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I know some audiophiles have a hard time imagning a PC in the HT. I'm curious as to who has discovered its potential.TIA
Edits: 07/06/08Follow Ups:
I set up a "living room PC" as my first DVD player almost 10 years ago, using a Pentium 133 and a Creative DXr2 MPEG2 decoder card and drive, and an infrared remote receiver I built. So, not surprisingly, my first HD disc player is an HTPC. Athlon 3800 X2 with an LG DVD/Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo drive, an Nvidia 8500GT video card, and an ATI Remote Wonder RF remote. Playback of HD-DVD and Blu-ray is smooth, although the player software leaves something to be desired. I did need AnyDVD to get around the fact that the video card did not support HDCP. WindDVD seems a little better than PowerDVD.
Sound is a problem; you really need a video card that supports HDMI audio, and an HDMI receiver (or processor) to get the lossless sound. I haven't had much luck getting multichannel out via the analog outputs. I understand some people have resorted to ripping and reencoding HD movies so they can get proper full-resolution audio playback without HDMI hardware.
Thanks for the reply,
I agree with you on the sound. Although I'm content with the 5.1 or 6.1 I can get out of the PC's SPDIF. My reciever doesn't have the new codecs, so not a problem at the moment.In the near future I would like to build a custom HTPC. It will have true HDMI outs instead of DVI.I'll wait till the price of those cards come down a bit. I use a Nvidia 256 bit 1 gb ram 8800GT right now. I did have an ATI 3450 installed and before that a Nvidia 7600. The Nvidia 8800 of course smokes them both.
Glad too see another HTPC user amongst the crowd! Cyberlink BD works very well on my PC for playback. I have a copy of WinDVD also. There were some hiccups when I tried to use it, so I went back to Cyberlink.
Even my DVDs look better with this video card over my previous Nvidia 7600. Using the PC as a media center has been a winner for me. No need to worry about things getting too old or out of date. I can always upgrade the hardware and the software.
My new HP notebook has an HD DVD drive in it (that's why it was so cheap) and since I have a number of movies in that format, I hooked it up to the TV via HDMI connector and it worked great in 1080p. But it's a fuss using a notebook in this manner, because the nVidia software + Vista does not seem to remember the video settings for my TV, so every time I want to do that, I have to readjust picture size. I don't know to what extent the HP-supplied QuickPlay software supports the high quality audio. Windows Media Center as supplied with Windows Vista Home Premium does not currently support Blu-Ray at all.
But mostly, I just use the Playstation 3 for Blu-Ray movies and Apple TV for all else. Apple TV has the richest content and it's a joy to use.
Well I guess the Apple is close enough. lol
Yeah I use Cyberlink BD software.It seems to function well.
I installed a Sony BD drive and a ATI video card with dual DVI outputs. I have one for my flat panel in the great room and another for my bedroom flat panel.I'm thinking of going with a DVI to CAT5 converter for the long run to the bedroom.This maybe cheaper than a long HDMI cable, not totally sure though. I need to do more research. I'll use my reciever's second zone to power the audio hopefully in the bedroom.
I have the PC in a hall closet...out of sight.. out of mind! I've read Anydvd software by Silsoft will allow you to play Bluray even on non 1080p monitors and through other media players without the DRM crap.
I think Nero has a plug in for Blu ray as well.
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