
Unfortunately, nothing more has come of this yet.
 
Another user sent me a PM asking about the CEC adapter yesterday, and this got me to have a look around and see if there were any other options now.
Well, it seems that there is an application available for $5 which will let you control Media Center via your TV remote!
 
http://sites.google.com/site/chir21/home/CEC-Tray
 
I've spent a little bit of time testing this, and the integration is just OK.
I had a few issues with it initially. To begin with, nothing worked. It turns out that I had to manually specify which input on the television I wanted to control.
To find this out, run the latest version of libCEC
Select the input you are using for the HTPC, and make note of the address. You can see here that HDMI 3 on my Sony TV is "3000"
 

 
Now quit the libCEC application and run HDMI-CEC Tray. Manually set the input address to match the one specified by the libCEC application.
Relaunch HDMI-CEC Tray after this change, and once it connects (the tray icon should turn green) you should now be able to control Media Center via your TV remote.
 
There are some limitations here though.
Firstly, only one application can use CEC at once. So I am unable to use Hendrik's tray application at the same time as this.
HDMI-CEC Tray does include options to turn the display off/on when the system sleeps/wakes, or put the PC to sleep when you turn the TV off, but there's no option to turn the TV on/off when the Windows turns the display on/off.
 
And so far, I have been unable to get custom key mapping to work via the XML config, which means that you're left with only the most basic controls.
The arrows work and selection works, but both back/exit do the same thing (back) rather than being able to set one to toggle Theater View or act as an escape key.
While play/pause and stop works correctly, on my remote at least, next/prev are zooming the video in/out.
FF/RW are working as the chapter skip buttons.
None of the other buttons seem to be doing anything.
The volume controls are still controlling the TV volume rather than the PC volume - though that may be a TV setting rather than anything to do with this application.
 
While you can set the red/green/yellow/blue buttons on the remote to launch external programs, MCC commands do not seem to be working.
  

So the remote works, but implementation is rudimentary.
For some, this may be all you're looking for though.
 
Personally, I'm still hoping that Hendrik decides to implement full support for CEC control in Media Center, as control could be a lot better than it is now - using the 0-9 buttons (labelled abc/def/ghi etc.) to navigate through a large list of artist names for example.
But finally having CEC control has also made me realize that my current Sony TV remote (similar to this one) is not really that good for controlling media playback, so I'm not sure that it's actually what I want now.
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astromo

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Re: HDMI CEC control for Media Center
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2014, 05:35:37 pm »

Hey, that's great work.

As fate would have it, I received my Pulse8 in the mail today. So, your write up comes at an opportune time. I'll factor it in to my evaluation and tweaking and will report back if I find anything worth piping up about.

Cheers..  ;D
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MC31, Win10 x64, HD-Plex H5 Gen2 Case, HD-Plex 400W Hi-Fi DC-ATX / AC-DC PSU, Gigabyte Z370 ULTRA Gaming 2.0 MoBo, Intel Core i7 8700 CPU, 4x8GB GSkill DDR4 RAM, Schiit Modi Multibit DAC, Freya Pre, Nelson Pass Aleph J DIY Clone, Ascension Timberwolf 8893BSRTL Speakers, BJC 5T00UP cables, DVB-T Tuner HDHR5-4DT

astromo

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Re: HDMI CEC control for Media Center
« Reply #2 on: May 16, 2014, 11:11:18 pm »

Another user sent me a PM asking about the CEC adapter yesterday, and this got me to have a look around and see if there were any other options now.
Well, it seems that there is an application available for $5 which will let you control Media Center via your TV remote!
 
http://sites.google.com/site/chir21/home/CEC-Tray

For those interested, the site mentioned above doesn't offer a download link (that I could find anyway). HDMI-CEC Tray is available on SourceForge. The application is "donate-ware" and that avenue works via the Dev's home site.
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MC31, Win10 x64, HD-Plex H5 Gen2 Case, HD-Plex 400W Hi-Fi DC-ATX / AC-DC PSU, Gigabyte Z370 ULTRA Gaming 2.0 MoBo, Intel Core i7 8700 CPU, 4x8GB GSkill DDR4 RAM, Schiit Modi Multibit DAC, Freya Pre, Nelson Pass Aleph J DIY Clone, Ascension Timberwolf 8893BSRTL Speakers, BJC 5T00UP cables, DVB-T Tuner HDHR5-4DT

astromo

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Re: HDMI CEC control for Media Center
« Reply #3 on: May 16, 2014, 11:21:17 pm »

For those interested, the site mentioned above doesn't offer a download link (that I could find anyway). HDMI-CEC Tray is available on SourceForge. The application is "donate-ware" and that avenue works via the Dev's home site.

There's a thread started by the HDMI-CEC Dev on the Pulse 8 forum that may also be of use - I made the CEC adapter work with Microsoft Media Center !
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MC31, Win10 x64, HD-Plex H5 Gen2 Case, HD-Plex 400W Hi-Fi DC-ATX / AC-DC PSU, Gigabyte Z370 ULTRA Gaming 2.0 MoBo, Intel Core i7 8700 CPU, 4x8GB GSkill DDR4 RAM, Schiit Modi Multibit DAC, Freya Pre, Nelson Pass Aleph J DIY Clone, Ascension Timberwolf 8893BSRTL Speakers, BJC 5T00UP cables, DVB-T Tuner HDHR5-4DT

6233638

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Re: HDMI CEC control for Media Center
« Reply #4 on: May 16, 2014, 11:32:28 pm »

For those interested, the site mentioned above doesn't offer a download link (that I could find anyway). HDMI-CEC Tray is available on SourceForge. The application is "donate-ware" and that avenue works via the Dev's home site.
When I "donated" $5 it took me to a page that downloaded v1.62 - the version on SourceForce seems to be quite out of date. (v1.10)
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astromo

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Re: HDMI CEC control for Media Center
« Reply #5 on: May 16, 2014, 11:39:49 pm »

When I "donated" $5 it took me to a page that downloaded v1.62 - the version on SourceForce seems to be quite out of date. (v1.10)

Thanks for picking me up on that.

I went for a snoop around and in the Pulse 8 forum discussion that I referenced, I found a link to v1.64 and a later post with a link to v1.66.
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MC31, Win10 x64, HD-Plex H5 Gen2 Case, HD-Plex 400W Hi-Fi DC-ATX / AC-DC PSU, Gigabyte Z370 ULTRA Gaming 2.0 MoBo, Intel Core i7 8700 CPU, 4x8GB GSkill DDR4 RAM, Schiit Modi Multibit DAC, Freya Pre, Nelson Pass Aleph J DIY Clone, Ascension Timberwolf 8893BSRTL Speakers, BJC 5T00UP cables, DVB-T Tuner HDHR5-4DT

wacind

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Re: HDMI CEC control for Media Center
« Reply #6 on: January 20, 2015, 11:54:48 am »

Hi.
I know this post is old but i was wondering if anyone was still using the CEC-tray application. The pulse-8 forums are dead and i cant find support for this anymore.
Anyways... Is anyone using the CEC-tray software with a GTX/NVIDIA card? I was using this with an amd integrated graphics card and this software worked perfectly. CEC-tray application was working with the automatic setting

I recently upgraded to a GTX card and now it the CEC-tray software only connects to HDMI once when it starts up (ive configured the input address manually to 3000 for hdmi3 on my tv). However, now with the GTX card, If i change the input on my TV at all, the software stops responding.

Anyone know if there is a fix for that? I tried versions 1.64 and 1.67
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