Couple of questions

[NaTT]

I put ultimate on my office PC yesterday and quite liked the look of the media center front end. Before I go wrecking my HCPC I've a few questions:

1) Can you get 44.1Khz audio out of vista for playing ape files etc? I.e. is there an equivillant to ASIO?

2) Can you modify Media Center to use a specific application to play DVDs/ HD-DVDs / BDs? E.g. TT or PowerDVD?

3) Are there any recommended IR remote controls? (all I've found through searching are pretty pictures of devices folk thought might be out by now)

4) Does vista have any HDD tools (better than XPs). I've got a disk thats' FAT is corrupt or summat and keeps filling the disk trying to add in new bits to fix itself (and so doesn't fix itself)

5) Under what circumstances does Vista downscale video or audio? I've several BDs, HD-DVDs and single file HD movies stored on HDDs. I'd like to ensure they still get played at full res.

thanks!

[NaTT]

[quote=NaTT;4860146]
4) Does vista have any HDD tools (better than XPs). I've got a disk thats' FAT is corrupt or summat and keeps filling the disk trying to add in new bits to fix itself (and so doesn't fix itself)
QUOTE]

I'll start then (it was quite a few questions, sorry)
It appears that "yes" Vista is better able to fix disk errors. I plugged in my errorsome 500Gb SATA drive from an XP PC that went into spasms at boot up trying to "insert index entries into file $0 527" add infinitum.
Vista did this also, but managed to fix the errors. Ta da. Qudos to Vista.

I'd still love to know if MC can be configured to use your chosen app and if there's way's of avoiding the Kmixer when processing sound.