I've just tried the setup on my other PC and I can't get Surround whatever I do. I can play a Blu-ray in Surround with DVD fab player but when I go through the speaker set up in WMC it doesn't work properly. There seems to be something missing because it doesn't ask where the speakers are connected, only how many there and when I test them it plays everything through the front speakers. The good news is that It is loading the DLLs from ehome but that doesn't really help. I actually bought this as a replacement for the HTPC in the living room when it went wrong but I repaired that one instead and put the new one upstairs so I never tested it properly on the AV Amp. I will try and get WMC working properly when I get a minute because it would be a pain if the main one goes wrong again.
I have just remembered there's a few other PCs that have Media Center on them and they might be easier to test with because I'm not so worried about those. I'm not sure why WMC doesn't work with surround sound on the second one but I do remember there are a number of odd things that I never got to the bottom of with that one. For instance, despite having a quad DVB-T2 tuner, I can't select HD preferred when setting up a recording schedule. The only option is any channel or a specific channel. If I import the schedules from another PC, the option is there but it ignores it and records whatever it likes - usually every instance on every channel. I removed WMC and reinstalled it but it didn't help. I even fitted the DVB-S2 cards from the Living Room PC, which work perfectly downstairs and it was exactly the same. Most peculiar.
I have just tested this on another PC: 1/ put the app path registry entries in and checked that ehshell.exe loaded the correct version of MSVidCtl.dll from ehome. 2/ set windows sound to 5.1 and checked that my video app played in surround. 3/ went into WMC and set the speakers to 5.1 and tested it. As expected, it played the same sound repeatedly but I let it finish and clicked on I heard sound from all speakers anyway. 4/ exited WMC and went back in then tested playing a wtv file in surround and it worked. Note: It is important that you exit WMC after setting it to 5.1 because it will always fail to play until you do. The odd thing is that on this one and my Living Room PC, I can set WMC to 5.1 with windows sound set to 5.1 but not on the other one I tried. I wonder what the difference is? edit: I have just realised that I don't have launcher on this one but WMC works perfectly in full screen mode!
Anyone know why I get this on my Living Room PC but not on the other ones? Is there a connection with this and the problem at hand?
OK. I found some registry entries present on my 2nd PC that weren't present on my Living Room PC and when I removed them I was able to set and test the speakers as 5.1 with windows set to 5.1. When I played my test file, I got glorious 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound. The option list shown in the last post still doesn't come up but the important thing is that it now working properly. These are registry entries I found and removed: Code: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center] "DigitalAudioEndPoint"=dword:00000000 "LoudnessEqualization"=dword:00000001 "SpeakerFill"=dword:00000000 "DolbyMode"=dword:00000002 I'm a very happy bunny.
Yes but I went through all the sound setup numerous times and reset everything. All enhancements were definitely turned off. Given that Microsoft don't support WMC in Windows 10, why would a Windows setting create registry entries in a key you would only expect to exist when media center is installed? I turned on sound equalisation on my laptop and those registry entries didn't appear.
I still dont get how you can get your amp to apply surround to a multi channel output from the pc? I checked my registry and have... Code: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center] "10 Foot OOBE"=dword:00000000 "EnableSPADLaunchErrors"=dword:00000001 "Ident"="6.0" "DigitalAudioEndPoint"=dword:00000001 "LoudnessEqualization"=dword:00000000 "SpeakerFill"=dword:00000000 "DolbyMode"=dword:00000002 windows sound was set to stereo at the time, makes no difference if its set to 5.1
I wish there was some documentation about these. I notice that yours has "DigitalAudioEndPoint"=dword:00000001 whereas mine was "DigitalAudioEndPoint"=dword:00000000. I wondered if that was why I wasn't getting the setting I showed but changing it didn't make any difference. Whatever, I think it was "DolbyMode"=dword:00000002 that was causing the problem on mine. None of my other PCs has that and they all work fine with my setting.
Going back to your first point, I don't know what amp you have but mine is an Onkyo tx-sr607 and it is set to direct mode. It switches modes internally to decode whatever signals it is given. This is how I imagine it works. WMC checks to see which modes the audio output device support before it takes control of it. I think this is where it goes wrong because it can't take control of the windows audio output when it is set to 5.1 in windows and it is how the installer configured it, so it outputs audio in multichannel PCM instead. Problem is that WMC doesn't seem to support 5.1 over PCM so it comes out as stereo. However, when WMC is configured as I have it, it can take control of the windows audio output and outputs in 5.1 when required. This is pure conjecture on my part and I would love to understand WHY this is happening. Sadly I don't.
Just wondering... maybe it's not just ehshell that is needed. These are the app paths I have: Code: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\ehsched.exe] @="c:\\windows\\system32\\ehsched.exe" "path"="c:\\windows\\ehome" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\ehrec.exe] @="c:\\windows\\ehome\\ehrec.exe" "path"="c:\\windows\\ehome\\" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\ehrecvr.exe] @="c:\\windows\\ehome\\ehrecvr.exe" "path"="c:\\windows\\ehome\\" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\ehshell.exe] @="c:\\windows\\ehome\\ehshell.exe" "path"="c:\\windows\\ehome\\" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\ehtray.exe] @="c:\\windows\\ehome\\ehtray.exe" "path"="c:\\windows\\ehome\\" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\ehvid.exe] @="c:\\windows\\ehome\\ehvid.exe" "path"="c:\\windows\\ehome\\" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\mcupdate.exe] @="c:\\windows\\ehome\\mcupdate.exe" "path"="c:\\windows\\ehome\\" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\ehmsas.exe] @="c:\\windows\\ehome\\ehmsas.exe" "path"="c:\\windows\\ehome\\" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\ehprivjob.exe] @="c:\\windows\\ehome\\ehmsas.exe" "path"="c:\\windows\\ehome\\"
My Amp is a Denon AVR-X3300W, with the amp set to pure mode and windows sound set to 5.1, only stereo is output from the amp, which is as expected, it is a Multi Chanel out from windows but only 2 channel. If i select movie sound and Multi In + Dolby Surround, it stays in stereo. If i select music sound and matrix, it comes out as a surround but bot proper surround. my reg entries; Code: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\ehshell.exe] @="c:\\windows\\ehome\\ehshell.exe" "path"="c:\\windows\\ehome" Why am i missing so many entries?
I think I created the media center ones when I was trying to fix WMC back in March 2017! I definitely remember posting something on here about setting up application specific entries to try and fix the problems we were having. If you think about it, they would never have been required when WMC was a supported product because MS would have made sure that everything worked when they pushed out updates. It is only now that it isn't supported that these extraordinary interventions have become necessary. There's obviously something different about how your PC is configured that is stopping it from working. I've got tons of other app paths in all of my PCs so I don't know what happened to yours. Have you got any backups anywhere? I have just removed all the media center app paths one by one from my spare PC and it worked right up till I removed the one for eshell. As soon as I put back my media center app paths, I can play a recorded TV show with Dolby 5.1 Surround and my amp initially shows multichannel but quickly switches to Dolby 5.1.
I just removed WMC from my spare PC and installed 8.8.3. With my app paths set, I can set speakers to 5.1 in windows, set speakers to 5.1 in WMC and the test works. It plays recorded TV with Dolby 5.1 perfectly, same as all the others. Just as a test, I put the registry setting I found on the other PC (DigitalAudioEndPoint & DolbyMode) in and rebooted and it didn't make any difference at all. I don't understand that. The other bonus with my settings is that WMC works perfectly in full screen mode without using launcher on this one.
It has never played back 5.1 from xp, 7, or windows 10, I removed all but WMC entries btw WMC does not support 5.1 natively, are you using a codec pack. I don't, as i often use the ff playback where the sound plays back at an increased speed, really handy for watching things quickly.
Nope. I haven't used codec packs for years (almost certainly never since switching windows 10) because of all the problems they caused me. If a program doesn't work without installing codecs, I look for something else that does. I guess that means WMC must support 5.1 natively as it works on all of mine.