Mega 180/Media Player/Graphic Card/TV-Out

Hi,
after very long research I decided to use Mega 180 as a dedicated PC for media center purpose and to connect it directly to my TV (Siemens 100 Hz real flat 16:9) and to upgrade my second PC and to connect the two PCs wirelesly and to use Media Portal software.
And then I have started to read related posts and forums. But this time I learned that there are new issues I have to deal with.
1. TV-out: The TV-Out of Mega 180 is not good enough on a TV. My question is do I have to buy another powerful graphic card? I need recommendation. My TV has composite and scart inputs.
2. Media Portal: This software has lack of some features. If I use MCE 2005, will it be better?
3. If I use a video converter, will it help me to find better picture on my TV?
Yes bodies, unfortunately there is no way to find the best solution. And I am at the final stage. If this solution does not run, I will give up. I need your recommendations.

This is copied from another reply I made today. The Mega 180 can drive a TV just fine. But you need to spend alot of time making it work.
How you hook up to your TV depends on your available TV connections and your quality standard. The Mega 180 does have an SVideo output. I don't use this however. I have a VGA input port on my 42 inch plasma monitor. It accepts VGA 640 X 480, 800 x 600, or 1024 X 768 standard computer resolutions. It also accepts 480P or 1080i TV inputs using the VGA port. Many quality TV monitors have a DVI port or component video. These would require some sort of physical adapter to attach to a Mega PC.
So I actually run in 1080i mode most of the time. This makes DVD's and HDTV look really nice. When using the XP computer screen I keep it in 1080i mode but map this to 960 X 540 resolution using PowerStrip. This way I can read the text on the display without it being distorted. However this is pretty low resolution for most web browsers and email programs. So it is kind of cramped... When playing computer games I switch to 1024 X 768 computer mode. The good thing is the on board Nvidia MX440 graphics work just fine to generate all these modes. So I do not have a card in the AGP slot.

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I'm trying to narrow down what is causing Media Center III to crash intermittently on my Mega 180.
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But I want to eliminate that it is a problem with the 18G "Crush" onboard video chipset. I am using the onboard only.
Anybody have a vid card in their AGP slot of the Mega 180 and use Media Center III??
Are you still getting crashes in Media Center III??
John

Finally I give up using the Media Center. I'm using now Girder with Nathans great plug in (see MSI Mega series girder plugin version 1.0 available ). The only disadvantage is that the fancy leds are not working.
Regards
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I have a MEGA 180 with Media Centre III and was wondering if there was a button on the remote that does full screen instead of having to start the item you wish then trying to navigate to the button and pressing ok?
This is for the sections such as MP3 mode for the visulisations or Video Clip mode for full screen home movies.
I have tried all of the buttons but none of them seem to work.
Any help would be apprecitated
Cheers.

That makes the MCDIII run in full screen, but the video (etc) still runs in a window inside the MCDIII App. The only ways I found were to set the settings to auto maximise the display, or to press the button to the bottom right of the picture. Also I found there was no way of getting back to menu mode without using the keyboard (unless you were prepared to navigate the buttons without seeing them!!!).
This made MCDIII totaly unsuitable as a remote controlled application, and hence I binned it. I now use MediaPortal which works well. Just need to find a better way of getting the DVD filters to work.

I think my graphics card went out?

Ok I looked for about an hour and found nothing on this. I just bought a power mac G5 with dual 2.0gig processors and 4 gigs of ram. It has 8 ram slots. I think its early 05. Anyway I used it for about a day I had it plugged in to my monitor which has a vga and a dvi port on it. I had the vga plugged into my g4 but I didnt have a power cable or anything else plugged in it. I dont know why but it was. I had my G5 plugged in the dvi. It worked fine. The next day I decided I want to move the G5 to the other side of the room. I shut the computer down unplugged everything moved it and put it back together, but I didnt plug in the G4 cause Like I said I didnt know it was like that till I saw it. Tried to start it and the screen just says no cable attached. I went and bought a DVI to HDMI to plug it into my flat panel TV and same thing. I noticed when I turned it on it bongs, all the lights are normal, but the fans slowly start speeding up after a few mins. I guess its the AGP card if you know for a fact it is and could recemend a good graphics card that could drive two 20" apple cinema displays for normal use and could drive one monitor with really good graphics for games and stuff that would be great oh and It cant be more than like $200 - 250 if possible.
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thanks again japamac. I tried that though. I grounded myself, took the card out reseated it. I even got dust remover and dusted the slot and the card. This really *****.

Is my graphics card burned out?

I have a 15 inch aluminum unibody macbook pro
2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB (switchable graphics)
I run boot camp regularly to play video games on windows 7.
I was playing a video game on mac today and it kept crashing my computer, so I loaded up bootcamp to play another game and the following happened to me a few times: http://imgur.com/a/FLqf7#0
I haven't played any graphic intensive game on the mac since then, but everything is fine and nothing messes up when I'm watching videos, music, etc.
On boot camp, i think it's running the video card the whole time? not quite sure, but I guess the main question is if my graphics card is burned out?
Any help or advice is very much appreciated!
Thanks,
dizzyxmoron

All in all, at least you got a definitive resolution. If you have a suitable backup, the only annoyance will be that of time spent.
Rereading your first post, I understand that the system was booting up. Maybe do a clone on an external drive before turning the old drive in? Then install afresh with a new Lion instance and migrate all back in, either with Setup Assistant at first start or Migration Assistant afterwards.

Mega 180 and onboard graphics problems!

Problem is this:
Primary graphics output of my Mega 180 is only displaying in Green, the secondary output is blurred and too bright, no amount of altering settings and installing drivers changes this situation.
Any suggestions.
Piers
Athlon 3000+
Windows XP Pro
Matched pair 512Mb 2700
Diamond Max 160Gb
Onboard Sound/Graphics/LAN

To isolate the problem you should try a different VGA cable and a different monitor.
If those don't help then the problem is with the computer.
Try unplugging it from the wall wait 10 seconds and plug it back in... This is kind of a cure all for many mega 180 ills.
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Have you tried resetting the BIOS settings to all defaults ?
If you've done all these things and nothing helps it sounds like the board may be bad.

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Hi
We have a problem to get the TV card installied in MSI Media Center III deluxe.
The TV card (Hauppauge PVR 250) works very well with the Hauppauge WinTV Software - but there seems to be no way to integrate the tuner card in Media Center.
We proceeded like this:
- We startet MSI Media Center III deluxe und selected Television
- In the Setting the WDM Driver for the Hauppauge Card was selected.
- Here is the First Problem. It is impossible to selecte Cable as source. After selecting "cable" media center switches autmatically to "antenna"
- We pressed the button for automatic programming but it just did nothing.
Do anybody here has the same configuration and got the card working?
Can somebody post us his WinDVR3.prog file (if this is the file for TV programming). Perhaps we can program then television manually.
Thanks for help
Greetings
Patrik
PS: We know that a MSI tuner card is recommended.

Finally I give up using the Media Center. I'm using now Girder with Nathans great plug in (see MSI Mega series girder plugin version 1.0 available ). The only disadvantage is that the fancy leds are not working.
Regards
Patrik

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My onboard IDE controller has given up the ghost so I have purchased a PCI sata card to use a spare sata disk, the problem is I can't see any way to get the 180 to boot from the PCI card. Anyone any ideas?

Yep - I disabled the PATA ports.
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I have a Dual Core Mac Mini and works fine while I'm on my desktop working, iTunes and other programs but when I use Front Row to watch Podcasts, Movies etc. it blinks out on me and seems to like go to sleep on me and when I press a button on the remote it wakes up and for a few seconds keeps a live image and then blinks out again.
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I've been having the same issue but maybe slightly different. I have a Mac Mini and an InFocus X1A projector. When Im working on the Mac everything is beautiful, but when I go into Front Row, beyond the first menu, the image blinks and the projector seems to have trouble holding the resolution signal; frequently goes blank and reports the resolution of the Mini and after 2-3 seconds go back to the image. Any thoughts? I upgraded to the latest, 10.5.1 and I wonder if there's an issue there with that.
Thanks very much

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Hello
We have the following problem: Media Center III deletes the radio stations programmed in HiFi Mode!
- I programmed the 6 stations in the HiFi Mode as described in the MSI manual
- Switched to the PC mode and started Media Center III and entered the radio section
- After shouting down the PC and switching to the HiFi mode, the 6 programmed stations are gone away.
The problem only appears when using Media Center. It seems that Media Center deletes the stations when communication with the radio tuner.
Thanks for your help!
Best regards
Patrik

the problem is the fact that the radio tuner isn't a "physical" device that Windows recognises
damn MSI and their proprietory hardware!! surely some sort of USB tuner "hardwired" to the USB controller would have been a better solution? grr, but then how would that have worked in Hi-Fi mode...

MEGA 180 Media Centre Product Key

Does anyone know how I can get a product key for MSI Media Centre?
It is a legal copy that I got with the computer in April, but the key is printed on the Paper CD wallet, which I can't find!!!!!
Many thanks in advance,
Themac

the serial key included with the download is:
VBMK844FOLEXHAI
it is in the serial.txt file, so it must be a generic code, like with the MSIPVS, which had the same code printed on every CD. seems a bit pointless to me, as its a free download anyway...

Mega 180 and Media Center III----looks perfect----is it??

I DON'T want to shell out $1000 for cheap HP/Compaq or whatever which includes Media Center Edition
But I DO like the look and features of Microsoft's Media Center Edition.
In the Manual for the MEGA 180-----Media Center III looks perfect for what I want.
Am thinking of a Mega 180 using onboard video, the MSI TV/Tuner Card, onboard SoundStorm---and a cheap Barton. I already have 2 x 512 of NVidia recommended PC2700 RAM for use with the onboard and almost all other parts----but by the time I'm done----I'd be shelling out around $400
The manual makes everything look good "on paper"----but I see from this forum their are "issues".
Did/does MSI support the 651 model well?? Bios updates----utility and driver updates??
This thing looks like a tremendous alternative to a Microsoft Media Center Edition overpriced machine. And I'm willing to do driver updates and Bios updates----heck, I love a challenge----I just don't like a product that lies about what it can really do.
Worth it----or should I pass.....
Thanks-----John

Quote
Originally posted by johnrr6
Did you try the settings button in MC III that says "Enable Fullscreen"
That may not be it----it may just be a TV setting----but it's the only thing I can think if.
Good Luck,
John
I believe that function is only for viewing the videos from the preview window to fullscreen. I don't think it enables/disables "stretch mode" but i'll try that tonight.
if it works i'll post it here. if not ... well .... same thing i guess

Media Player fades out between tracks

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Sorry, i didn't see your post and I just posted the sme issue, it is really annoying, so much so that I am considering returning my Blackberry, I thrive on the MP3 use and this is not acceptable. try as i might I cannot find a Phon e Number to call RIM tech support, so thier not alowing me contact is going to lead to the loss of a sale on this phone and any future phones that I might have purchased from them.
Larry

Mega 180/Media Player/Graphic Card/TV-Out

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