Got a Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2H? Does it work with Media Center?

Lucky you… I think…

I spent two months, on and off, hunting one of these down. Eventually I found one (in France, on eBay), paid top dollar (or Euro) to get it over, and then had another 2 weeks of pain trying to get it to boot an OS (but that’s another story!)

Once I had it up and running in my HTPC case, I found it wouldn’t work with Windows Media Center – giving a “Your Video Card or Drivers are not compatible with Media Center“. I used to get that with my old MC, based on an ATI / Sapphire Radeon 9600 – the solution to which was usually a good kick and a reboot.

With this mobo, there is no graphics card – I’m using the HDMI output of the on-board Intel G33 graphics. I eventually tracked the problem down to the Hardware Acceleration. Reason – I don’t have none; not on the on-board graphics of this mobo. So, I took it down from ‘Full‘ to ‘None‘, and Media Center then opened without complaint.

I still didn’t have any TV or DVD though. The reason for this was fairly obvious – I didn’t have any MPEG2 decoders, which both use, installed. Then came the next tricky bit: trying to find an MPEG2 codec that didn’t need Hardware Acceleration. I eventually found it within the Cyberlink MPEG2 Decoder, in FinalCodecs. I’m not sure if this is entirely legit, so I’m looking for another Codec that’ll provide a long-term solution. Admittedly, although I have an C2D E6750 that should software-decode BluRay movies without any problem, it seems to struggle with the frame rate on simple DVDs.

However, in a final twist, Media Center is complaining about video drivers again – and nothing seems amiss. So… back to the Codec pool, it seems….