Troubleshooting Windows Media Center Edition 2005 MPEG2 Decoder Problems

[Jason Dunn]

It's incredibly easy to break MCE 2005 - all it takes is the installation of a video editing program that comes with an MPEG2 codec, and MCE 2005 will fold like a house of cards (that's my experience at any rate). Symptoms of this problem include a black screen when you try to play MPEG files, and a lockup/crash of the MCE interface when you try to play a DVD from within the MCE interface (DVD playback through Windows Media Player will probably still work). So how do you fix it? Here's how...<!><br /><br /><b>Step 1: Diagnose the Problem</b><br />Click START > RUN then type CMD to get to the command line. Type <i>dvdupgrd /detect</i> and you'll get something that looks like this:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/detectdecoder.gif" /> <br /><br />This screen will tell you what decoder is currently active. Odds are, it's not going to be the encoder that you want it to be, nor will it be one that's compatible with Windows Media Center. If it was, you probably wouldn't be having any problems. ;-)<br /><br /><b>Step 2: Fix the Problem</b><br />Now that you've figured out that you're using the wrong codec, the next step is to fix it. When I was first searching for a solution to this part of the problem, I found several sites that suggested I hack the registry - and it wasn't an easy hack either. Thankfully, Barb Bowman came to my rescue and recommended the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=de1491ac-0ab6-4990-943d-627e6ade9fcb&displaylang=en">Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility</a>. This utility is so perfect for this problem I have no doubt Microsoft designed it for this purpose. After installing and running the program, I discovered that when Pinnacle Studio 9 was installed, it somehow wrested control of MPEG2 decoding away from the nVidia codec. When you run the application, you'll see it list off the various codecs:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/decodercheckup.gif" /> <br /><br />In my case, the fix was as simple as selecting the nVidia Video Decoder and clicking the SET AS PREFERRED button. Bam! My problem was fixed, and hopefully yours will be too. I didn't even need a reboot - MCE 2005 was fixed immediately after making the change.<br /><br />It's important to understand that Media Center Edition 2005 uses Windows Media Player 10 to play back video content, and it seems WMP10 is more sensitive to codec compatibility than WMP9. Having a fully compatible and certified codec is incredibly important to system stability with MCE 2005. Now why Microsoft doesn't just provide one is beyond (probably some silly anti-trust concession...)

[Suhit Gupta]

Ahh, so this is how you fixed it, ignore previous message. Hmm, I am surprised the software does not do this for you automatically. Especially with MSFT's philosophy of 'let us do everything for you', it should have cycled through all the options and tested them in a sandbox or some such. Oh well! :roll:

Suhit

[Jason Dunn]

Yeah, it's completely sloppy - I know that part of their thinking is that because MCE boxes come from the vendor, everything will be "tidy", but I was able to break it by just installing the Pinnacle software...which anyone could certainly do on a brand-name MCE box...

[mcsouth]

Ummm, since Microsoft developed this handy little solution, how come it is not integrated into the MCE2005 package? Or has it been developed in the week or two since MCE2005 has been released? It would be nice if, instead of crashing, you would actually get an error dialog indicating what is going on, or better yet, the app actually opens in the process of advising you of the concern.

This is exactly the kind of stuff that is beyond most typical PC users, and takes MCE2005 out of the 'appliance' category - you can't just plug it in and expect it to work. Heck, I feel like I know a thing or two about PC's, considering I built my own unit, set up our home network, etc, etc, etc, but even I would feel a bit stumped over a situation like the one you describe. Needless to say, your experience has been a bit humbling......for me!

[Jason Dunn]

Ummm, since Microsoft developed this handy little solution, how come it is not integrated into the MCE2005 package? Or has it been developed in the week or two since MCE2005 has been released?

It's been out for a while now, before MCE 2005, likely because MCE 2004 had the same problem...

[StarTide]

Have any of you tried to play a straight mpeg2 file from My Videos using the Nvidia decoder? Everytime I try to do it, it gets a "can not play video, unknown error occurred". Try to run the same file under WMV 10 and it will play, but with an error on closing. Running that same file in either ZoomPlayer or WinDVD 6 and it runs fine.

Trying to track down a hesitation issue that appeared to be coming from the WinDVD 6 codec, removed that, and it stopped hesitating. Now though, I can not play back regular mpeg2 files, but DVD works.

Any ideas? I have run that utility that allows you to set the preferred codec, and it is set to the NVidia one. So not sure what is going on here.

Any help/ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Jason Dunn]

Have any of you tried to play a straight mpeg2 file from My Videos using the Nvidia decoder? Everytime I try to do it, it gets a "can not play video, unknown error occurred". Try to run the same file under WMV 10 and it will play, but with an error on closing. Running that same file in either ZoomPlayer or WinDVD 6 and it runs fine.

Hmm...do you mean there's an MPEG2 video file that won't play in the MCE interface, but that same file will play inside WMP10? That's very strange, but also similar to the problem I was having with a DVD. Is it all MPEG2 files? If it's just one file, I'd suggest there's something screwy with the MPEG2 file itself, perhaps a codec issue. Try transcoding it to WMV.

[StarTide]

Hmm...do you mean there's an MPEG2 video file that won't play in the MCE interface, but that same file will play inside WMP10? That's very strange, but also similar to the problem I was having with a DVD. Is it all MPEG2 files? If it's just one file, I'd suggest there's something screwy with the MPEG2 file itself, perhaps a codec issue. Try transcoding it to WMV.

It is really odd, and I have tried many Mpeg2 files, ones I have created from DVD rips, and ones I have found on the net while trying to figure this out.

Any Mpeg1, WMV, or Divx file plays with no problem inside of the MCE interface. Even DVD's play fine. Now if I take a file that is encoded as MPEG2 (using Gspot to verify the codecs), and click on it, sometimes I get a weird screen green, with some odd artifacts, and then a "can not play file" error message (again inside of MCE).

Take that same file (tried several files), and open it in WMP 10. It loads, and starts, but if you look at the file name in the playlist area, it is orange with an "!" in front of it (signifies and error I guess). BUT the file plays. If you attempt to FF/RW it will crash WMP. If you just close down WMP you get a message stating a problem occured. And tha tis after the program is closed. Truly odd.

Okay so continuing the test, I open that exact same file up in WinDVD 6 Platinum or ZoomPlayer Pro, and it runs perfectly, with no issues at all.

Another odd thing, if you run GSpot on the file, throughout all of this, it will report that no codec for MPEG2 is installed, even though I have tried this all with just the Nvidia decoder (.58 version I believe), WinDVD installed/not installed.

So in utter frustration last night, I reinstalled just a normal SP2 copy of Pro and installed WinDVD, Divx 5.x, and Meedio. Guess what? It all works. If the Meedio interface for Movies and Music didn't suck so hard, I would just stick with it.

I am a computer geek and if I am having this much trouble, and it sort of echoes the problems you had after installing Pinnacle, can you imagine what mom & pop in rural America are going to run into? I think it is a great solution, but if you installed the Nvidia decoder for MCE, it should install into MCE and not be able to be broken so easily.

Not sure if that last paragraph makes much sense, but an appliance this thing is not.

Thanks

[Jason Dunn]

I am a computer geek and if I am having this much trouble, and it sort of echoes the problems you had after installing Pinnacle, can you imagine what mom & pop in rural America are going to run into? I think it is a great solution, but if you installed the Nvidia decoder for MCE, it should install into MCE and not be able to be broken so easily.

Absolutely - I agree 100%! I'm going to be meeting with the MCE folks in November, and I'm going to give them this feedback in a loving, but very firm way. MCE breaks way too easily. :roll: