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To pitch in about Linux HTPCs being a loving bear, here's a new development: http://linuxmce.com/ Apparently it installs overtop a standard Ubuntu install and works really well out of the box. Early word is it's on par or better than MCE, although of course you tend to get that attitude with linux zealotry. Still worth a try before slapping windows on it, especially if you're trying to do upscaling/HD resolutions with an older machine. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Mar 22, 2007 |
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Mar 22, 2007 21:04
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Vladimir Putin posted:I want to watch OTA HD on a really old spare computer I have. The thing is, I'm not sure whether it will be able to handle OTA HDTV. The specs are: It would be pretty dicey - more than likely no. The ATI HDTV tuner, for example, lists as its minimum requirements: # Pentium 4 or Athlon operating at 1.3GHz or greater # 256MB of system memory # Graphics card with 64MB or greater of frame buffer and Microsoft DirectX 9.0 support Personally, I wouldn't bother trying to make it work - it'll be a massive headache. Kepp posted:I'd also like to see a kind of 'bare bones' example of a simple HD capable PC. My 2.4ghz P4 stutters pretty badly trying to display HD content and I'm looking to put together a cheap box to do it for when I get an HDTV this summer. Right now I've been leaning to the hacked Apple TV because of the price but if I could integrate OTA HD, Media Center and DVR features that'd be something worth paying for. It depends. If you're talking about a PC that can play HD-DVD/Blu-Ray stuff, the top end is just now getting to the point where it can handle 1080p content. Common consensus right now is you want a Core 2 Duo 6300/6400, probably overclocked a bit (since it's so easy to do), combined with a Geforce 7600 level card to handle everything. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Apr 17, 2007 |
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Apr 17, 2007 18:47
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Kepp posted:I'm thinking about putting together the beginnings of an HTPC sometime soon and am looking to save some money. My main concern is displaying 720p content without any lag. I'm not going to be using it for gaming of any type. Displaying ripped DVDs and HD content and acting as media server are the only things its going to have to do until I figure out whether or not I want it to be a PVR as well. Room for expansion is important. I'm looking at purchasing the following: Long story short, right now HD content is dicey. For 720p, your processor should be able to handle it. The onboard video card might be a concern though. Keep in mind, you have to allocate memory from your system RAM to the onboard card on that board. 256M seems to be the sweet spot from other people's reports. So you're already down to 744 system memory. Nvidia has just released the 8500/8600GT cards though, which apparently offload the entire HD decoding process to the card. They are only 100 bucks, and testing is showing it can even handle the most intensive 1080p files with no problem. It does require a combination of a DVD software that supports the process (Newest PowerDVD for example) and Vista (or XP SP2 after July). You might want to grab one of those to be prepared for the future. And, if you are concerned about expansion, you shouldn't be looking to get a MicroATX board. It's only got 2 PCI slots - add a tuner and you're down to 1. The processor is fine if you just want 720p decoding (or get one of the new 8500s). The only thing I might recommend is moving up to one of the new 65w cores. It's about a 10 dollar difference on newegg, but it runs cooler, which is good for overclocking or for keeping your system quieter.
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Apr 23, 2007 16:09
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V-Men posted:What should you consider when looking at motherboards? Any motherboard from the past few years will have acceptable onboard sound. The big trick is getting it to be properly handled by Windows/your receiver. Long story short, it can be a real pain to get unprocessed 5.1 output from a SPDIF connection to a receiver for every application. I eventually ended up letting the chip/dvd software do the decoding and running 5.1 sound out through the analog ports to my receiver.
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Apr 25, 2007 21:30
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V-Men posted:I think my other consideration is a quiet motherboard. For sound quality of optical vs. analog, I'm not a big sound nut. As long as I can get 5.1 reliably, I'm satisfied. I didn't hear any differences, but I'm not an audiophile in the least. Honestly, you may have better luck getting output through spdif than I did - it certainly wouldn't hurt to try. Just a heads-up that different applications are maddingly different about how they want to output sound channels. For "quietness", quite a few motherboards run on passive cooling (heatsinks only) nowadays. A good way to check is find a motherboard you like on newegg, and check their pictures of the boards. 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.
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Apr 26, 2007 13:40
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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.
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Apr 27, 2007 20:15
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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. 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.
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Apr 29, 2007 04:34
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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.
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Apr 29, 2007 04:36
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EC posted:That's what I figured. 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 |
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Apr 29, 2007 17:09
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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.
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Apr 29, 2007 20:55
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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 |
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May 1, 2007 13:17
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WTFBEES posted:Any thoughts/opinions on Woot's offering tonight? 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.
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May 2, 2007 18:29
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V-Men posted:So, I think this is what my HTPC will be: 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 |
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May 3, 2007 19:37
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tragick posted:Does anyone have experience with getting the hardware acceleration to work with the 8500/8600 series cards? There's a lot of possible issues. First off, if you have installed any codec/video player pack other than PowerDVD, Haali Media Splitter, and maybe AC3 Filter, you need to remove them, and possibly flatten/reinstall. They can seriously interfere with the ability of PowerDvd's drivers to utilize HW accel. After that, are you trying to run the videos windowed? It seems to be a somewhat common bug that Media Center/WMP11 can greenscreen video if windowed. Try playing it through Media Center fullscreen. Finally, there are some reports that .2065 version of PDVD works great, but the .2911 version, which is the latest, has broken HW acceleration for playback through anything other than PowerDVD. Other than that, welcome to driver hell, and wait it out for newer versions of PowerDVD/Nvidia Drivers/Haali's. I'm still fighting my installation, which is being wonky in the extreme. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jun 1, 2007 |
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Jun 1, 2007 17:00
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RibeyeJaksom posted:Is there a TV tuner card that will take the signal from my digital cable set-top box and let me view/record HDTV through my HTPC? I have been looking at these Hauppauge cards and they only seem to allow for analog cable, unless I am misunderstanding something? (Is the set-top box converting it to analog for the TV so I don't have to worry about this?) I just want to be able to record/PVR HDTV from my digital set-top box with my HTPC. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Quick lesson in High Def broadcasts: Over the air signals you get with rabbit ears are ATSC standard. The signals you get over cable is QAM. Tuner cards that record high-def only do ATSC, no QAM - more than likely because of piracy concerns. The only thing that comes close to what you want is called an HD Homerun. You can check it out over here: http://www.silicondust.com/ It's made by a very small company that probably doesn't give a gently caress if the cable companies care about it, so it can read QAM signals. However, that being said, it's a pain in the rear end to get it to work in either Linux or Windows MC. Check the forums on that site to get a better idea of what it takes.
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Jun 6, 2007 17:38
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RibeyeJaksom posted:Thank you. I have already looked into ATSC but 1) in my area it would require a roof antenna which is not possible in my current living arrangement and 2) would not have HBO/premium channels which is why I am looking for something that can take the unencrypted signal out of my cable box. HDHomeRun looks exactly what I want, only I hope it can take the signal from my box instead of dircetly from the cable coax and let me use it in conjunction with an IR blaster. The HDHomerun is a tuner,but it actually connects via ethernet, either directly to the computer or via a router. So no, you wouldn't need a coax connector on your system. I don't believe you can hook it up after the cable box, because the cable box is actual a QAM tuner itself. You could run them in parallel though (a splitter feeding the cable and HDHomerun at the same time). You'd probably be better off asking the other questions on their forums, as I haven't gotten one yet, and was just investigating it recently.
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Jun 6, 2007 21:40
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RibeyeJaksom posted:So nobody except people willing to buy a Velocity Micro media center are able to do this? So how exactly are people setting up their TVs when they have premium cable? Are they splitting their cables before it reaches the cable box and using one TV input for the cable box and one for the HTPC? Doesn't that defeat a large part of the HTPC's purpose? What do they do, switch to the HTPC to use PVR function with ATSC channels and then switch back to the set-top box for premium channels (which they cannot PVR)? That seems like a real pain in the rear end. Is there really no better way? Nope, not really. Piracy concerns have cut off high-def recording at the knees. BTW, yes premium stuff like HBO and Showtime is encrypted, but any other high def stuff typically isn't, although it varies from provider to provider.
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Jun 7, 2007 13:45
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EC posted:http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2143304,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532 They don't really have any bearing on HTPC market... DX10 really has nothing to offer HTPC users. The 8500/8600 series have been the biggest gamechanger cards lately, providing high-def decoding, and being available with HDCP, and fanless. And there is virtually NO chance of these low-end 8000 series not having DVI connectors. When they say HDMI, they probably mean actual HDMI. It's not easy to find VGA-only cards anymore. Hell, most of the $25 dollar cards on Newegg have DVI on them. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jun 8, 2007 |
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Jun 8, 2007 18:14
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OldSenileGuy posted:I'm looking to turn my PC into an HTPC of sorts in the near future. My plan for now is to convert all my TV DVDs (Simpsons, Futurama, X-Files, Twilight Zone, etc) into files that I'll store on an external HDD and use my computer to play them on my PC. As such, I'm looking for a good program similar to Front Row on OSX that I can use to organize all this poo poo. I've already downloaded AntMovie Catalog, but like the name says, it's more suited for movies. Plus, as far as I can tell it's just an indexing system, I can't browse through it and actually launch any videos. Medio came out ~3 years ago, but Yahoo bought out the assets last year I think, and haven't done anything with them. As for something like Front Row, if I understand it from the description on apple's site, it's just a frontend for your media files, no? If so, Windows Media Center or the Linux HTPC apps all have the same kind of functionality. I must admit a fondness for Media Center, despite some annoying quirks in the Vista version (like forcing you access ripped DVDs through one option and xvid/divx/etc in another). You might want to check out thegreenbutton.com, as they have one of the biggest userbases for MC info. As for the Linux stuff, I still haven't found a solution I'm happy with. They all seem to built with lots of configuring in mind to support all requests, without offering anything MC doesn't. Still worth looking into if you're patient. EDIT: I do HDVideo, DVD rips, music, timeshifting, etc on my system. If you're just going for a DVD storage solution, the Linux stuff can do that admirably with a lot less hassle than I'm making it out to be. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Jun 18, 2007 |
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Jun 18, 2007 13:40
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Aaearon posted:Can anyone recommend me a tv tuner card for my situation? I'm returning to university in August and I rather leave my 6 year old, heavy, tv/vcr combo at home and just use my computer as a TV with my Dell 2001FPW. I'm looking for cards that can do QAM and ideally has two tuners (so I can record and watch at the same time), but two tuners isn't that necessary. There are no tuner cards that do QAM, only NTSC and ATSC. Mainly because of cable service and movie studios worried about piracy. The only thing that comes close to what you want is called an HD Homerun. You can check it out over here: http://www.silicondust.com/ It's an external box that is a dual tuner, it connects via ethernet to your computer, where it's recognized as a tuner. It reads unecrypted QAM- however, it's a pain in the rear end to get it to work in either Linux or Windows MC, because you have to do a lot of hand configuration. Check the forums on that site to get a better idea of what it takes. Also, keep in mind no tuner solution will read encrypted QAM right now, other than a cable box. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Jun 21, 2007 |
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Jun 21, 2007 13:25
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Aaearon posted:On the specs for the AverTV Combo Card, according to http://www.aver.com/mpd/combopcie.html can do QAM: Well, it's a little more complicated, but theoretically any card that can read ATSC could read QAM signals. However, right now there are no cards on the market that can properly read and map the qam signals and thus let you watch them. Windows doesn't support it natively either. Thus, even if the hardware can do it, the software won't let you. I looked around and in Jan. this year Avermedia said they were going to put out their own QAM viewing software which they apparently haven't done yet. The HD homerun is the only tuner I know of that will read QAM and allow it to be viewed in MCE. Even then it takes some hand-tuning of the drivers (you essentially map QAM channels to ATSC equivlents, fooling media center into believing it's OTA signals). I'm not real up on the Linux side, there a few that supposedly do QAM, but with very mixed results as to it working well or at all. On top of everything else, are you SURE the cable company where you live is running any of their QAM signals unencrypted? Because lots of cable companies encrypt all their HD channels, premium or not.
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Jun 21, 2007 19:46
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OldSenileGuy posted:Where did you confirm it, and what's your threshold for "high-bitrate"? You should be able to handle 720p stuff fine, and any VC-1 stuff up to 1080p no problem. It's just the .264 high end discs are really intensive. A friend of mine was overclocking a Core 2 Duo to ~3Ghz and was still running 50% usage on both cores for some of the higher-end bitrate blurays.
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Jul 10, 2007 13:50
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dfn_doe posted:That is perhaps the absolute best description/guide I've ever seen so far. I know most of this already, but thanks for putting up in one place. I had to read about 200 different AVS threads to get to where I am now. One question, what's the easiest way to get the most current version of GraphEdit?
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Jul 19, 2007 18:52
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furushotakeru posted:Does dual/quad/single core matter that much for 1080p playback? My understanding of this issue is very limited because I have never owned a multi core processor machine, but wouldn't the computer only be able to dedicate one logical processor to video playback even if it had two or four? Or an even shorter version: A Radeon2400/2600 or Geforce 8500/8600 with proper software (Specifically PowerDVD Ultra) can playback 1080p stuff flawlessly, rendering the processor irrelevant. If you're using any other video cards, you'll need a high end core 2 duo to handle all 1080p sources reliably. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Jul 25, 2007 |
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Jul 25, 2007 13:25
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moron posted:So, my question is.... given that the other specs of my HTPC aren't especially high, would a 8400 based card do the job, or would I be sensible to splash out a bit of extra cash on a 8500? Keep in mind if you get a card that's designed for high-def playback, the actual system specs are almost irrelevant. One site had the highest bit-rate Bluray running on a Semperon 2800 without maxing the processor. Lobbyist posted:From the page I linked: Anandtech doesn't know what the hell they're talking about here. The 8500 and 8600 are virtually identical, and they are identical when it comes to video playback capability. The main difference is that most 8600s have HDCP support, but you can still find 8500's that do as well. I've had an 8500 since May and it works great. The only bitch is a lack of proper overscan correction (but that's inherent in the drivers for ALL their cards). Crackbone fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Aug 7, 2007 |
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Aug 7, 2007 20:22
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Typh posted:My 32" is 1366x768, and supports 720p and 1080i. When I set my HTPC to output 1366x768, it only takes up a small amount of the screen (unless I stretch it to full). When I set it to 1920x1080, it takes up the full thing. You should set it to match your screen resolution as closely as possible. Chances are your set will accept 1280x720, since that's standard. A lot of LCDs for some odd reason are that goofy 768p resolution, despite the fact that 720p is the actual high-def standard. You'll probably be better off setting the PC to output 720 rather than 1080, since the less scaling the set has to do, the better will be as a result.
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Aug 7, 2007 20:43
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moron posted:Another quick question....what's the best media player to use for HD content? I've been told that VLC, Mplayer and all the other players I'd usually use aren't the ones to use for HD content...? Any specific codecs I should get? dfn_doe posted:Stupid nVidia and their naming conventions are really at fault here. "PureVideo" is the name of their commercial (read: costs money) mpeg decoder software codec; "PureVideo HD" is the name of their hardware decoding engine. To add to the confusion, on some older nvidia hardware using the purevideo software codec would also enable some limited mpeg2 hardware acceleration features (xvmc) AND new purevideo hd capable cards are not all created equally, the 8600 and 8500 series cards support more codecs in their hardware decoding engine than the more expensive and "higher end" 8800 series cards. Furthermore, the nVidia drivers that allow purevideo hd hardware acceleration only work on vista AND need to be coupled with a capable software directshow filter AND VMR9 OR Enhanced rendering engine. The most popular purevideo hd capable directshow filters AFAICT are the ones made by cyberlink which come bundled with the *NEWEST* powerdvd 7.3 Ultra build. Only additions here is that XP should now have Purevideo HD support, and Media Player Classic/WMP11 both work for 8500 compatible decoding. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Aug 7, 2007 |
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Aug 7, 2007 21:09
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Typh posted:I think you missed something from my post. When I set it to its native resolution, it acts as if it is a 1080 set. As in, the 1366x768 only takes up only the center of the screen. In Catalyst control center, I need to tell it to stretch to fill to actually fill the screen. If I set it to 1920x1080, it takes up the full screen. I understand what you said. I mean try to set the PC to output 1280x720 exactly, not 1366x768. I say this because it's possible that the set can't accept a 768p signal. It might only be able to read 1280x720p exactly, and do some minor internal upscaling. Some TVs are very picky about what display timings they'll accept. This can be especially true the older the set is. What kind of set is it? Also, how old is the video card?
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Aug 8, 2007 03:19
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Typh posted:The TV displays 1366x768 just fine. In fact, it appears to be able to display any resolution perfectly via 1:1 pixel mapping (up to 1920x1080). I need to crank the resolution up to 1920x1080 to get a 1:1 picture that fills the screen. This would make sense if it were a 1080p screen, but it is not. Did you at least try setting the PC output to 1280x720 instead of 1366x768?
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Aug 9, 2007 13:49
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Typh posted:Er, of course. I also tried many other resolutions. It displays them as if it is displaying 1:1 and it's native resolution is 1080. Hmm. Next things I would try would be check the manual to see if there are different display modes on the TV that would influence how the picture is displayed. Unlikely but it should be easy to check. After that, I'd move onto trying a VGA connection instead of HDMI and seeing if you have the same results. It's possible it's just some sort of funky issue with input on the HDMI connector.
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Aug 14, 2007 17:36
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TPS Report posted:I'm wanting to change my desktop into a htpc and move it into the living room. I am wanting to play HD content so the ability to play 1080p is what I am looking for. My old computer I am afraid is too slow to run HD. It is a 2.8 P4 and it has a Leadtek A6600 GT TDH GeForce 6600GT 128MB 128-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X Video Card. - The 8500 is fine, there's no reason to move to the 8600 if your goal is playing high-def media. - 1 Gig of ram should be plenty for media center applications. My system has a x2 4200, 1 gig of cheap ram, and an 8500 (fanless) in it, and it works on 1080p stuff fine.
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Aug 21, 2007 20:49
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Mike Toole posted:Try using The ORB. I tried settign up using both MCE and TVersity and they failed, but ORB worked right out of the box. It would probably be fine, but you should check and make sure that motherboard has a PCIe slot to accommodate either companies' HD cards.
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Aug 30, 2007 13:21
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:I think this is probably more HTPC than HDTV, so I'll ask here. HDCP is almost certianly what the problem is. Cable boxes and High Def Movie players are required to implment HDCP on their HDMI outputs. You're not going to get around it short of getting an HDCP compliant monitor, or moving to something that can accept component connections (although typically that will limit you to 720p resolution).
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Sep 10, 2007 00:27
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Explosm posted:I have this one and it plays 1080p as smooth as butter. What kind of processor are you running? Also, are you talking about 1080p Quicktime trailers or high-bitrate .264 files?
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Jan 22, 2008 21:40
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EC posted:Anybody seen this guy: It's certainly a possibility, although almost every device that outputs HD over component limits it to 720p, precisely to stop devices like this from getting "full quality" copies.
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Jan 23, 2008 17:27
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ashgromnies posted:Would the lower end processor with only 2mb cache not be able to play 1080p video? I have an oldass Athlon 3200+ XP processor in my desktop that plays HD content just fine... I don't see what I need this extra-expensive processor for. What are you counting as "HD"? Because 1080p x264 files used to require at least a Core 2/A64 processor clocked at 3Ghz. Some new codecs have apparently dropped the processor speed requirement, but there's no way you were playing 1080p HD video on an athlon xp chip. Maybe some bastardized xvid or QT trailers (which are encoded at lower quality specifically for PC playback).
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Feb 1, 2008 17:30
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ashgromnies posted:I definitely was playing x264 720p rips on my Athlon XP. I said 1080p - big difference between those. Randi Challenger posted:Are you talking about 3GHZ between the 2 cores or each core at 3Ghz? I have a T7300 @ 2.0Ghz and it playes 1080p x264 just fine, I just want a quad-core for future proofing and maybe a bit of light gaming and heavy photoshop use. 3Ghz clock used to be what people recommended. I remember in particular, Casino Royale was some obscenely high bitrate that choked Core 2 processors trying to run it, at least a year ago. I know that recent coreAVC codec has apparently really cut down on the requirements, but even 2Ghz seems low. For reference, what codec/software are you using and are what files are you playing? Are you sure they're not VC-1 encoded (which takes a lot less processing power)? FURTHER EDIT: I'm genuinely curious, because my HTPC has a X2 4200 which choked on 1080p x264, so I put in a 8500GT for HD decoding (which works great). I'd get rid of the card if HD codecs have gotten that much better. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Feb 1, 2008 |
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Feb 1, 2008 18:16
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Randi Challenger posted:No, its a 1080p file in x264, non VC-1 and I bought the CoreAVC professional edition and 99% of the time it runs like a champ. Only a few scenes that I've gone through where there is a ton happening on the screen where it might stutter. I'm still going quad core though If you're getting stutter of any HD file you're probably running higher CPU usage than I'd want. Pretty cool that CoreAVC's so much better than it used to be, though.
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Feb 1, 2008 18:51
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Kiriyama posted:I'm just buying a new HDTV and came upon this thread looking up info on audio systems and was amazed at the idea of HTPC. Also amazed I never thought of such an idea before. Running all your hard drives is not going to make a lick of difference to the life of your power supply.
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Feb 12, 2008 14:39
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Mr FancySocks posted:I pretty much have the same setup, but with a Athlon X2 5600+ (89w), why the aftermarket cpu cooler? Stock is fine. Also, not sure you'll need a dedicated graphic card for BR with the MA69GM, it does 1080p just fine. How would that motherboard handle high def? The onboard video card doesn't support HD acceleration, in which case the processor handles all the decoding. That motherboard doesn't factor into Bluray playback at all.
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Feb 14, 2008 14:57
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