maybe this is common knowledge, but I finally started researching some intermittent issues i've been having where Windows Media Center will show "display port driver error" when trying to watch encrypted content from my HD Homerun Prime with cablecard.


Issue appears to be that my new Radeon HD 7950 has lots of displayport ports, but Windows 7 doesn't consider it HDCP compliant, even though it is.  Had to switch one of my monitors to DVI (although HDMI would have worked too) and HBO shows up fine now.


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2392252

I never ran into that problem when I had my old 6950 cards. And each one of those had 4 display ports a piece. I think I am going to stick with Nvidia for awhile.

So another case of DRM screwing over the legitimate consumer....

After reading the article, I have to wonder if this issue is addressed in the Windows 8 version of MC? They say it was a "fast publish" article, but haven't touched it in over a year. Through some quick searching, it looks like you won't be able to test that theory until general availability on October 26 when the WMC add-on for Win8 is available:

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/07/02/upgrade-to-windows-8-pro-for-39-99.aspx

i'm pretty surprised that this isn't something they didn't already fix by now, the KB article is over a year old.

It probably hasn't been fixed because, according to Microsoft, WMC is a niche product, and doesn't have enough users (as a ratio of the whole userbase) to devote any time to the fix. This is also part of their same reasoning for making WMC an add-on for Win8 instead of just including it by default. If it's not an included part of the OS, they can update just WMC without going through the extensive testing, validation, and other hoops that have to occur for an OS update, because it would technically not be an OS update any more.

Which is lame.  I for one ditched my Verizon set top boxes and invested in the HDHomeRun 3 Tuner, which uses CableCard.  WMC, out of all the Media Centers I've tried, has the best support for this thing, as well as all the other features one might want like Netflix integration.  CableCard was stupid easy to setup.  Their library browsing for movies and music leaves alot to be desired, but its functional enough.  The program itself has so much potential.  Such a shame.

Next best MC I've found was XBMC, but getting the HDHR to work with it isnt as straight forward.  I love XBMC's media library browsing too, much cooler than WMC's.  It just seemed like a TV tuner was an afterthought with XBMC.

Home Server's not getting any love at all. It turned 4 and got kicked out of the house.

I just did an in-place upgrade over top my Windows 7 Ultimate setup with Windows 8 Pro.  After doing the upgrade, I immediately used the free coupon to get Media Center back (since the upgrade helpfully takes media center away from you).

Well, after 3 restarts, Media Center was back.  I loaded it up and it said it detected a previous MC config and asked if I wanted to import.  Hell yes I did.  After it was done, TV was working perfectly again.

Now, the kicker (or bummer) - i dragged the window over to the displayport connected screen and it MC window popped up and said it needed an update (it basically said to go to windows update and install an optional update there).  When I went, the only thing there remotely close was http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2712101

Edit:  installed the update and now all it does is give the same message as Windows 7 did:  "Display driver error:  the video playback device does not support playback of protected content."


Oh, and one more thing.  After Windows 8 removed Media Center and I had to get it back installed, there literally are zero differences that i've found thus far.  Sad, very sad.