Media Player Classic - Home Cinema settings

Here are the quick settings for MPC-HC for playing x264 (mkv) movies.

Download Media Player Classic Home Cinema here.

You can read a more comprehensive guide or visit several hundred pages of forum post but if you want to just make it work, here's it is:

Win 7 users, if you are experiencing a missing dll error on mpc-hc, install DirectX End-User Runtimes first.




Notes:
Catalyst 10.4 and mpc-hc version 1819 and above now supports L5.1 x264 dxva.


My preferred encoders (720p):
Scene:
1. Wiki
2. CBGB
3. iNFAMOUS

Internal:
1. HiDt
2. EuReKA

My specs:
Windows 7 64 bit
Biostar A785GE using IGP (HD4200) for video output.
Athlon II x2 240 2.8Ghz
Team Xtreem Dark 1066 CL6
Previous video cards used for hd playback: HD4350 , 9600gt

Biostar A785GE Bios

Here are the OC bios settings for Biostar A785GE Ver. 6.4.

Product page

My specs:
Athlon II x2 240 2.8Ghz
Team Xtreem Dark DDR2-1066 CL6


Bios:
Version 080015
Date 04/20/2010






The minimum memory voltage is 1.95V



Max Core VID:


Max NB VID:

Xbox 360 controller emulator for XFX game controller

Here's the emulator for xbox 360 controller for XFX game controller

Original: XBOX 360 Controller emulator vibmod

Modified for XFX controller: (Version 3.1.4.0)
Mirror 1
Mirror 2

You can map the buttons yourself by editing x360ce.ini

OUTDATED - MediaPortal - Playback - Part 4

This post is already outdated, MovingPictures 0.7.5 won't scrape backdrops anymore as of May 2010

When you start MediaPortal it should look like this...




This is the modified List View: Almost transparent to get a full view of the backdrop.

The "Rating" info doesn't scrape anymore so with a little bit of xml editing you can remove it:

This is the vanilla Filmstrip View:

Notes:

I modified MediaStream skin so it will look different than the default.

You can modify it yourself assuming you have a basic knowledge of xml / html.

Here's the file that you're going to edit: (It's not that hard)
C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\skin\MediaStream\movingpictures.xml
The image files:
C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\skin\MediaStream\Media\

The posters and backdrops are located in:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\thumbs\MovingPictures
You can change the location of the backdrops and posters in the MovingPictures advance settings.

The backdrops and posters are downloaded from http://www.themoviedb.org/. You can also upload your own backdrops.

OUTDATED - MediaPortal - Settings - Part 3

This post is already outdated, MovingPictures 0.7.5 won't scrape backdrops anymore as of
May 2010

Here are some important settings marked by a red dot.

Untick "Show last active module when starting/resuming from standby" when you're getting a black screen at start-up on movingpictures (win7)

Then it will be able to import the movie info, poster, and backdrops over the then. Be sure to rename your file [ name of movie (date) ie. Transmorphers (2007) ] for easy scraping. Check your firewall too. You can add the info, poster, and backdrops yourself if it's not found on the database.

OUTDATED - MediaPortal - Installation - Part 2

This post is already outdated, MovingPictures 0.7.5 won't scrape backdrops anymore as of May 2010


This is tested on WinXP Pro SP3 and Win7 64bit.

Note: As of 2010, the software versions I'm using are already outdated but still works.


Let's get started...

Install the following:

Step 1:

First install Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package and Windows Media Player 11. Win7 users don't have to do this.

Step 2:

Media Portal 1.0.0 - if you have errors installing, download 7zip and unpack the package. Run package-mediaportal.exe.
Recommended: Or just download this unpacked 1.0 that I uploaded. Mirror

Step 3:

MediaStream 0.16 - manual installation, follow the included instructions carefully. Direct link or Mirror.

Easier instruction:

Copy the font-files in the Font folder to C:\Windows\Fonts

Copy the folder "MediaStream" to C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\skin\

Copy the contents of the folder "plugins" to C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\plugins\

Step 4

MovingPictures 0.7.5 - easy auto-installation. Direct Link and Mirror. Note: Around Feb 2010, the "Rating" info doesn't work. You can see a working Rating in the screen shot above. A new version is available but not compatible with Mediaportal 1.0.0.

Step 5

Media Player Classic Home Cinema - it's a very good media player, it has all the codec you need. You may also want to install Haali Media Splitter. It's a faster matroska splitter than mpc's internal decoder.

Run MediaPortal Configuration
Choose Advance Mode

OUTDATED MediaPortal - Intro - Part 1

This post is already outdated, MovingPictures 0.7.5 won't scrape backdrops anymore as of May 2010


Want to make your movie list look like this?



It's MediaPortal - a freeware media center.

Specifically I'm using...

MediaPortal 1.0.0
Skin: MediaStream skin v.0.6 MediaPortal 1.0 RC4 or 1.0 Final
Plugin: Moving Pictures 0.7.5

Shifted from XP SP3 to Windows 7 64bit - the program still works as of April 2010


What this guide DO tell you...
1. Make MediaPortal work.
2. Make moving pictures work so you will have a nice gui of your movies.

What this guide DOES NOT tell you...
3. All other functions of MediaPortral and everything else.

You can always visit the MediaPortal Forum.