I have been running WMC on an HTPC using a three tuner HD Prime and connected to an AV receiver and Plasma TV for at least 8 years with no real issues. Recently started it back up again after a year and a half of YouTube TV. I've noticed a couple of things which seem odd. For one, the sound through WMC seems noticeably lower than what I had through YTTV and also through the Silicon Dust App. Almost as if the center channel speaker is a lower volume than the surround channels. I went into Sound and Devices in the Windows Control Panel and noticed the sound was set at stereo. I have a 7.1 surround system, so I went ahead and switched it to 7.1, but then WMC would give me an error message about "files required to play are not installed...". The only way to get WMC to work was by setting it back to stereo. Not sure if that setting even makes a difference, but seems odd that ticking the box for 7.1 instead of stereo would break WMC.
Also, after watching a recorded program, I can not go back into live tv. I get an error message about a tuner conflict (I know not all three tuners are in use). I have to then close WMC and go into live tv from there.
I played around with the HD App on my Windows 11 laptop, and it looks like they made some substantial improvements over what I see in Windows 7. Is anyone using this app, and besides the lack of DRM recording ability, are there any issues with it? Trying to decide if it makes sense to update my Win 7 machine to 10 or 11 (if it will work with this old I3 4200 processor) and go with the HD App, or go through the trouble of reinstalling Win 7 from scratch and seeing if that fixes any of these issues.
WMC or Silicon Dust DVR?
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Stu7575
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artm
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I've been running Win7 WMC and HD Primes (two) for years without any real issues. The main issue was hardware capability with the video card, resolved by changing PC's. I had to upgrade EPG123 recently, because of SD upgrade.
I suggest reinstalling WMC in Win7. Get it to where it works correctly. Then image your hard drive with Clonezilla. You can always revert to that image if need be. Of course, you'll lose settings (recording schedule) so back that up periodically.
You should store your recordings on a different drive so you don't lose them with the image restore. I just use an external USB drive for that storage. With Win7 and WMC on their own drive, the image is relatively small. Heck, you can even clone it to another same size drive and keep it as a backup. Then just swap the drive in when needed.
This has saved my butt twice with WMC and other times with regular, non-WMC PC's.
I suggest reinstalling WMC in Win7. Get it to where it works correctly. Then image your hard drive with Clonezilla. You can always revert to that image if need be. Of course, you'll lose settings (recording schedule) so back that up periodically.
You should store your recordings on a different drive so you don't lose them with the image restore. I just use an external USB drive for that storage. With Win7 and WMC on their own drive, the image is relatively small. Heck, you can even clone it to another same size drive and keep it as a backup. Then just swap the drive in when needed.
This has saved my butt twice with WMC and other times with regular, non-WMC PC's.