VNC & Vista and Media/VMC

thepharcyde · 3 Nov 2008 at 21:00

I have a laptop that connects to my HTPC via VNC so I can do everything remotely as opposed to configuring sat in front of a 37" screen. I use this for opening videos that I play in Media Player Classic to save using a wireless mouse etc.

Problem being is that VNC puts my HTPC in 'Basic mode' so I cannot play videos/watch live TV in VCE without restarting.

Anyone else got this issue why it runs in Windows 'Basic mode'?

psd99 · 4 Nov 2008 at 06:08

Same thing happens to me. VNC and RDP will not work well in streaming unless you got a gig connection between the 2. It is slightly improved with a gig connection but not that great.

If you use RDP do you notice any difference?

Dracata · 5 Nov 2008 at 15:59

thepharcyde said:
I have a laptop that connects to my HTPC via VNC so I can do everything remotely as opposed to configuring sat in front of a 37" screen. I use this for opening videos that I play in Media Player Classic to save using a wireless mouse etc.

Problem being is that VNC puts my HTPC in 'Basic mode' so I cannot play videos/watch live TV in VCE without restarting.

Anyone else got this issue why it runs in Windows 'Basic mode'?

What version of VNC are you running? If you're running VNC Enterprise/Personal Edition, or UltraVNC then this is likely because it's loading a VNC Mirror Driver, which is essentially a secondary graphics driver. Windows automatically disables the aero interface upon a mirror driver loading, i'm not sure however why you're unable to open videos.

What happens when you try to load a video?

thepharcyde · 5 Nov 2008 at 21:30

Dracata said:
What version of VNC are you running? If you're running VNC Enterprise/Personal Edition, or UltraVNC then this is likely because it's loading a VNC Mirror Driver, which is essentially a secondary graphics driver. Windows automatically disables the aero interface upon a mirror driver loading, i'm not sure however why you're unable to open videos.

What happens when you try to load a video?

Videos are fine, it's just a restart is required if I want to watch Live TV again on my HTPC.

Dracata · 5 Nov 2008 at 22:46

thepharcyde said:
Videos are fine, it's just a restart is required if I want to watch Live TV again on my HTPC.

Ah, that's probably because of the way the mirror driver is unloaded from the system. It's also likely to do with 'whatever the live tv application' does, if it uses it's own graphical driver / hooks into something then it's probably a conflict somewhere.

Disabling the VNC Mirror Driver should resolve the issue, although reverting to hooks/polling will slow the performance of the VNC connection.