I have noticed a issue people (Timothy?) are reporting when using Media Center to trans code recorded HDTV on the fly to Windows Home Server. Since I have no hardware to use this feature with I never played with it. It appears that when trans coding HDTV content there is no sound in the file that is made. Seems kind of dumb that Microsoft wouldn’t have worked out some sort of license agreement to include an AC3 decoder with the networks so that this feature would function. What is ever dumber is that Microsoft even included such a feature when they knew it wouldn’t work. As long as you don’t trans code the HDTV recorded with Media Center the sound works fine during play back.
I have a SiliconDust HDHomeRun network TV tuner I use to record HDTV with. I will be doing a post on this very cool product shortly. Anyway HDHomeRun comes with an app called Quick TV that is software used to view TV from the tuner. I installed it and gave it a whirl. No sound! I went to the SiliconDust very good users forums and they knew all about this problem and had a link to a free download that enabled the sound. This free download was a “AC3 filter” according to their website. I installed this and everything was just ducky, I now had sound using this app. I never gave it further thought after that.
So where am I going with all of this? I was reading the forums at We Got Served (sorry Andrew :)) and ran across a post from a guy who had this no sound issue mentioned above. On a whim I post a link to this AC3 Filter not knowing if it would fix the problem or not. I figured it was worth a shot to at least try it. Well the gentlemen gave it a shot and reported back. It worked! Needless to say I was pretty surprised.
So I’m posting this here to see if other who are having this problem (Timothy?) want to give this a shot and report back on if it works for everyone or not. This would be really cool if it does. I make no guarantees that this will work. All I can promise is this software shouldn’t mess system. At least it hasn’t mine and if it doesn’t work you can always uninstall it.
Download Link to the open source AC3 Filter
Link to the open source website for further information and maybe make a donation if it works for you.
fasthair
This new filter solves our TV Archive stalling issue. Thank you fasthair! I will post some screenshots and video soon.
Thank you again,
Tim
That is great news Timothy! That is two reports of this fixing the problem. I would like to say I was smart enough to figure this out and know it was the answer. The truth is while fixing my problem I happen to stumble upon this. You know the saying… even a blind dog finds a bone every once in awhile.
I think it's kind of funny that we have to resort to Open Source software (and very good software at that!) to fix what MS knew was broken when they pushed it out. Sorry Andrew I couldn't resist 🙂 Looks like I'm going to have to hit the Donate button on this one.
You are very welcome,
fasthair