[kelly]

Are any of you guys going the HTPC route?

I've been reading about some of the systems on some of the various forums and I'm curious to say the least.

Last night my friend and I AB'd his laptop's DVD player against his home Panasonic DVD player. To my surprise, the laptop whipped the little Panasonic. So, I had to wonder what all was out there.

I've considered replacing both my DVD player, which doesn't have progressive output and doesn't have DTS and my receiver, which doesn't support DTS or have any kind of pre-in for multichannel.

So, now I'm wondering if a better solution might be to look into building an HTPC and using it with a multi-channel amplifier. The HTPC would handle DVD playback, deinterlacing, scaling and multi-channel audio decoding. I'm a little concerned about the audio portion of this. In my experience, computer geeks know their video but not their audio. I really wonder how a high end soundcard's multi-channel out would compare with a moderately priced pre/pro.

Anyone have any experience or thoughts?

 

[radrd]

Everything I have read suggests that a Philips DVD963SA player would kill any HTPC setup in both audio and video quality.

That's what I would go with to replace your Panasonic.

If you really want to go the HTPC route, you might take a look at:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenT...562&f=67909965

It's a damn good forum. If you join, just be careful not to tell anyone that interconnects make a difference in sound quality.

 

[Leo]

kelly,

Well my next route is a HTPC for the movie room because no one can see to get the deinterlacing right - consistently - in the standalone players. I've read a good deal in the AVS Forum and they seem to have done well with the audio portion using a nice card. The only thing that concerned me was the amount of fan noise from a HTPC - makes me wish I had put the equipment rack in a closet - I may still be able to do that, but it will require ripping up an outside wall to re-route the wiring. Let me know how things go if you decide to go that route. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

 

[kelly]

I have a damned hard time believing a $400 DVD player is as good as it gets, especially with newer deinterlacers and scalers out.

As for the fan noise, you can always underclock a CPU if you really want to run completely fanless.

 

[lini]

kelly: Clever idea - you get all the goodies including funny video freakalizers with a htpc (and including stuff like dolby headphone and dolby virtual speaker, which is a plus for headphone and stereo guys). My solution for that is a supermarket pc, the last ALDI pc sold here in Germany, which came already tailored to entertainment pc requirements (including stereo tv card, rf remote control, very quite coolers, ati 9500 pro with good tv-out, 160 GB hd, pvr software, dvd-burner... the price was 1,200 euro), I just replaced the moderate on-board audio with the Aureon 5.1 Sky. I'll guess, I'll soon add an LG Flatron 1810A and connect one of my old panasonic hifi vcrs to both, and the rest of my old equipment can go...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[dd3mon]

Quote:

Originally posted by kelly I have a damned hard time believing a $400 DVD player is as good as it gets, especially with newer deinterlacers and scalers out. As for the fan noise, you can always underclock a CPU if you really want to run completely fanless.

No modern CPU that would perform well with DVD playback (if this is done 100% software, it takes some power to keep the playback smooth) could run fanless. Very quiet fans? Sure, but a 100% fanless computer is an impossibility without some other exotic (usually noisier) cooling system.

I've yet to see someone disagree that the 963sa offers the best picture quality on any DVD player they've seen, regardless of price. The audio section is alot more controversial, but for pure HT usage, I think it would clean up on 95% of DVD players.

-dd3mon

 

[vrao81]

It does not take a fast cpu to play dvd movies. My 400 mhz pentium II plays dvd's smooth as glass with software decoding. As far as fans go, you can just use one vantec 80mm stealth fan to cool your cpu and have no other fans in your case and your pc will be as silent as it gets.

 

[Wodgy]

About audio quality, I think you'll find that a decent sound card will be a good source for home theatre audio. DVDs are usually encoded at 96 kHz or more anyway, so the sound is naturally less brittle and DAC-sensitive than Redbook audio.

On the other hand, if you're also going to be using your system for music listening, you should really also consider an outboard stereo DAC (not a USB audio gadget -- a real DAC, like the Benchmark or Bel Canto or whatever). There are no sound cards that match this kind of sound, especially if you're into upsampling (there are no sound cards that do asynchronous upsampling, though you can do synchronous upsampling in software).

 

[lan]

I'm into having a HTPC because it gives greater flexibility and control.

Having deinterlacing on the PC isn't that big a deal but scaling is. It's nice to match your source's output and display device to minimize conversions. Like some DVD players might only do 540p but your TV maybe 720p or your digital projector is 1280x768 res. Having it all done digitally inside a PC is good. It's only recent that DVI is starting to appear on set top boxes and displays and there are still compatibility issues there. Quality wise it goes, DVI, VGA, Component and the first 2 are where the PC is "at home".

I see you have an X1. I have a Z1.

I like having 1:1 pixel mapping on my non standard res of 960x540 with powerstrip.

 

[kelly]

Yeah, the X1 is only 800x600 but it supposedly can look much better when the video is properly scaled and you run in native mode. I don't find that hard to believe at all.

I really wish I could find a fair comparison between dScalar and other deinterlacers. I believe that 963sa uses the FLI2200, which is the same deinterlacer in my projector. I saw a video capture board/scaler/deinterlacer that has the FLI2300 which supposedly kicks ass. They claim it's better than dScalar but I've read the contrary in some places. Neither do motion adaptive interpolation yet.

I'm finding that it's very difficult to find good recomendations on capture boards for this usage. That really surprised me.