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ESXi Based Media Center 7 Extender TV Issue

Answered ESXi Based Media Center 7 Extender TV Issue

  • Sunday, January 15, 2012 3:52 PM
     
     
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    Hello,

     

    This might be a bit long so I apologize in advance but could really use some help. I have been running my main Windows 7 Media Center mahcine on ESXi for a while now and have gone through 3 hardware configuraiton changes(an old AMD athlon board, then to an Intel i5, and now on new server). I have never run into any issues in the past using this setup but on my new hardware I am having an issue.

     

    Current Setup:

    Dell Poweredge 2950 2x Quad Core Xeon 5320

    ESXi 5

    Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

    HD HomeRun for TV tuners

    Extender - Xbox 360 250GB S

    I setup the HD Homerun drivers/software without an issue and can verify that the TV functionality does work on the Win7 Virtual Machine by opening the HD Homerun live preview. I then run through the setup for WMC live tv and it does not give me any errors. The issue is when I try to use an extender (Xbox 360, fully updated) to watch live or recorded TV. The extender will open up the TV guide, go to the live tv menu, the popup for the channel, dolby digital logo, etc. will come up but the entire screen is black. It acts like the tv is playing but the screen remains black. I can switch channels and it is the same for every channel. The really odd part is that I can turn closed captioning on and it will show up but still not actual image of the show. I have tried everything I can think of and nothing makes any sense, please help! 0

     

    I know that the TV does work as I can console into the VM and the TV is viewable there. But for some reason the extender will not show the TV feed(except for the closed captioning).

     

All Replies

  • Wednesday, January 18, 2012 7:23 PM
     
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    I suggest that you try with Media Center running on a physical machine, as your issue might be related to the ESXi virtualization.

    Reposting this at the Windows Entertainment and Connected Home forums is also recommended, there are some WMC experts there:

    http://experts.windows.com/frms/windows_entertainment_and_connected_home/f/114.aspx

    Tim De Baets
    http://www.bm-productions.tk
     
  • Friday, February 24, 2012 7:03 PM
     
     
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    I've been trying to accomplish the same thing and I think it has to do with the fact that ESXi doesn't support audio devices for virtual machines. I'm unable to watch live TV in MCE within the VM because "no audio devices are detected". The Extenders use RDP or remote desktop to connect to the main MCE server...so I'm guessing that if playback fails on the main MCE server (due to no audio device), then it will also fail on the extender. I'm going to purchase a USB audio card and use USB passthrough in ESXi to pass the USB audio device directly to the VM. I'll let you know if it works...
     
  • Monday, April 16, 2012 12:34 AM
     
     
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    I am suffering the exact issue described here and wondering if adding a USB audio device has resolved this for anyone?
    • Proposed As Answer by cram501 Monday, May 14, 2012 4:45 AM
    • Unproposed As Answer by cram501 Monday, May 14, 2012 4:45 AM
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  • Monday, May 14, 2012 4:50 AM
     
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    I had the exact same problem.    It ended up being something with the default network card that is installed with ESXI (E1000).

    If you turn off the "Link-Layer Topology" selections it should work although I still ran into performance problems.   One I swapped to the VMXNET virtual network card (included with ESXI 5), all my problems went away.  Note:  Until you install vmware tools, you won't have a driver for the VMXNET.

    • Proposed As Answer by cruz878 Monday, May 14, 2012 4:01 PM
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  • Monday, May 14, 2012 4:05 PM
     
     
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    Can't thank you enough for the response. I spent hours trouble-shooting this and had given up leaving my HDHomeRun useless.

    I confirmed that after switching the installed network adapter to VMXNET that my tuner is now working in MC. This also appears to have cleared up the lag I was experiencing when browsing files via MediaBrowser.

     
  • Monday, July 16, 2012 11:36 PM
     
     
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    Thank you!  This was the key to getting mine working as well.

    For those of you who have read this and can't figure out what you need to do, here's the step by step solution.

    1.  Install VMWare Tools in your Guest Windows 7 OS.

    2.  Shut down the Guest OS.

    3.  in Vsphere Client, find your Virtual Machine, right click and select "Edit Settings"

    4.  Click on Network Adaptor 1 and make a note of the MAC Address. 

    5.  Uncheck "Connect at Power on."  Click OK.

    6.  Click "Add" to add a new Network Adaptor, and then click Ethernet Adaptor.  Then click Next.

    7.  Change Adaptor Type from E1000 to VMXNet 3.  Click Next and then Finish.

    8.  Edit the newly created adaptor ("Network Adaptor 2") to ensure that it will be connected a power on, and also change the MAC Address to Manual and then enter the MAC Address from your original adaptor.  This may not be necessary, but it may keep Windows from complaining about hardware changes...

    9.  Boot your new machine and everything should work just fine.