Well I have searched and read and tried a bunch of different things and I am still having an odd issue. If this has been addressed and resolved please just tell me what to search for or provide a link as I don't want to be one of  "those guys".

So about 6 months ago I built this machine to be my primary MC.

Here are the Specs:
MB: eVGA - 750i FTW
Video: eVGA - 9600 GT
CPU: Intel Q8200 @ Stock Speed (2.33)
Ram: 4 GB DDR2 1066
Seagate 160GB SATA HDD
ATI HD Tuner - (First Gen)
Hauppage - Win TV 150
Lite-On Blu Ray Drive
Toshiba HD-DVD Drive
Currently loaded Vista 32 Ultimate SP2 (Have tried 64 Ult and Win 7 64 All same problem)
550W An
Arcsoft Total Media Theater 3


Audio is running though Optical on Board Audio Realtec HD

Projector Optima EP-719 have Tried Different Resolutions Seems to support 1280x720 nicely. This is run DVI->HDMI->DVI (this is because the cable I have is HDMI on one end and DVI on the other.

I built this as an upgrade from a AMD 64 with 2 GB of Ram and was having same freezing issues. Low and behold having the same issues with this one.

Here is what I know:
Blu Ray and HD-DVD Freeze (at no set time or interval) After first freeze MUST hard reset computer. Restart movie plays for a while seems to be less time then locks again.

Regular DVDs will play flawless all the way through.

TV seems to work fine not that I use it for that anyways.

Netflix over internet works fine. (the silverlight version for MC)

Things I have tried:
Removed all of Vista's visual effects as saw it helped some people.

Monitored Tempratures to see if possibly over heating. - didn't look like that was the issue.

Firmware seems to be up to date on the Blu / HD Drives

Not really sure what else to check so any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Have you examined the app, system and media center logs? Does it happen in both the 2-foot UI as well as the 10-foot UI? Is TMT up to date? Have you tried any other HD playback software to see if they exhibit the same behavior?

I would guess you have either a hardware problem, or TMT is at fault when trying to use hardware accelerated video decoding.

You can probably confirm or eliminate bad TMT coding by configuring it to use software decoding for a while and see if it still hangs. Of course it could equally be bad HA implimentation in the drivers by Nvidia (wouldn't surprise me).

Hardware fault wise, what components have come across from the old system? I would suspect the graphics card or power supply being at fault. You could also try ripping a bluray disc and see if it hangs during ripping (bluray drive at fault) or on playback of the ripped content (graphics card at fault).

I have had nothing but issues with version 3 of TMT.  If you have version 2 try it if not then download the trial version of PowerDVD 9.

Sorry I haven't got back sooner had a crazy couple of days. Well the only hardware left from the old system is the HDD and Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Drives.  And tuner cards.

Now on the old system I did have TMT2 Id have to find my disk around here to re install it but had the same problems with that. I could check out power dvd but then how would I play my HD-DVDs? I can't remeber if I used the video card in the machine or not cause I had an ATI in there for a while also.

This is where it got kind of strange on the old system when I first installed everything. Everything worked fine. HDCP worked great etc. Then I did all my updates and lost HDCP connectivity so thats when I went to Any DVD. Everything worked great. Then I did the service pack 2 update. HDCP worked again but Blu and HD DVD Stuttered but didn't freeze.

So I tried Win 7 HDCP worked TMT3 worked but froze and hard locked.  Hardware accel is off still locks / newest drivers.

I still need to check the logs but thats more info for ya.

Yes PowerDVD 9 only works with BluRay but, you can use it to test playback of your BluRay discs.  See if you still have freezing issues with another BluRay application.  TMT 2 you should be able to download from ArcSoft as long as you have your original login information however, TMT 2 does not work with Win7.

 Ok so I know it has been a while since I have posted any updates but I MAY have fixed the issue. I looked into the logs and found that the computer kept Erroring at Random times in conjunction with ATI - HDTV Wonder Card I had. So I really don't use it anyways so I removed it. After that BR played for about another hr then it froze again. Looking at the logs again the only error I could find was with software having issues with the firewall. So I turned it off (firewall) and started to play again (after reset). I didn't have time to go though a whole movie after that but was another 45 min and seemed to be no other issues. 

 

I do not know if the issue is resolved yet but I did try PowerDVD and it froze as well (this was when DTV card was still in PC)

 Well it definatelly did NOT fix the issue. I have removed everything from the orginal Media Center besides the Video Card. I know that "Could" be problematic but I really don't know on this one.

There is no glitching or anything like that it jsut randomly freezes. I have removed both tuner cards. Turned off Hardware accel. Made sure everything was up to date. And now the only errors that show up in event log are when I push the reset button to restart becuase of the lockup. I have no idea what else to try. 

 Maybe a different BR Drive but it also happens with HD. TM3 has been running great but If it is the problem how do I check it's errors? + when i used PDVD it also crashed so I don't think software is the problem either. 

Any other ideas would be great!?

 Thanks!

Ok more info and lets see if we can crush this....

CLEAN Install - Just Formatted. Vista 32 Bit (SP1 ONLY) No other updates done.

No Anti Virus, Firewall off and VMC has not been run yet 

Latest nvidia, nforce and realtek HD Audio drivers.

Projector (Optima EP719) is Native 1024x768 so left it at that.

Total Theater 3 Plat. Updated to 3.x.140

Hardware Accel Off.

No Errors in Log except for "Unexpected Shutdown"

Seem to be making "Some" headway as movies only seem to freeze 1-2 times thoughout play. Basically Freeze then restart pickup where I left off.

Also Updated the Bios on the MB.

Don't know what else to try. I could pickup a different video card but other then that I really have no idea what else to try.

 

 

 Found my Problem seems to be heat. I put a house fan on an open case played 2 movies without any problems. Anyone know a good video card for media center mainly Blu Ray and HD-DVDs only.