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V-Men
Aug 15, 2001

Don't it make your dick bust concrete to be in the same room with two noble, selfless public servants.

Crackbone posted:

As for what processor you need... the requirement now isn't a big deal. The 8500/8600 series cards I mentioned earlier are confirmed to eat x264 processing for lunch. There are tests showing those cards let you process 1080p x264 video on a Semperon 2800 without maxing the processor.

My personal preference is still the Athlon x2 series, mainly because of the price/performance sweet spot. You can get an x2 3800 for 65 bucks from Frys right now, which will more than handle windows and give you some headroom for growth.

Yeah, I'm with you on the processor part. Now, as for video card, I was under the impression that the 7600 series can also handle the majority of x264 processing. Is that correct?

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ShaneB
Oct 22, 2002


V-Men posted:

Yeah, I'm with you on the processor part. Now, as for video card, I was under the impression that the 7600 series can also handle the majority of x264 processing. Is that correct?

I have a Leadtek 6200 that eats 720p x264 content up. I don't own a 1080p capable screen, but I'm willing to bet my Athlon XP 2000+ (at 200x10) wouldn't be able to handle it in the first place. The system is JUST fast enough for good 720p x264 playback, but it's all old spare parts so I'm happy with it for now.

trinary
Jul 21, 2003

College Slice
The other day I read a review from a Korean site (I think) that had CPU stats on decoding 1080p H.264 streams with the 8500/8600 series of cards. On a Sempron 2800 they were reporting 18% CPU usage with an 8500. Same CPU was %90+ decoding with a 7600, and probably dropping frames. I think I might wait and see how cheap those cards can get, they're available for around $100 now. Unfortunately, that means I'm gonna have to upgrade my HTPC motherboard to something that can take PCI-E, which means new CPU, etc.

This also means I'm gonna have to buy a copy of Windows to run on my HTPC, since nvidia has no current plans to extend their XWindows drivers to support the new decoding features.

I tried to figure out what the deal is with hardware decoding on linux, but it seems like such a clusterfuck I might as well not even try. Very frustrating.

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

V-Men posted:

Yeah, I'm with you on the processor part. Now, as for video card, I was under the impression that the 7600 series can also handle the majority of x264 processing. Is that correct?

Okay, here's a brief rundown -

You've got two main types of HD - VC1 and x264. VC1 is much less processor intensive, so for the purposes of this we'll concentrate on x264 - which is Blu-Ray and Quicktime HD video mostly.

With no video card involvement, and the processor doing all the decoding, even the best processor is hard pressed to handle 1080p x264 video. 720p is quite a bit easier, but still pretty intense.

Now, Nvidia came out with "Purevideo" starting with the 6600 series, which was supposed to offload some of the video processing burden. Long story short, the drivers and software which were supposed to do this never really matured, and it takes something short of voodoo magic to see any real improvements. For example on my athlon 64 3500+ with a 7800GT, it does 720p at about 60-80% usage, and it's 100% with dropped frames all over the place on a 1080p source. My friend, who has a Core 2 Duo overclocked to 3.2Ghz and a 7900GT has 50% usage on both cores to run 1080p. So the 7xxx series and below really don't do anything worthwhile to help high def-decoding.

The new "HD Purevideo" they launched has some specific requirements, that being Vista, an 8800, 8600, or 8500 series card, and software capable of utilizing HD Purevideo (like PowerDVD 7.3).
But with that stuff in place the gains are incredible.
My friend went from 50% usage on both cores to 5% usage with an 8500 for the same 1080p material. Tests are showing that chips as low as a Semperon 2800 can run 1080p sources with only 20% CPU usage or so.

Unless you're wanting to game with your HTPC, it's a better investment to get a mid-range processor, and take the money saved towards an 8500 card.

V-Men
Aug 15, 2001

Don't it make your dick bust concrete to be in the same room with two noble, selfless public servants.

Crackbone posted:

Okay, here's a brief rundown -

You've got two main types of HD - VC1 and x264. VC1 is much less processor intensive, so for the purposes of this we'll concentrate on x264 - which is Blu-Ray and Quicktime HD video mostly.

With no video card involvement, and the processor doing all the decoding, even the best processor is hard pressed to handle 1080p x264 video. 720p is quite a bit easier, but still pretty intense.

Now, Nvidia came out with "Purevideo" starting with the 6600 series, which was supposed to offload some of the video processing burden. Long story short, the drivers and software which were supposed to do this never really matured, and it takes something short of voodoo magic to see any real improvements. For example on my athlon 64 3500+ with a 7800GT, it does 720p at about 60-80% usage, and it's 100% with dropped frames all over the place on a 1080p source. My friend, who has a Core 2 Duo overclocked to 3.2Ghz and a 7900GT has 50% usage on both cores to run 1080p. So the 7xxx series and below really don't do anything worthwhile to help high def-decoding.

The new "HD Purevideo" they launched has some specific requirements, that being Vista, an 8800, 8600, or 8500 series card, and software capable of utilizing HD Purevideo (like PowerDVD 7.3).
But with that stuff in place the gains are incredible.
My friend went from 50% usage on both cores to 5% usage with an 8500 for the same 1080p material. Tests are showing that chips as low as a Semperon 2800 can run 1080p sources with only 20% CPU usage or so.

Unless you're wanting to game with your HTPC, it's a better investment to get a mid-range processor, and take the money saved towards an 8500 card.

Well, I guess my TV is only good for 720p / 1080i anyway so I guess I really won't worry about 1080p source material. Thanks for the info though. I'm slowly piecing together what I need.

Also, I read on some other forum about the 8600s only being able to decode x264 in Vista.

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend
I'm having some weirdness playing back 720p content. I'm using CoreAVC, and the audio seems to start way, way before the video does, which makes it out of sync. I have a P4 1.8, 512mb RAM, ATI 9600. Not top of the line, but I figured I could at least get 720p out of it. I've tried a couple of different media players and all do the same thing. I have DefilerPak installed, but I disabled it from handling x264 content. Is there something I might be missing somewhere?

more falafel please
Feb 26, 2005

forums poster

I'm pretty much completely oblivious to this whole thing. Here's what I want to do, can someone tell me if it's possible?

My roommate and I have Comcast Digital Cable, with a DCT700US cable box. We've got a Mac Mini with Front Row, and a big-ol' box running Ubuntu, something like a 2.4 athlon with a gig of ram, with a bunch of hard drives in it. At this point, we can play all the media on the big-ol' box in Front Row, because Perian is awesome.

The big-ol' box is running Ubuntu. It can be running something else if that'd be easier, but right now it's running Ubuntu. If we got a tuner card, would we be able to record digital cable? Would it only take some channels? Would we be able to watch one channel and record another one?

If it could work, what would it look like? I would assume it'd be like this:
Cable comes in from the wall, into the cable box. It goes out into a coax splitter, one end plugged into the TV, one end plugged into the tuner card.

Or would we have to get another cable box?

The cable box also has RCA composite out, could we just plug that into the capture card? Would that change things?

I sort of assume we wouldn't be able to watch a channel and record another one with one box, but could anyone tell me if this is possible?

Inside Outside
Jul 31, 2005

I have a quick question and I think this is probably the most relevant thread to ask. I have a Vizio 32" LCD, and some old HP media center PC hooked up over VGA. I tried using this cable (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102974&cp=&pg=4&sr=1&origkw=phono+rca&kw=phono+rca&parentPage=search) and plugging it into my TV's RCA plugs, but that doesn't seem to work. Is this the right plug or am I doing something wrong?

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

V-Men posted:

Well, I guess my TV is only good for 720p / 1080i anyway so I guess I really won't worry about 1080p source material. Thanks for the info though. I'm slowly piecing together what I need.

Also, I read on some other forum about the 8600s only being able to decode x264 in Vista.

Well, the issue isn't what your TV can output, it's what the material is encoded in. For example Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray rips are often in 1080p. While your TV might downsize that material to fit your TV, your computer would still have to process the 1080p file. That's why being able to do 1080p x264 decoding is the "holy grail", because it allows you to handle any sort of media.

And as for the 8600 only doing x264, that's not really true. It doesn't completely take over for VC-1, but it does reduce the load. However, VC-1 (and pretty much any other type of video codec) is much less intensive than x264. So if you can do 1080p x264, everything else is doable.

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

EC posted:

I'm having some weirdness playing back 720p content. I'm using CoreAVC, and the audio seems to start way, way before the video does, which makes it out of sync. I have a P4 1.8, 512mb RAM, ATI 9600. Not top of the line, but I figured I could at least get 720p out of it. I've tried a couple of different media players and all do the same thing. I have DefilerPak installed, but I disabled it from handling x264 content. Is there something I might be missing somewhere?

Check your processor usage in task manager. Chances are it's at 100%. A 1.8Ghz process really isn't enough to decode even 720p. My Athlon XP 2500 can't do it.

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend

Crackbone posted:

Check your processor usage in task manager. Chances are it's at 100%. A 1.8Ghz process really isn't enough to decode even 720p. My Athlon XP 2500 can't do it.

That's what I figured. :( Would this system work? Any suggestions on things to cut down the cost a bit? I have the case/PSU/sound/drives already.

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

EC posted:

That's what I figured. :( Would this system work? Any suggestions on things to cut down the cost a bit? I have the case/PSU/sound/drives already.

That would probably be fine, although if you're going to use an 8500GT, you really don't need that beefy of a system.

If you want the machine soley for HTPC work (ie you're not worried about gaming), then you can go down to 1G of RAM, and get an athlon 64 x2 series and save a chunk of change.

Keep in mind though, that you HAVE to have Vista and DVD software that supports the 8500 decode to see the benefit of the card. I know PowerDVD's newest version does, I don't remember what the other is. So you'll need to add the cost of that software to the hardware costs.

Here's a good thread about it on avsforum:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=835630&page=1&pp=30

Here's what I'm getting ready to order for the "core" of my new HTPC:

ECS AMD690GM-M2 Socket AM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
$64.99

GIGABYTE GV-NX85T256H GeForce 8500GT 256MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card -
$97.99

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+(65W) Windsor 2.0GHz Socket AM2 Processor Model ADO3800CSBOX $79.00

A-DATA 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit $59.99

$325 for that setup.

Crackbone fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Apr 29, 2007

EC
Jul 10, 2001

The Legend
Yeah, the box is going to be dedicated to HTPC, no gaming. So if I have no plans on going to Vista anytime soon, I won't see the benefits of the 8600? Still seems like a good deal for a nice video card, though. Thanks for the input.

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

EC posted:

Yeah, the box is going to be dedicated to HTPC, no gaming. So if I have no plans on going to Vista anytime soon, I won't see the benefits of the 8600? Still seems like a good deal for a nice video card, though. Thanks for the input.

Well, it's rumored the HD Purevideo decoding will be released to XP sometime this summer, but of course there's no way to be sure.

mazachan
Apr 18, 2005
Puppies
Does anyone have any experience with streaming tv over a network? I was looking at the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid Video Recorder and thinking it may be easier to just stream it over my wireless network than to run another coax cable to the room for tv.

V-Men
Aug 15, 2001

Don't it make your dick bust concrete to be in the same room with two noble, selfless public servants.
I didn't realize some of the 8500s and 8600s were so cheap. Bit of a downer about waiting on the XP drivers for Purevideo though.

trinary
Jul 21, 2003

College Slice

V-Men posted:

I didn't realize some of the 8500s and 8600s were so cheap. Bit of a downer about waiting on the XP drivers for Purevideo though.
Even more of a downer is that we'll probably never get support in Linux, or it will take years to show up. I have a mythTV setup that works great for me, I put a lot of work into customizing my remote for it, and I'm gonna have to start over (and pay for vista or XP/Media Center).

Tux Racer
Dec 24, 2005
I am in the market for an LCD monitor for going off to college. I want something in the range of 20"-22", 16:9 aspect ratio, and fairly inexpensive. I need it to double as a TV. My plan is to use it as my computer monitor and TV since I will be recording shows on my computer and watching them again when I have time. Anyone have any suggestions?

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

mykuhl posted:

I am in the market for an LCD monitor for going off to college. I want something in the range of 20"-22", 16:9 aspect ratio, and fairly inexpensive. I need it to double as a TV. My plan is to use it as my computer monitor and TV since I will be recording shows on my computer and watching them again when I have time. Anyone have any suggestions?

Are you talking about hooking up the monitor to a cable box/DVD player as well as a computer?
If that's the case you'd need to get an actual TV rather than a monitor. Nowadays the main difference is the TVs have a lower resolution (usually 720p), but have more video inputs and built in NTSC/ATSC tuners.

If you can live with 1280x720 as your desktop resolution it's probably the best bet. Of course, that comes with a big price difference, as a 22" LCD TV retail still runs 4-600 bucks.

If you just want to watch stuff you've recorded on your computer, or you can guarantee that all your video input devices will output through VGA/DVI/HDMI, a regular monitor will work.

Crackbone fucked around with this message at 13:24 on May 1, 2007

Tux Racer
Dec 24, 2005

Crackbone posted:

Are you talking about hooking up the monitor to a cable box/DVD player as well as a computer?
If that's the case you'd need to get an actual TV rather than a monitor. Nowadays the main difference is the TVs have a lower resolution (usually 720p), but have more video inputs and built in NTSC/ATSC tuners.

If you can live with 1280x720 as your desktop resolution it's probably the best bet. Of course, that comes with a big price difference, as a 22" LCD TV retail still runs 4-600 bucks.

If you just want to watch stuff you've recorded on your computer, or you can guarantee that all your video input devices will output through VGA/DVI/HDMI, a regular monitor will work.

No, I am going to have a TV tuner on my computer and I will also hook my Xbox 360 to the monitor. I am just looking for a TV replacement for my dorm room so that I don't have a TV and a computer monitor. So I guess I am looking for something with little backlight bleeding, good color, etc.

drivel
Feb 24, 2005
Drivel is what comes forth from your mouth why don't you SHUT THE FUCK UP,Mods?


Nap Ghost

more falafel please posted:

I'm pretty much completely oblivious to this whole thing. Here's what I want to do, can someone tell me if it's possible?
..
The big-ol' box is running Ubuntu. It can be running something else if that'd be easier, but right now it's running Ubuntu. If we got a tuner card, would we be able to record digital cable? Would it only take some channels? Would we be able to watch one channel and record another one?

If it could work, what would it look like? I would assume it'd be like this:
Cable comes in from the wall, into the cable box. It goes out into a coax splitter, one end plugged into the TV, one end plugged into the tuner card.
..
The cable box also has RCA composite out, could we just plug that into the capture card? Would that change things?

Note: I'm no expert with cable (my HTPC takes satellite in). You will be able to do one of two things - either plug the cable directly into a PCI cable card on your HTPC and tune/decode the cable on the PC, or take the video out from the cable box into a video capture card on the PC, offload the decoding to the cable box and drive the box with an IR blaster type device.

The 'nicest' solution of course is to do away with the cable decoder box altogether. However you most likely will be limited by your ability to decrypt the tv content. If you can find a card that lets you decrypt the content on the PC somehow you should be able to make this work, dependent on the OS support for your card and the software you want to use to drive it all.

The easiest solution is to use a video capture card. Then just get your PC to drive the cable box using the PC as a big remote control and feed the video output of the cable box straight into the capture card. The downside to this is needing the extra decoder box, extra cables etc.

Either solution will only let you watch one channel at a time. I'm no cable guru so I'm not sure if its possible to receive two channels simultaneously even with a dedicated tuner card. Its definitely possible to do with satellite if the channels are on the same multiplex.

WTFBEES
Apr 21, 2005

butt

Any thoughts/opinions on Woot's offering tonight?

http://www.woot.com/

I've been contimplating building a fancy looking HTPC, but that's pretty dang cheap.

V-Men
Aug 15, 2001

Don't it make your dick bust concrete to be in the same room with two noble, selfless public servants.

WTFBEES posted:

Any thoughts/opinions on Woot's offering tonight?

http://www.woot.com/

I've been contimplating building a fancy looking HTPC, but that's pretty dang cheap.

It's a Compaq, which turns me off right there.

Aesthetically, it's a tower, albeit a nice looking tower. If you don't mind a tower pc in your home theater setup, than it looks alright.

The video card is very meh and it looks like you'll be relying on the processor for all your HD codec needs which even a 2.4 Ghz should be hard pressed to process 1080p without system drag. I could be wrong though.

more falafel please
Feb 26, 2005

forums poster

drivel posted:

Either solution will only let you watch one channel at a time. I'm no cable guru so I'm not sure if its possible to receive two channels simultaneously even with a dedicated tuner card.

Even if I have two cable boxes? If I had 2 TVs, I'd just need two boxes to get cable on both of them, right?

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

WTFBEES posted:

Any thoughts/opinions on Woot's offering tonight?

http://www.woot.com/

I've been contimplating building a fancy looking HTPC, but that's pretty dang cheap.

It's an okay deal for an older processor. If you don't plan on doing any High-definition video playback or gaming, it would be fine. But if you are it's not all that hot.

V-Men
Aug 15, 2001

Don't it make your dick bust concrete to be in the same room with two noble, selfless public servants.
So, I think this is what my HTPC will be:

Case: Silverstone SST-GD01B-MXR
Motherboard: Asus M2N-E Socket AM2
Video Card: GIGABYTE GV-NX86S256H
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz
Memory: Transcend JetRam 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800

Is the heatpipe on the video card worth the price? Or can the case that I picked keep the machine cool enough on the inside so that I could get the 8500? HDCP compliance is pretty much the key figure here.

Crackbone
May 23, 2003

Vlaada is my co-pilot.

V-Men posted:

So, I think this is what my HTPC will be:

Case: Silverstone SST-GD01B-MXR
Motherboard: Asus M2N-E Socket AM2
Video Card: GIGABYTE GV-NX86S256H
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz
Memory: Transcend JetRam 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800

Is the heatpipe on the video card worth the price? Or can the case that I picked keep the machine cool enough on the inside so that I could get the 8500? HDCP compliance is pretty much the key figure here.

Honestly, it's hard to say, but there are two case fan slots in the back, side vents, along with the power supply fan. That's probably enough to go with the HDCP compliant 8500. If you want to be sure, go with what you have. I might be in the minority, but I've never had a problem with case heat in anything I've built since I started building them about 12 years ago. It seems to me the biggest heat issues come when people are seriously overclocking or are using substandard cases/fans to try and get rid of heat.

Crackbone fucked around with this message at 19:51 on May 3, 2007

V-Men
Aug 15, 2001

Don't it make your dick bust concrete to be in the same room with two noble, selfless public servants.
I just measured my TV stand and realized that there are very few htpc cases that will fit in there :doh:

Flay Minion
Sep 23, 2004

hepme
I'm not sure this is the right thread but I searched and came up nada so here goes:

I've got tons of VHS that need to be on DVD for size, deterioration and backup issues. Some of them are home movies, some football games, some are purchased movies. I tried connecting my PC to the VHS but while a couple of them worked, the bought movies were no-go.

I've been told that this is due to something called Macrovision. I'm not sure what it is (something to do with "pulsing the VBI"??) I fished around and came up with this to correct this "pulse" or whatever:

http://www.reviewcentre.com/review194800.html

Has anyone direct experience with this or similar devices? Would it be easier to just get a VHS/DVR combo thing or am I facing the same issues? I also understand that there are services where you can send your tapes and blank DVD's and they'll do it for you. Worth the while?

Thanks for helping out.

ClassActionFursuit
Mar 15, 2006

Horned posted:

I'm not sure this is the right thread but I searched and came up nada so here goes:

I've got tons of VHS that need to be on DVD for size, deterioration and backup issues. Some of them are home movies, some football games, some are purchased movies. I tried connecting my PC to the VHS but while a couple of them worked, the bought movies were no-go.

I've been told that this is due to something called Macrovision. I'm not sure what it is (something to do with "pulsing the VBI"??) I fished around and came up with this to correct this "pulse" or whatever:

http://www.reviewcentre.com/review194800.html

Has anyone direct experience with this or similar devices? Would it be easier to just get a VHS/DVR combo thing or am I facing the same issues? I also understand that there are services where you can send your tapes and blank DVD's and they'll do it for you. Worth the while?

Thanks for helping out.
First off, why would you want to record a VHS tape onto a DVD when you could just get the bought movie on DVD? Since the picture quality difference is pretty large, I'd think that if the movie were important to you, you'd just buy it and get important things like an anamorphic presentation and 5.1 sound. Secondly, yeah that thing will correct for Macrovision, and no, a combo unit won't help you. I'm also sure those services will not copy prerecorded tapes onto a DVD for you.

Seriously though, just rebuy the goddamned movies. The difference between the two formats more than justifies the cost.

Flay Minion
Sep 23, 2004

hepme

LastInLine posted:

First off, why would you want to record a VHS tape onto a DVD when you could just get the bought movie on DVD? Since the picture quality difference is pretty large, I'd think that if the movie were important to you, you'd just buy it and get important things like an anamorphic presentation and 5.1 sound. Secondly, yeah that thing will correct for Macrovision, and no, a combo unit won't help you. I'm also sure those services will not copy prerecorded tapes onto a DVD for you.

Seriously though, just rebuy the goddamned movies. The difference between the two formats more than justifies the cost.

What a great idea! You may paypal my account. I'll need about $3000.00 to rebuy all those movies at $10 per pop. Oh, they'll cost more than that? $5000 then.

Thanks so much.

I don't particularly care if the quality is not DVD. If I cared about that I wouldn't have loving posted. These are older movies (lots of kid stuff).

But--you did try to answer the original question about the VICE 1000, so thanks for that at least. And the service WILL copy movies--they just cost too much for as many as I have to do (at least the ones I've looked into).

Ryokurin
Jul 14, 2001

Wanna Die?

EC posted:

I'm having some weirdness playing back 720p content. I'm using CoreAVC, and the audio seems to start way, way before the video does, which makes it out of sync. I have a P4 1.8, 512mb RAM, ATI 9600. Not top of the line, but I figured I could at least get 720p out of it. I've tried a couple of different media players and all do the same thing. I have DefilerPak installed, but I disabled it from handling x264 content. Is there something I might be missing somewhere?

That processor is just plainly not going to be able to handle that in AVC. I ran a similar outfit a few months back, except it was an 9600XT and a Athlon XP 2800+. Mpeg-2 up to 1080i only in overlay and AVC was a no go. Personally I've never had any success on it with anything less than a x700 and a Athlon 64 no slower than 3200+ BTW, the same thing applys, 1080i only in overlay, but 720p AVC is fine.

.Spec
Oct 4, 2001

Ryokurin posted:

That processor is just plainly not going to be able to handle that in AVC. I ran a similar outfit a few months back, except it was an 9600XT and a Athlon XP 2800+. Mpeg-2 up to 1080i only in overlay and AVC was a no go. Personally I've never had any success on it with anything less than a x700 and a Athlon 64 no slower than 3200+ BTW, the same thing applys, 1080i only in overlay, but 720p AVC is fine.

I've been fighting a very similar problem as EC with my HTPC except that the audio is lagging on some .mkv files. I'm running I believe the same processor as you (maybe a 3400+), Geforce 6200 with a gig of RAM and half the time audio loses sync and other times it looks like I'm just dropping frames like mad. Strangely enough about a third of my 720p content plays just fine.

At this point I'm going to have to reinstall Vista due to all the driver/registry/media player fuckery I've been doing. I'm still undecided as to whether or not to throw newer hardware at it and home that fixes the problem although I don't really want to since it seems like it's at least partly a software problem.

Yeah if anyone has any thoughts I'd love to hear them since I'm pretty much at the end of my wit and I've tried just about everything google has suggested.

drivel
Feb 24, 2005
Drivel is what comes forth from your mouth why don't you SHUT THE FUCK UP,Mods?


Nap Ghost

more falafel please posted:

Even if I have two cable boxes? If I had 2 TVs, I'd just need two boxes to get cable on both of them, right?

If you have two cable boxes with the video output feeding into two capture cards, yep you would get both channels. By using capture cards, your PC is effectively just replacing the tv and recording the input.

It would start to get pretty ugly at this stage though, 2 cable boxes, 2 power cables, 2 IR blasters, 2 sets of video out to in cables etc.

rivetz
Sep 22, 2000


Soiled Meat

Inside Outside posted:

I have a quick question and I think this is probably the most relevant thread to ask. I have a Vizio 32" LCD, and some old HP media center PC hooked up over VGA. I tried using this cable (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102974&cp=&pg=4&sr=1&origkw=phono+rca&kw=phono+rca&parentPage=search) and plugging it into my TV's RCA plugs, but that doesn't seem to work. Is this the right plug or am I doing something wrong?
There is no reason that cable won't work fine, assuming you're running it from your onboard audio or your sound card's Out into a receiver etc.

Horn
Jun 18, 2004

Penetration is the key to success
College Slice
Does anyone have any experience with RF remotes? I was looking at the Niveus Media PC Remote but its sold out everywhere. Is there anything similar out there that does both IR for controlling TV's, dvd players, etc and RF w/ mouse control?

willroc7
Jul 24, 2006

BADGES? WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' BADGES!
I'm trying to hook my 42" 1024x768 plasma TV up as a secondary display on my 8800gts (1280x1024 17" primary) for my new HTPC and I was wondering what resolution would be best to send to it. I would like to watch DVD's and HD movies on the plasma while surfing and gaming on the 17". Sending the native resolution to the TV results in a 4:3 image that is stretched to 16:9. I'm using the latest drivers from nvidia's website, and after battling with nvidia's control panel for a good while, I managed to send a 1920x1080i signal to the TV and 1280x1024 to the 17" monitor. However, the image was cut off pretty severely around the edges of the TV at that resolution, so much so that you couldn't see the task bar. I tried adjusting the image size and position in nvidia's control panel but it seemed to have no effect whatsoever. Everything is connected via DVI, any thoughts?

geera
May 20, 2003
Does anyone happen to have a link to an XBMC installation walkthrough from A-Z? I realized I have an Xbox sitting there doing nothing, so I'd like to turn it in to a HTPC, but the information I've found on how to do it seems cobbled together and not very organized. I read you can avoid the whole mod-chip thing and soft-mod the xbox using a copy of Mechwarrior, and then install XBMC via FTP. That's what I'd like to do, but I can't for the life of me find clear instructions on how to perform the softmod.

Absolut_V
Oct 8, 2003

Superman That Jones!

geera posted:

Does anyone happen to have a link to an XBMC installation walkthrough from A-Z? I realized I have an Xbox sitting there doing nothing, so I'd like to turn it in to a HTPC, but the information I've found on how to do it seems cobbled together and not very organized. I read you can avoid the whole mod-chip thing and soft-mod the xbox using a copy of Mechwarrior, and then install XBMC via FTP. That's what I'd like to do, but I can't for the life of me find clear instructions on how to perform the softmod.

You want this.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2363216
I have modded several xboxes with Wafflezone's kits and they have all worked perfectly.

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dutchbstrd
Apr 28, 2004
Think for Yourself, Question Authority.
What do you think of this setup? Its not too bad when you take out the price of the speakers.

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=5035572

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