Category Archives: Windows Media Center

AMD 6670, ATI 6670, audio cutting out, audio dropping, HDMI audio, HTPC, intermittent audio problem, Windows Media Center

AMD 6670 HD Audio Intermittent Problems – Audio Cutting Out

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Discovery

Our family has fully welcomed the Windows Media Center ecosystem. Our living room big screen tv is driven solely from our Media Center home Theater PC (HTPC) or our XBox360. This summer, AMD released an update to the AMD VISION Engine Control Center, which along with it updated the HD Audio driver for our AMD Radeon 6670 video card. Unfortunately, this update introduced a very annoying and inconsistent audio anomaly.  Randomly , while watching Recorded TV , the audio would drop out for a few seconds. Sometimes this would happen frequently, sometimes it would disappear for an entire TV show viewing. 

Analysis

Our first step in troubleshooting this issue was to determine whether the issue was with the recordings or with the playback. As stated earlier we have an XBox360, so we utilized the extender functionality to watch the recording that we were having difficulty watching. Fortunately, this test proved that the recordings were no the issue. The recording playback performed beautifully through the XBox360. This pointed us to the HTPC connection to the TV. We verified that the HDMI cable was connected properly to the TV and the HTPC.  We tried a different HDMI cable to ensure the cable hadn’t broken, or acquired some new interference. After these tests failed, we tried each subsequent AMD release and some beta drivers along the way, each leaving us disappointed.

Resolution

We’ve been limping along utilizing the XBox360 as our consumption device. This holiday weekend, I was determined to figure out a resolution and return our system to the stable entertainment system of awesomeness we’ve come to expect. While Googling around looking for AMD 6670 HD Audio Problems  I discovered this post xbmc.org: (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=134993), describing the utilization of the Realtek HD Audio Codecs found here . After the previous failed attempts had failed, I jumped at the oportunity to try a new audio driver, however, this step should be taken with care. Please make sure your backups are up to date before installing or removing any device driver!
I was borderline giddy as I finished my test episode of Mythbusters which “Confirmed” the results of the test.  The Realtek driver has returned our system to its previous state of awesomeness. Hopefully this post will help you if your system is having similar issues.
ATI HD4200, HDCP, IGP, Windows Media Center

HDCP Support Required

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I recently switched back from utilizing my XBOX360 as a Windows Media Center extender as my primary display device provider,  to a HDMI connection to my Home Theater PC (HTPC). My television is a Samsung HP-T5064 plasma, which supports High Definition Content Proction (HDCP) over HDMI. The motherboard in my HTPC is a MSI 785GM-P45 with an Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP)ATI Radeon HD 4200. After reconfiguring my setup with the direct HDMI connection between the HTPC and the television, I began to get very frustrated a I continued to receive the “HDCP Support Required”  error in Media Center when trying to view Live TV on a HS cable channel. This was also accompanied by missing audio over the HDMI cable. I attempted updating the system/chipset drivers which included the display driver. This did not solve the problem, much to my dismay. So off googling I went when I stumbled upon someone stating they had tweaked a setting in their BIOS to improve performance of their IGP. The Shared Memory setting, which determines how much of your system memory is shared with the on-board graphics IGP could be set manually. My setting was currently set to Auto. I changed this to 512, which will allow the IGP to access 512MB of memory. I rebooted the machine and was very pleased to hear the welcome chime of Windows Media Center. I quickly switched to LiveTv, changed the channel to Fox Sports Detroit and was please to be presented with the stunning image up Comerica Park and the post game show from the Tiger’s game. Hopefully this can help someone else who was pulling their hair out with the dreaded HDCP Support Required error.