noob confusion over HDTV and HTPC

footman · 25 Jun 2006 at 22:57

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?

footman · 26 Jun 2006 at 07:13

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.

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?

footman · 26 Jun 2006 at 21:14

cheers, thats all clear. Would a decent HTPC play dvd's (both sound and vision quality) better than an amp/dvd player combo?

footman · 26 Jun 2006 at 21:58

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.

sorry to be such a noob.....but whats sd?

footman · 26 Jun 2006 at 22:57

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.

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.

footman · 26 Jun 2006 at 23:09

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.

the cpu I intend using is the one in my sig.

footman · 27 Jun 2006 at 07:16

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.

Im expecting an x800 gto unlocked to 16 pipes bought on MM . Would this do the job?