Converting a Philips Showline 9350i to Digital TV (DVB) and Vista
I just picked up one of these great media center PC's off of ebay for £200. Unfortunately they have dual analogue tuners which are nigh on useless these days. Therefore I went to Maplin and picked up a USB dual tuner DVB TV adapter (K-world 399U I think) for £40.
I plugged it in but couldn't get XP Media center to work with it so I decided to install Vista.
Firstly I backed up the partitions using Acronis True Image Home. This was very important as the 9350i does not come with any recovery media!
I then added another 1GB of RAM to the 9350i as Vista is notoriously memory hungry. It takes standard DDR2 RAM (533Mhz or faster preferred but I used 400Mhz and it worked fine).
I installed vista and everything worked fine apart from three things:
1. No sound. The sound did not work initially. It took me ages to get it working....eventually I found that backup I took very useful as on the original C drive of the install there is a folder called Philips and in there was drivers for all the hardware. The audio driver in there was the only one I could find that worked so don't lose them!
2. Stuttering picture on live TV. I googled this and found the answer to be that Microsoft's Vista bundled MPEG2 decoder sucks. I downloaded NVidia's PureVideo decoder, rebooted and everything worked perfectly! You need to use this tool to change the default codec: link
3. Front Panel display says "Starting Up" constantly. I haven't fixed this problem yet. The drivers/program for this did not install properly on Vista. Anyone got any ideas?
Pictures to follow....
Update (Thanks to Ronald):
Vista drivers are here! : http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/dcbint/get?url=/sca/sca/070314/070314170811_18207.zip&ofn=Vista drivers.zip
I plugged it in but couldn't get XP Media center to work with it so I decided to install Vista.
Firstly I backed up the partitions using Acronis True Image Home. This was very important as the 9350i does not come with any recovery media!
I then added another 1GB of RAM to the 9350i as Vista is notoriously memory hungry. It takes standard DDR2 RAM (533Mhz or faster preferred but I used 400Mhz and it worked fine).
I installed vista and everything worked fine apart from three things:
1. No sound. The sound did not work initially. It took me ages to get it working....eventually I found that backup I took very useful as on the original C drive of the install there is a folder called Philips and in there was drivers for all the hardware. The audio driver in there was the only one I could find that worked so don't lose them!
2. Stuttering picture on live TV. I googled this and found the answer to be that Microsoft's Vista bundled MPEG2 decoder sucks. I downloaded NVidia's PureVideo decoder, rebooted and everything worked perfectly! You need to use this tool to change the default codec: link
3. Front Panel display says "Starting Up" constantly. I haven't fixed this problem yet. The drivers/program for this did not install properly on Vista. Anyone got any ideas?
Pictures to follow....
Update (Thanks to Ronald):
Vista drivers are here! : http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/dcbint/get?url=/sca/sca/070314/070314170811_18207.zip&ofn=Vista drivers.zip
posted by James White at 10:45 AM
22 Comments:
Thanks for the post. Very helpful. What kind of RAM was it? DDR2 PC4200 or PC6400? Not sure what the pinouts are on my Philips since I haven't opened it up?
I used PC4200 cause I had some lying around, but the stuff that was in there was PC5300 so you should probably use that. (just runs the FSB at a slightly higher speed).
Helpful again. How many pins? Standard 200 pin module I guess?
Have you tried upgrading the internal hard drive?
Standard DDR2 ram. I think it has 240 pins, it is the same I use in Dell desktops at work and my home desktop.
I didn't upgrade the hard disk, but I doubt this would be technically difficult. However, as everything is tightly squashed into the box you may have to remove a lot of screws.
Plus, remember to take an image backup to restore just in case :)
Hi James,
Philips does provide an MCP9350i sound driver for Windows Vista, download it from: http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/dcbint/get?url=/sca/sca/070314/070314170811_18207.zip&ofn=Vista drivers.zip it's the mcp9360i sound driver but its the same as the mcp9350i. Currenty using it.
Also in this package is the VFD driver for the front : works with vista, only issue i have with it: after standby have to reboot the program for the VFD to come up again, this tool http://www.xs4all.nl/~hveijk/mst/index.htm will problaby fix that but havent got round to test this.
The third driver is MCP9360i only (tv tuner)
Internal harddrive upgrading is very simple, just 3 torx screws at the back, and it's an standard S-ata hdd, also the burner could be replaced quite easily.
System has got an extra PCI slot, just have to drill some holes with a dremel.
Also i guess since there is an pci-e riser board there could be a possibly of replacing the onboard dvi pci-e board with something a bit more powerfull. Also requires a dremel.
Furthermore found out there is another version of this system out there the Onkyo HDC-7, basically the same system but with an extra Audio PCI board.
I'm very happy with this system, would like to find a Bios update for the Intel D945GSU motherboard though, would love to replace the CPU with an dual core version.
Thank you! That is great. I have some spare Pentium D chips lying around that I may try one day, they worked in a dell i had with an intel 945 based board.
The reason I haven't done it is that to get to the CPU looks like a lot of work, there are loads of screws and I think a lot of stuff would have to be removed first.
I did have a go at trying to remove the dual analogue tuner cards in there but I couldn't get them out, I took loads of screws out but couldn't find the right ones.
Hi James,
Any chance of a copy of those images? I found your site because I have gone ahead and blatted my machine and now vista wont allow TV to play despite following your recommendations. Obviously I'll happily pay a fee for a copy.
have you been able to get the tv to output dvi? mine outputs over dvi, but only at windows bootup. after that i get no signal. both vga and s-video work fine, but not dvi. i'm sure it's a driver thing, but i have no idea how to fix it. i've installed the latest intel driver and set the output between monitor/television (affects vga output), and one screen to two (also affects vga output). but otherwise no luck.
Sorry man, only running the machine through a crt TV at the moment so haven't tried DVI. I noticed on windows update a few days ago that there are new drivers for the intel chipset, you could try those.
thanks for the problem solving here, we experienced the same problems. However we got the front panel working again too. First disable "use user control to help protect your computer", go to:
control panel
user accounts
turn user account on or off
disable "use user control to help protect your computer"
then
c:/philips/drivers/fpmanager/setupdut.exe
then restart!
If you are in the UK, grab PC Pro magazine this month. It's got a free copy of Acronis True Image with it. It's well worth getting.
You post is an excellent guide to installing vista on a mcp9350.
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get the sound working. After installing the original philips drivers for windows XP MCE the familiar 'blob'-sound at startup returned. However, still no sound. I'm using the analog audio out, no sp-dif/digital. Any suggestions? Thanks.
A few people have had trouble with that. Did you try the driver at: http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/dcbint/get?url=/sca/sca/070314/070314170811_18207.zip&ofn=Vista drivers.zip
?
Hello,
Can anybody help me? I have been reconfig. partitions and the F11 option isn't working anymore. I still have de EISA partition but cann't start the recovery programm. Can anybody help me with the original philips XPMCE sounddriver? Can anybody provide the original partitions? Thanks!
Contact me at james@verydodgy.com and I'll see what I can do :)
Great Blog James nice to see some positive information,have sent you email.
I'm thinking of picking up one of these but it has no OS on the Har Drive, how easy is it to set up and would you recommend using WMC 2005 or Vista Home Premium ?
Hi James,
Here's another reply from the Netherlands, i can see i am not the first Dutchman to find your blog (many thanks too Google).
I am also struggeling with a MCP9350i. On ours the tuner hardware is not working anymore. Do you know if it is possible to replace the tuner cards? Keeping analogue tuners in would still be the best in our situation, because DVB-T reception in most cases requires a smartcard.
This post has been removed by the author.
Hi James and others,
I'm currently in the proces of installing vista (64 bits) on my 9350i. Everything works fine, expect for the audio.
I wonder how you solved it? Was installing the driver you mentioned sufficient? For me the 3-bits drivers in the Philips folder won't work. I have found a similar driver for 64 bit vista, but that won't install properly.
Also the drivers delivered with the 9360i do not work.
The strange thing is that for some drivers seem to work fine - including the driver that was installed during vista setup (at least the device manager indicates everyting is ok). However, I get no sound from the speakers. I have tried a dozen drivers (HDA, Sigmatel,intel) etc but none of them work.
Hope you or any one else can help,
Thanks,
Alex
Hi everybody have recently purchased an MCP9350i. I got it cheap because there was no HD or OS & no memory, it did come with a cd with files on it, but the one for the tuner was missing & I can't find a driver anywhere on the net. Heres what I Have fitted so far 500gb Seagate HD, 4GB Team Elite memory (3GB recognised) Hauppauge HVR 1100 DVB-T tuner & a LG Blu-Ray/HD drive, this will be followed by a higher spec GPU & Pentium D when the wife allows the funds to be released.
Hi guys, sorry I haven't checked this page for a while :)
Adam: I'd go for Vista as media center is much better on it. Its a little fiddly to get working but it will in the end.
Edjekroketje: The cards seem to be proprietary so I don't reckon you could fix or replace them. Just buy a USB TV tuner as I have. I just got a new one, WinTV Nova-TD and it works perfectly. If you want to stick with analogue hauppauge do those as well.
Jenx: Don't use 64bit vista, 32bit is trouble enough with the dodgy drivers :)
Allan: i've emailed you
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