Using an 8800GTS and Radeon 4550 together, HTPC?

[Lil old me]

Hi guys,

I've just got myself a bluray drive for my pc which is connected to a panasonic 42" plasma via a nvidia 8800GTS. This is great for playing games but I know I need a HDCP enabled graphics card to watch bluray in full hd res. I can't currently afford to outright replace my 8800 so im looking at getting an hdcp enabled card to sit in my other spare pcie slot. I really want it to be able to output audio over hdmi and afaik ati cards are better at this than nvidia hence the need to mix brands?

So would it be possible to use both cards in the system at the same time, keeping the 8800 for games and using the 4550 for blu ray?

Thanks

 

[bledd]

http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html

give that a whirl, removes the stupid copy protection on the fly as you're watching it -with no noticeable resources taken up, it installs itself as a driver

have been using the dvd version for years, awesome software, gets updated a heck of a lot

they have a 15/30 day trial, i've paid for mine

 

[Lil old me]

Thanks for that bledd, however Ive just had a revelation! Went and installed the cyberlink bd advisor and it told me my card IS hdcp compliant which I never realised before!

From wikipedia:

"The 8800 GTX also supports HDCP, but one major flaw is its older NVIDIA Purevideo processor that uses more CPU resources."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series#8800_GTX_.2F_8800_Ultra

I guess this is to do with it lacking the h.264 decoder. I have a pretty fast processor though so hopefully it wont make too much difference. Just waiting for my bluray order to arrive!

Craziness.

Anyways thanks for your help but I think I just saved myself £40!

 

[bledd]

cool

i use it mainly for the region/copy protection thing