Here's the setup: I've got a Dell PC with a ATI Radeon HD 4xxx in it, running Windows Media Center 7. That is connected to a Pioneer AV receiver with HDMI, used for HDMI switching. That's connected to a Samsung LE32something LCD TV (which only has a single HDMI input).

Here's the problem: Often, after some combination of turning off the TV and the receiver, Windows Media Center forgets that it's supposed to be displaying anything. When you turn the TV back on, there's just a blank, black screen. It doesn't look like a simple HDMI problem (like I used to have with my older, cheap HDMI switch), because the mouse cursor still appears, but doesn't do anything.

To recover, I have to grab the keyboard, press Ctrl+Alt+Del and then hit Log Off. Logging back on fixes it. Until next time. I suspect that WMC is getting confused about screen resomolutions when the HDMI connection goes away, and this results in the blank screen.

Questions: Has anyone else here seen this? Do you think it's a WMC problem? Is it because my graphics card is bonkers-old? Or is it an inherent problem with HDMI? How do I fix it? Would removing the AV receiver from the picture (by buying a new TV with more HDMI inputs) fix it? Not that I can afford that right now, but...

My first suspicion is a problem with the video card drivers. Every time I've had multi-monitor troubles, it's been a video card driver issue.

Well, strictly speaking, it's not multi-monitor, 'cos there's only one "monitor" connected. And I don't think I can upgrade the drivers, because the card's just that old.

Essentially, I suspect that I'll have to spend some amount of money to fix it (new graphics card or nettop PC with different graphics or a new TV). All of these are attractive -- I like spending money on shiny things -- but I just don't have the spare cash right now.

When it's in the black-screen state, can you log in remotely and see what it thinks its desktop topology is? and the EDID of the HDMI output? I bet it's put itself in a non-square-pixel mode. The graphics driver can probably enter such modes, and the screen can probably scan them, but GDI will rightly refuse to go anywhere near them.

If so then perhaps the receiver is failing, or partially failing, to read the EDID and is returning a default or corrupt one. If you have another HDMI cable, try swapping out the receiver-to-TV one.

Peter

I get this on my 3 yr old HTPC (Vista) connected to a very old plasma via VGA. Only solution I've found is to Ctrl-Alt-Del. It got so bad I just stopped using it.

Don't bother adding anything to that PC or fixing it. Just keep using it as-is, but disconnect it from the TV.

Then buy an XBOX 360 to use as an extender which will be your new display device. If you use the XBOX remote (or a universal) you can turn it on with the Media Center UI coming up right away.

All things considered, this could be the cheapest option.

Is this a completely drop-in replacement? Can I do with it everything that I would have been able to do with WMC? Will it play ripped Blu-Ray (MKV container), or will I have to mess around with transcoding? Otherwise, it does actually sound like a sensible option.

It should extend all features of WMC. But, WMC doesn't natively handle MKV, so you'll likely be out of luck in that department without using some other piece of software on the XBOX or using an alternative media player for things like custom rips in unsupported formats.

That's the nature of the beast at the moment. I've been looking into this solution as an eventual replacement for my SageTV PVR and its extenders since Google's acquisition. WMC + XBOX360 is the only game in town unfortunately. I don't want a PC connected directly to my TV with its maintenance issues and drivers, plus I really need to have a central PVR capable of serving at least 2 TVs elsewhere in the house.

Apple TV + jailbreak + aTV Flash + Plex ?

I guess the missing bit is control of the PVR from the client (I'm assuming that WMC + XBOX360 provides that) ?

Skip the AppleTV unless you want what Apple ships with it. Third-party software hacked onto it is going to be pretty sketchy as far as performance goes, if you can get it to run at all. The current generation ATV doesn't look like it's going to be jailbroken.

Yes, XBOX 360 extends the full WMC experience to other screens. It's the only WMC extender still manufactured and marketed.

I'm running an Apple TV 2 with ATV Flash on it. It works well, for what I use it for, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it

However I'm not using the Plex client, which I imagine has higher hardware requirements. Luckily I have very simple requirements, I just want to be able to point at a bunch of 720p video files on a SMB share and play them, without any fancy bells and whistles.

And yes, jailbreaking is an issue, as it does look like an Apple TV 3 jailbreak might be a long wait.

I just don't think there's any reason to jailbreak and old Apple TV to get it to work with SMB and a few extra codecs/containers when retail products already exist that do all that for a lower price. WDTV Live for instance.

Plex is another matter entirely, but it will probably perform a lot better on a micro-sized commodity PC platform than on an ATV. Some people have high hopes for Raspberry Pi with Plex or XBMC. I won't hold my breath for that one.

In your opinion...

For me there is every reason to do it, as I get SMB video playback of the a range of codecs*, plus I get to keep all of the normal Apple TV functionality including AirPlay, PhotoStream etc. Stuff that I wouldn't get with another cheap box.

* excluding notably, RealMedia files

That's why I have multiple boxes. And I get 1080p which you don't, from every single box.

The AppleTV UI sucks. Worse now with the new software than it ever was. Widely publicized that this is a UI that Steve Jobs shot down long ago, for good reason. The old ATV can only do 720p, doesn't support high bitrate video, doesn't support HD audio formats, doesn't support DTS, etc. The new version does 1080p but still has all the other limitations. But ATV also does AirPlay, including mirroring. That's its strongest feature.

Another box can play any format media and is an extender for my PVR. Another Box can play any format media and also stream from the web.

There's not a single box, with any amount of hacking, that does it all, and IMO, not much reason to try and do it all with a single box. Use the one that's best suited for the purpose. I don't use any of these boxes for music for example, since they all suck terribly at it. For that I have a Squeezebox or iOS device (other than AppleTV) to run iPeng. Including the two Squeezeboxes, but not including iPhones or iPads, I have 5 streaming devices, soon to be 6. 4 in one room, the second squeezebox and the as-yet-to-come additional product in a second room on a different floor.

I may retire SageTV in favor of WMC and a pair of XBOX 360's, but I'm going to wait until later in the year to revisit that plan.

It's cheaper and more versatile to buy a new AppleTV and a WDTV Live than it is to spend any amount of time and frustration buying ATV2, buying ATVFlash and spending time hacking it. Unless someone's making minimum wage, this much is fact, not opinion. Time is money.

But anyway, XBOX 360 is the only product that will work with Windows Media Center. And there is no other PC-based PVR platform on the market with extender support. It will also handle streaming from the network and locally attached storage with codec and container limitations - only MP4, etc..

Exactly. Like Bruno said, you have to pick the box that matches your needs. The entire reason I picked the Boxee Box was that it's by far the best device for playing back local, "acquired" content. But when Plex was released for Google TV, I determined it was a good enough alternative for my very glitchy Boxee Box.

Now I used Google TV, but I still don't have everything in one box. I still use my Boxee for vudu, which is fantastic and isn't on Google TV for some reason. My wife is also more comfortable with the Boxee interface for watching local stuff.

I also agree with Bruno that none of these boxes is any good for music playback, and I'll add home movies to that.

Frankly, I've always thought the best feature of the Apple TV is as a photo display device. It does a phenomenal job at that, but I haven't used it over a network, just from the hard drive of a rev 1 box.

For the average Joe, though, I still recommend the same thing: if you ever use iTunes or have Apple products, get an Apple TV. Otherwise, get a Roku.

But this thread isn't for an average Joe. I'm not sure what the answer is, Roger, but from what I've played around with so far, the Boxee Box has the best codec support.

FWIW, I've been running XBMC for a while, and other than some UI stuff I don't like, and some lockups that are almost certainly to do with the fact that I allocated far too little space to its root partition, it's been a champ. I don't think that it's yet failed to play anything.

I also have it PXE booting and mounting its drives as iSCSI, so the only moving part in the system is a small case fan.

Speak of the bloody devil. A new WMC Extender is coming to market. And happily it will support DTS:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/16/cetons-echo-extender-for-media-center-will-be-the-first-to-supp/

I don't think anyone should expect it to be any good at playing back common ripped media in popular containers like MKV however. And it will definitely suck at photos and music. It actually supports GIF images. Why?

I get this every so often on my computer, maybe a DVI detective or something similar will keep the video card happy when the receiver goes away.

There definitely are newer driver packages that support your card, but there not be many changes for your generation of card in those compatible packages. I'm still running a 4890 in my primary desktop/gaming machine, and age hasn't been an issue with it.

I personally would lean more towards the receiver being the culprit. HDMI handshakes do have the potential to be finicky. Have your tried running the PC directly to the TV just for testing?