Couple questions about using WMC

Discussion of getting WMC to work on Windows 10 (unsupported)
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CokeRobot

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Couple questions about using WMC

#1

Post by CokeRobot » Sun Jan 17, 2016 10:57 pm

Hello all!

After some research I found that WMC is the only good media center software bar none. So I got it working in 10 after a couple of tries and have the TV tuner working with it too which is freaking awesome! Really wish I had used this sooner!

Having said that, I do have a few questions about it that I wonder if it's just a WMC thing or a system thing or could be tweaked.

When in full screen and you press Win+C or going in and out of full screen, there is always a black screen delay before it readjusts. Is that a normal behavior or is there something that can be done to fix it. All drivers are current as far as I know, but I'll recheck.

The second is that I have over 8,000 songs that I'll throw into a shuffled playlist with it. When going into the Now Playing list itself, it always starts at the very first alphabetically listed artist, never at the current song. That is so far my biggest gripe with it and I wonder if regedit or a xml edit can be done to fix that if at all.

The third thing that comes to mind are Now Playing visualizers. Are there any awesome NPVs that can be added into WMC? Kind of like from the Zune player maybe? Or any must-have add-ins in general?

Thanks in advance!

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Crash2009

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#2

Post by Crash2009 » Mon Jan 18, 2016 3:39 am

CokeRobot wrote: When in full screen and you press Win+C or going in and out of full screen, there is always a black screen delay before it readjusts. Is that a normal behavior or is there something that can be done to fix it. All drivers are current as far as I know, but I'll recheck.

The second is that I have over 8,000 songs that I'll throw into a shuffled playlist with it. When going into the Now Playing list itself, it always starts at the very first alphabetically listed artist, never at the current song. That is so far my biggest gripe with it and I wonder if regedit or a xml edit can be done to fix that if at all.

The third thing that comes to mind are Now Playing visualizers. Are there any awesome NPVs that can be added into WMC? Kind of like from the Zune player maybe? Or any must-have add-ins in general?
I get the Black Screen Delay too. I think that is normal. Anything more than a half second might need some investigation.

Everybody has their own favorites for Music and Visualizers. On my Win 7 box I use XBMC for its great visualizations, and, integration into WMC, and, you can use the remote, which by the way you should get one ASAP, even a 20 dollar Rosewill remote will do for now. Haven't set up XBMC or Emby in Win10 as of yet, but I don't expect it to be a problem. Nearly everything else went in OK. GuideTool, Sean's WMC Backup, MyChannelLogo's, and, Ceton's MyMediaCenter, are good to have.

DanH

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#3

Post by DanH » Tue Jan 19, 2016 4:56 pm

The black screen may be related to the changing of resolutions by the video card....and the speed of doing so by your monitor. Some monitors handle this quickly while others can be very slow.

I seem to remember a setup step where you tell WMC the type of display that you are using. If you answer those questions correctly, and are using a high-res monitor (1920x1080), then there should be no reason for it to change the resolution and this switch will occur quicker.
Was Danh_HP_m376n

niczoom

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#4

Post by niczoom » Sun Feb 07, 2016 12:53 pm

I have a new Samsung Series 7 UHD TV and am having this black screen issue when restoring or minimizing WMC from full screen mode. In my case it takes approx 2-3 seconds for the black screen to disappear. Too long for my liking.

Is it something to do with the maximum resolution that WMC is set to run in? Is it hard coded within WMC or perhaps can it be changed within the registry somewhere?
The black screen may be related to the changing of resolutions by the video card
So when WMC is run in full screen mode it changes the resolution of the output to 1920x1080 ??? But my TV still reports that its getting a 3840x2160 60p signal. I also use EventGhost in which I run some scripts which also show the WMC window to be 3840x2160.

So from this info it does not seem that WMC does change the display res when put into fulscreemode?

Another example is when using MPC-HC, it goes from a window to fullscreen without issue, no black screen or delay. So why this issue with WMC?

Any ideas?

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#5

Post by bob_p » Sun Feb 07, 2016 2:48 pm

Have you set the screen resolution in WMC when it's running in full screen mode?

NOTE that there isn't any benefit in displaying WMC at 4K - WMC programs are likely either 720p or 1080i - and scale pretty well on the PC up to 1080p. And having the TV scale from 1080p to 2160p is probably better, since the TV will probably do a much better job at scaling than the PC, plus it eliminates the burden of carrying a 2160p video stream over HDMI - especially if you're sending it through an AVR or a long cable run.

As for the black screens - that likely means the display resolution has been changed - and it takes a couple of seconds for the video to get synced before the image will be displayed on the screen.

Unless you have 4K programs you are displaying on the PC, strongly recommend staying with 1080p - that's what I've been using - and the image quality on my 4K TV is very good - even with the 1080p programs.

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#6

Post by DavidinCT » Sun Feb 07, 2016 4:04 pm

bob_p wrote:Have you set the screen resolution in WMC when it's running in full screen mode?

NOTE that there isn't any benefit in displaying WMC at 4K - WMC programs are likely either 720p or 1080i - and scale pretty well on the PC up to 1080p. And having the TV scale from 1080p to 2160p is probably better, since the TV will probably do a much better job at scaling than the PC, plus it eliminates the burden of carrying a 2160p video stream over HDMI - especially if you're sending it through an AVR or a long cable run.

As for the black screens - that likely means the display resolution has been changed - and it takes a couple of seconds for the video to get synced before the image will be displayed on the screen.

Unless you have 4K programs you are displaying on the PC, strongly recommend staying with 1080p - that's what I've been using - and the image quality on my 4K TV is very good - even with the 1080p programs.
I kind of disagree. I run my WMC machine at 2160p @60hz. In most things the colors on even standard TV look better and native 4K content looks like 4K content. Running WMC at 1080p with 4K content looks like 1080p content.

The black screen is a HDMI sync. No way around it unless you can get a splitter or something that locks in the HDMI signal so it does not have to re-sync. Battled with this one for years. It was one of those things just deal with it. It happens when I turn on my TV, or switch inputs on my AVR.
-Dave
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Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

crawfish

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#7

Post by crawfish » Sun Feb 07, 2016 8:08 pm

niczoom wrote:I have a new Samsung Series 7 UHD TV and am having this black screen issue when restoring or minimizing WMC from full screen mode. In my case it takes approx 2-3 seconds for the black screen to disappear. Too long for my liking.

Is it something to do with the maximum resolution that WMC is set to run in? Is it hard coded within WMC or perhaps can it be changed within the registry somewhere?
The black screen may be related to the changing of resolutions by the video card
So when WMC is run in full screen mode it changes the resolution of the output to 1920x1080 ??? But my TV still reports that its getting a 3840x2160 60p signal. I also use EventGhost in which I run some scripts which also show the WMC window to be 3840x2160.

So from this info it does not seem that WMC does change the display res when put into fulscreemode?

Another example is when using MPC-HC, it goes from a window to fullscreen without issue, no black screen or delay. So why this issue with WMC?

Any ideas?
Set your video card to the desired resolution, and then go through WMC's TV Setup to choose the resolution for WMC. Also, if you're using an Nvidia card, you may need to set "Content type reported to the display" to "Full screen videos" to avoid the black screen.

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#8

Post by niczoom » Sun Feb 07, 2016 11:22 pm

Set your video card to the desired resolution, and then go through WMC's TV Setup to choose the resolution for WMC. Also, if you're using an Nvidia card, you may need to set "Content type reported to the display" to "Full screen videos" to avoid the black screen.
I just ran WMC TV Setup, it recognized my res of 3840x2160. Ive also set the content type to 'Full screen videos'.
Still got a 2 sec black screen when going into and out of fullscreen mode.

As a test I set my PC res back down to 1920x1080 and still get the black screen in WMC.
The black screen is a HDMI sync. No way around it unless you can get a splitter or something that locks in the HDMI signal so it does not have to re-sync.
My current setup in HDMI direct from the PC (GTX950) to the TV (Samsung Series 7 UHD 65").

Why does HDMI need to re-sync when WMC goes into fullscreen mode??

How is this diffrent to MPC-HC going into and out of fullscreen mode??? It does this without issue, no black screen or delay, and thats playing video at the same time....

My previous system was Win 7 WMC connected to a FHD TV via DVI to HDMI cable, the PC was running in 1920x1080. There was no black screen issue when going into and out of fullscreen mode.

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Crash2009

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#9

Post by Crash2009 » Sun Feb 07, 2016 11:57 pm

Try plugging in to the Samsung DVI hdmi.

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#10

Post by niczoom » Mon Feb 08, 2016 12:23 am

Crash2009 wrote:Try plugging in to the Samsung DVI hdmi.
Just tried it, got the same result.

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#11

Post by crawfish » Mon Feb 08, 2016 12:33 am

niczoom wrote:
Set your video card to the desired resolution, and then go through WMC's TV Setup to choose the resolution for WMC. Also, if you're using an Nvidia card, you may need to set "Content type reported to the display" to "Full screen videos" to avoid the black screen.
I just ran WMC TV Setup, it recognized my res of 3840x2160. Ive also set the content type to 'Full screen videos'.
Still got a 2 sec black screen when going into and out of fullscreen mode.

As a test I set my PC res back down to 1920x1080 and still get the black screen in WMC.
After setting the resolution for the video card, did you then go through WMC's TV Setup to choose the resolution for WMC, i.e. set it to 1080p? You want them both to be exactly the same. Keep "Full screen videos" set as well.

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#12

Post by niczoom » Mon Feb 08, 2016 12:47 am

In the 'Nvidia Control Panel' under 'Change Resolution' I changed the Refresh rate from 60Hz to 59Hz and what do you know ...... there is now 'NO' 2 seconds of black screen with WMC going into and out of fullscreen mode. Looks to be fixed !!

I had initially set this new system up this week using 60Hz as it was the highest available, and all other software running on the PC was not causing any issue other than WMC.

At the moment at 59Hz (only been 15min), to my eyes, it looks exactly the same as 60hz.

Why is there a 59Hz option in this list anyway??

Also, during this process I was playing around with AutoHotKey scripts. I removed the WMC borders and title bar so it was basically a borderless window, then moved and resized (3840x2160) WMC to make it look the same as when in fullscreen mode. As I use a keyboard for out HTPC I setup a keyboard shortcut to get this done.

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#13

Post by niczoom » Mon Feb 08, 2016 12:51 am

crawfish wrote:After setting the resolution for the video card, did you then go through WMC's TV Setup to choose the resolution for WMC, i.e. set it to 1080p? You want them both to be exactly the same. Keep "Full screen videos" set as well.
Yep, just gave it a quick try. In WMC it detected the display as "1080p, 60hz". Still the same result, black screen..... but as soon as i changed the refresh rate to 59Hz all was good !

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#14

Post by crawfish » Mon Feb 08, 2016 1:14 am

niczoom wrote:Yep, just gave it a quick try. In WMC it detected the display as "1080p, 60hz". Still the same result, black screen..... but as soon as i changed the refresh rate to 59Hz all was good !
Well, that's good. The idea is to prevent WMC from changing resolution when it goes in and out of full screen. The "Full screen videos" recommendation was to avoid a problem that occurs with some TVs (e.g. my old Sony LCDs), which would be detected as monitors and use PC timings at the desktop, while WMC would switch to HDTV timings in full screen, which has the same effect WRT screen blanking. That problem used to interact badly with the 29/59 bug, causing WMC to blank while watching affected programs.

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