Play/Pause and a few other issues.

[Swynol 375]

I have a cheap media centre remote, and a harmony one. both of them cant pause or when paused re play. when i hit pause its like it pauses the frame for a milly second and then plays again. same with pause, if i hit play when its paused it jumps 1 frame then pauses again.

 

any ideas?

 

my other issue is that i leave MBT open and turn off my AVR and TV, if i turn it on within 30mins all is good, if i leave it longer than that then when the TV turns on MBT is a small square in the top right of the screen and then crashes.

 

and finally anyone had any luck lunching MBT using a non official media centre remote?

Edited January 17, 2014 by Crazypete00

[pmac 143]

You may have to turn the number of button repeats down in your Harmony remote settings, not sure about the MCE remote, but it sounds like it's sending the command twice each time you press the button. In your Harmony setup there should be a section titled something like: "My remote is sending too many/too few repeats", which will allow you to adjust this. I've had a similar problem, with my remote moving two spaces every time I wanted to move one.

 

Good luck,

 

Patrick

 

EDIT: Also, if it's the Harmony in question, you can assign a "WINKEY+(# key)" to launch MBT from the taskbar.

Edited January 22, 2014 by pmac

[shaefurr 1340]

I have that problem in MBT as well. But since my remote also has a keyboard ive just switched to using the spacebar to pause/play.

[Davidtt485 6]

The Harmony One does not use Myharmony.com and i haven't seen that issue with using my one, but i have it programmed as a Media Center PC SE. It sounds to me like you programmed your Harmony to copy the cheap remote and thats the issue,

[Swynol 375]

Thanks, ye I have to learn the commands from the cheap remote. If I set WMC se then My ir receiver doesn't understand my command

[pmac 143]

Try setting up the device as Adesso ARC-1100, I was having problems with the IR receiver I switched to, and this worked perfect for me.

 

EDIT: It seems perfect wasn't the right choice of word for me to use.... see my post below.

Edited January 24, 2014 by pmac

[Davidtt485 6]

see if you can manually map the pause button to the pause command instead of learning. Did you program by pointing it into the bottom, or did you find it in the database ??

[Swynol 375]

couldnt find it in the database so manually mapped it using the cheap remote. acctually i have 3 remotes. all of them cheap copies and strangely the remotes only work with their own ir receivers so no mix and matching

[Davidtt485 6]

That makes sense, i did have a cheap remote too it was silver and have 4 colored buttons at the top but i was able to find it in the database. if you google search the supplier it might give you the info you need. Mine was a Chinavision.

[pmac 143]

Apparently there are some issues with the remote I had to set up to get my Harmony to work with my other IR receiver. Namely, the exact play/pause issue you were having.

 

After doing some research it seems it's due to the type of remote it is: Officially named the "ORTek VRC-1100", but there are also clones of it sold as "Adesso ARC-1100" and "Hama MCE Remote".

 

 

The problem with these remotes and MBT, as well as WMC/MBC is that the "Play" and "Pause" buttons are actually the same thing, causing them to send both commands at the same time, regardless which button you are pressing. Apparently this is due to the way the older Windows Media Center (Pre Vista) handled the play/pause command.

 

Now the problem, at least for me is that I don't own another remote that can communicate with the IR receiver that came with my cheapo silver remote, so I have nothing to teach my Harmony a working "Play" or "Pause" command from. Which really sucks, because the whole reason I started using this IR receiver is because I was having problems with my HP IR receiver getting way too much IR interference from my plasma TV, so I couldn't scroll through titles by holding the arrow buttons down. BUT the play/pause buttons worked fine. With the cheapo receiver I am getting absolutely zero interference. (go figure...)

 

So it seems unless anyone else has some ideas, I'm either getting great navigation with my remote, but no play/pause function. Or I'm getting play/pause functioning properly and slow navigation (moving through all my titles one at a time).

[Swynol 375]

thanks pmac - thats the remote i have. annoyingly the other remotes i have dont work with that IR receiver. i bought a cyberlink one so will give that a go soon. 

 

also the other annoying thing with that remote is the Win+1 key to launch MBT doesnt work

[pmac 143]

Yes, I noticed that. If you look at the bottom of my other thread "slow navigation with Harmony remote", I detailed how I was able to get MBT to launch with that remote though. Let me know if you need any help figuring it out.

[Swynol 375]

just had a look at what you posted, cant wait to rush home and give it a go. lets hope we can somehow sort out the play/pause issue.

 

i wonder if there is a way to map space bar to the remote. - i suppose the other option is to buy a genuine remote but then i might have the same issues you had as i too have a plasma 

[pmac 143]

I've done a lot of research over the past few days (I need something to do, as I don't work for the Winter season lol), and unfortunately it seems highly unlikely that there is a (clean) fix for the play/pause issue. I've read in some other forums that some people have got it working for other clients (XBMC, Media Portal, MythTV, among others) using some EventGhost scripting. I don't know much/anything about using EG, but it's also not the kind of approach I'd like to take, since I'm trying to keep a minimalist setup without a bunch of peripheral programs running in the background.

 

The only other viable (but unlikely) option would be for the MBT core to allow some key binding customization to allow the user to specify which keypresses do what in terms of navigation, etc. This way, users that have older remotes (apparently these silver remotes are fairly popular) that communicate differently than current MCE (RC6) remotes, could program MBT to accept the commands their remotes are sending.

 

For now, I've gone back to my HP IR sensor and my interference woes, since I found the lack of a play/pause feature much more of an annoyance than having to individually click through my titles. Maybe one day I'll find a spot for my sensor that doesn't get too much interference from my plasma set.

 

Also, there are "plasma-proof" sensors out there, but it seems they require a fair bit of setup, and "stick-on" IR transmitters that you need to put in front of the IR sensor on all of your devices, which should also be kept somewhere away from your television (think: closet media-rack, or similar).

Another similar option would be to use one of the high-end Harmony remote which work off of RF signals, but the base station for these remotes also requires your devices to be labelled with these stick-on sensors, as far as I can tell.

[Davidtt485 6]

there is a kit made by cables 2 go that is an ir extender but it allows you to actually put all of your stuff in a closet and comes with those stick on ir sensors i use it for my theater room in my basement.

http://www.amazon.com/C2G-40430-Acoustics-Infrared-Repeater/dp/B001BLTDZA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390591866&sr=8-1&keywords=cables2go+ir+kit