Associate
- Joined
- 1 Oct 2007
- Posts
- 1
- Location
- London
Hi guys,
I've got a cheapish media PC which I built earlier this year to output content to my TV. The TV is a plasma which supports up to 1080i and has a maximum resolution of 1366 x 768.
The PC is a Shuttle SN21G5 barebones PC with an Asus Extreme X300SE 128MB graphics card. At the moment, I use a DVI cable from the media PC to the TV which also has a DVI input port. The resolution is set to 1366 x 768. For sound, I use a coaxial SPDIF cable from the PC to my receiver (I'm assuming this is sufficient for getting 5.1 Dolby sound?).
Anyway, I would like to replace the current DVD drive with a Blu-Ray drive like the Pioneer BDC-202 in order to be able to watch Blu-Ray media. I've read a thread that mentions PowerDVD, is there a Blu-Ray specific version of PowerDVD that I would need?
My main concern is with getting the best image quality from my setup. Am I likely to have to change my current (AGP) graphics card? Is the DVI-DVI cable good enough or should I look to replace it with a DVI-HDMI cable? Would I need to use something like PowerStrip to change the resolution and refresh rate to get the most out of it?
The media PC is only connected to the TV, so I'm not concerned about dual displays and such.
Many thanks,
Chiu
I've got a cheapish media PC which I built earlier this year to output content to my TV. The TV is a plasma which supports up to 1080i and has a maximum resolution of 1366 x 768.
The PC is a Shuttle SN21G5 barebones PC with an Asus Extreme X300SE 128MB graphics card. At the moment, I use a DVI cable from the media PC to the TV which also has a DVI input port. The resolution is set to 1366 x 768. For sound, I use a coaxial SPDIF cable from the PC to my receiver (I'm assuming this is sufficient for getting 5.1 Dolby sound?).
Anyway, I would like to replace the current DVD drive with a Blu-Ray drive like the Pioneer BDC-202 in order to be able to watch Blu-Ray media. I've read a thread that mentions PowerDVD, is there a Blu-Ray specific version of PowerDVD that I would need?
My main concern is with getting the best image quality from my setup. Am I likely to have to change my current (AGP) graphics card? Is the DVI-DVI cable good enough or should I look to replace it with a DVI-HDMI cable? Would I need to use something like PowerStrip to change the resolution and refresh rate to get the most out of it?
The media PC is only connected to the TV, so I'm not concerned about dual displays and such.
Many thanks,
Chiu