noob confusion over HDTV and HTPC

footman

footman

footman

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I took the first step today buy buying a Panasonic 42inch plasma. I had intended to build an HTPC from my spare bits.

Having now learnt a bit more about HDTV it would seem that my only way of getting it where I live is to get a telewest Tvdrive box. If I get that whats the point in building an HTPC?
 
can be used for everything a normal pc can
can record tv
upscale dvds (make them look better)
and a load of other stuff i dont knwo much about
 
Well I use mine for upscaling DVDs as said, but also have it connected to amp so I can play my entire music collection.

I also find it useful to be able to browse the web in the living room on the jumbo TV and stuff like google earth is great when friends are round.

HTPC means Home Theatre PC, so it's not really got anything to do with recording TV. I have SKy+ for that.

Of course if your happy with your DVD player and the other uses don't appeal then yes it's a waste of time. You would have been better with an LCD with higher resolution and sharper PC display anyways.
 
as above I use mine for dvd upscaling and my music collection. The only reason I havent got rid of my dvd player yet is because it has speakers and I have my sky+ and xbox 360 connected through the optical for surround. When I get some more speakers at the end of july then I will be selling my dvd player.
 
pinkaardvark said:
Well I use mine for upscaling DVDs as said, but also have it connected to amp so I can play my entire music collection.

I also find it useful to be able to browse the web in the living room on the jumbo TV and stuff like google earth is great when friends are round.

HTPC means Home Theatre PC, so it's not really got anything to do with recording TV. I have SKy+ for that.

Of course if your happy with your DVD player and the other uses don't appeal then yes it's a waste of time. You would have been better with an LCD with higher resolution and sharper PC display anyways.
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I checked out the LCD's of 2 friends (both new sets) and found that the viewing angle and colour rendition not to my liking, and anyway Im happy with the deal I got on the plasma.

I think I'm starting to get the point about recording. If I have a TVDrive box then that would do any recording I wanted so I would only need 1 TV card and a small HDD in my HTPC. Am I right?
 
in all honesty if you had telewest TV drive i wouldnt bother with a TV card at all

because your PC tuner card can only show freeview channels, with your telewest box you can get all 400+ channels or whatever you subscribe too.

Leave the Telewest TV drive to do the TV tuning and recording. and instead use your PC for music, playing DVDs and browsing the internet etc..

theres no point doubling up. However media centre does have other uses besides the recording facilities, like showing a font in windows thats readable from several feet away.

if you didnt have telewest, you could just use 2 TV tuners to make your own Freeview HD recorder, have on tuner to record, one to watch another channel, and then oodles of disk space to record stuff too.

But your telewest box does just that, but with more channels, so you may as well put your living room TV to better use :)
 
The only problem is that sd is not going to look too good on a plasma, and most of the programs are sd however people have said that tvdrive improves sd picture.
The advantage of the htpc is that freeview may look better than sd from tw and you can resize the window to surf the internet etc while keeping an eye on the tv.
This weekend, when the footie and gp were in danger of overlapping, i had the footie on the htpc, gp on pip and should i have felt the need, surfed the net.

However i am seriously thinking of getting a tvd for the hd picture.

also: i find the best dvd picture comes from component video from a std dvd player it gives a seriously good picture even from a £50 player
 
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footman said:
cheers, thats all clear. Would a decent HTPC play dvd's (both sound and vision quality) better than an amp/dvd player combo?
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If you are willing to spend time at it you will get better results than from a regular dvd player picture-wise.

Sound-wise you still need an amp and speakers otherwise you're limiting yourself to pc components which aren't a patch on a proper sound set-up.
 
Slam62 said:
The only problem is that sd is not going to look too good on a plasma, and most of the programs are sd however people have said that tvdrive improves sd picture.
Click to expand...

sorry to be such a noob.....but whats sd?
 
Goatboy said:
If you are willing to spend time at it you will get better results than from a regular dvd player picture-wise.

Sound-wise you still need an amp and speakers otherwise you're limiting yourself to pc components which aren't a patch on a proper sound set-up.
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I really want to get the best from my system but tell me if I'm making things too complicated.

I would get a better picture with more possbilities for fine tuning (ie upscaling)
using a decent graphics card in an HTPC and better sound than from my existing amp/dvd player buy passing the audio from a good pc sound card through that same amplifier.
 
Graphics card aint really the issue. What your after is raw cpu power, a 6600 GS Silent with the nvidia purevideo codecs will be more than capable for well under £100, spend the bulk on a good powerhouse cpu.
 
pinkaardvark said:
Graphics card aint really the issue. What your after is raw cpu power, a 6600 GS Silent with the nvidia purevideo codecs will be more than capable for well under £100, spend the bulk on a good powerhouse cpu.
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the cpu I intend using is the one in my sig.
 
footman said:
the cpu I intend using is the one in my sig.
Click to expand...

Yep nothing wrong with that. FFDShow which your likely to be using doesn't benefit from dual processing power and seems do do well with AMD 64's 3700 and above so you'll have no bother. As said pick up a nice quiet nvidia card, preferably a new one so it comes with the latest purevideo codecs and hardware support and you're off.
 
pinkaardvark said:
Yep nothing wrong with that. FFDShow which your likely to be using doesn't benefit from dual processing power and seems do do well with AMD 64's 3700 and above so you'll have no bother. As said pick up a nice quiet nvidia card, preferably a new one so it comes with the latest purevideo codecs and hardware support and you're off.
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Im expecting an x800 gto unlocked to 16 pipes bought on MM . Would this do the job?
 
footman said:
Im expecting an x800 gto unlocked to 16 pipes bought on MM . Would this do the job?
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Nvidia is the one to get, as said they come with the best video codecs, namely the purevideo ones. I'm sure the x1800 will be fine though and will help with games, it's just not an optimal solution.
 
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