Jul200921

780G chipset sound output through HDMI

I had a few issues with my HTPC where the sound only came out as stereo on my Sony STR-KS1300.

All drivers were installed correctly and the onboard sound was disabled.

But when viewing the supported formats for the playback device, it only listed 2 channels. Unfortunately I have been unable to change this, although I have got full 5.1 DTS and DD sound coming through to the receiver, by selecting S/PDIF pass-through in all the applications (even through I was using HDMI, not optical). The only problem with this is music comes through stereo only as WMP doesn’t pass-through stereo sound through as 5.1 in anyway and foobar doesn’t support pass-through, although there is a component you can download, but this wouldn’t work for my sound card as I think the DVD-A disc rips are 6 channel rather than 2.

I think the only way of getting proper 5.1 surround sound out of music, will be to buy another sound card and use another audio input in to the receiver.

Driver wise, I used the latest Catalyst package (9.6) and the Realtek ATi HDMI Audio driver (2.28). At this point I would also like to point out that the download speed from Realtek is diabolical. I ended up getting the filename of the file and searching on Google to find a mirror. Don’t be fooled by the other driver download sites, as they just directly link to the Realtek driver rather than a proper mirror.

Jul200920

HTPC resetup using Windows 7 and MCE

From my previous post about building my HTPC and configuring the HTPC using MediaPortal, I have now changed my setup software wise.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jul200916

[Drupal] An error occured while attempting to process add Content Modal form

When trying to add some content new a pane in Panels in Drupal 5 you may get this message.

In my case it was caused by the Secure Pages module. To fix this add the following line to your Secure Pages configuration under Ignore pages:

*ajax*

Jul200906

No add button in IMCE in Drupal when using the Secure Pages module

There may be cases where you are using IMCE with Drupal and have the IMCE appear on node add/edit pages which use a secure URL. You need to add the following to the ignore section of the Secure Pages module.

imce*

Go back to your node add/edit page and you should now have the add button in IMCE.

Jul200902

Firefox 3.5 released – No sign of Yslow or Google Gears

Firefox 3.5 is now available for download and a highly used addon by most developers hasn’t been updated.

Yslow has yet to be updated, neither has CSSViewer. The Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug are both up to date though.

Google Gears is also not available yet, but Google has released another addon for Firefox called Page Speed. Page Speed, much like Yslow, is used to evaluate the performance of webpages as well as giving suggestions on how to improve the performance.