HTPC and watching HD stuff question
Discussion
Using the AVforums selling bit I've managed to aqcuire this little lot for £200 quid...not bad I thunk.
-SilverStone ST-30NF 300W Fanless Power Supply
-Silverstone LC03 Aluminum HTPC case
-Sapphire Radeon 9600 Fanless APG x8 128MB DDR DVI-I TV-Out
-NEC DVD+-R/RW 16x Dual Layer
-Crucial Ballistix 184DIMM 512MB PC3200 NP CL2 x 2 - 1GB kit
-Gigabyte GA-K8VT800M mATX Motherboard, 8X agp, S-ATA
-Thermalright XP-120 Socket 754 / 939 and Intel 478 Heatsink
-AMD Athlon 64 3000 32/64Bit CPU Socket 754
-Thermalright Neo Plate
-Nexus 120mm Fan
-Fan Mate 2
Now I want to use this as a proper HTPC as I have access to newsgroups so have lots of hi-def movies and stuff to watch.
The only thing this needs to get it going is a Hard disk and a sound card with a digital output. And ultimately a TV tuner too.
I already have a 120gig and a 320gig HDD but they're IDE not SATA.
Also I'm not sure on the graphics card. I've bought a DVI to HDMI cable to give it a go.
So the question.
If I wack my 120gig drive in as master and install Win XP MCE then use the 320 as further storage and connect it too my 42" panny (1080i max) TV will it play mahoosive 9gig HD WMV files without stuttering or stalling? Does it have the balls?
I realise the ideal would be a new Mboard with a PCIe slot and a new Graphics card but I want to do this as cheaply as I can....cos I'm tight.
Don't mind if the PC doesn't operate at blistering speed just as long as it can handle streaming HD to my telly.
Many thanks.
-SilverStone ST-30NF 300W Fanless Power Supply
-Silverstone LC03 Aluminum HTPC case
-Sapphire Radeon 9600 Fanless APG x8 128MB DDR DVI-I TV-Out
-NEC DVD+-R/RW 16x Dual Layer
-Crucial Ballistix 184DIMM 512MB PC3200 NP CL2 x 2 - 1GB kit
-Gigabyte GA-K8VT800M mATX Motherboard, 8X agp, S-ATA
-Thermalright XP-120 Socket 754 / 939 and Intel 478 Heatsink
-AMD Athlon 64 3000 32/64Bit CPU Socket 754
-Thermalright Neo Plate
-Nexus 120mm Fan
-Fan Mate 2
Now I want to use this as a proper HTPC as I have access to newsgroups so have lots of hi-def movies and stuff to watch.
The only thing this needs to get it going is a Hard disk and a sound card with a digital output. And ultimately a TV tuner too.
I already have a 120gig and a 320gig HDD but they're IDE not SATA.
Also I'm not sure on the graphics card. I've bought a DVI to HDMI cable to give it a go.
So the question.
If I wack my 120gig drive in as master and install Win XP MCE then use the 320 as further storage and connect it too my 42" panny (1080i max) TV will it play mahoosive 9gig HD WMV files without stuttering or stalling? Does it have the balls?
I realise the ideal would be a new Mboard with a PCIe slot and a new Graphics card but I want to do this as cheaply as I can....cos I'm tight.
Don't mind if the PC doesn't operate at blistering speed just as long as it can handle streaming HD to my telly.
Many thanks.
My previous PC was a AMD 3100 sempron and i watched many a HD movie on that machine, including the hulk which was 12gig.
I had a different graphics card, 6600GT AGP version, but they are not a million miles apart, once connected to your TV okay, i dont think youll have any problems on the processing front.
Mark
I had a different graphics card, 6600GT AGP version, but they are not a million miles apart, once connected to your TV okay, i dont think youll have any problems on the processing front.
Mark
I have a Epson Emp TW700 HD 1280x720 lcd projector in my setup. (Superb bit of kit and highly recommended at about a £1000) 
This is driven by my old XP Pro Pentium M 2 ghz Elonex laptop with Intel chipset Chinese motherboard, 1gb ram and Intel 855 onboard graphics using 32mb of system ram via the vga out port, Creative Sound Blaster PCMCIA Audigy 2 ZS Dolby Digital sound card direct via optical lead to my Sherwood 5.1 decoder and amp.
It copes easily with playback of normal dvd/vobs, it also copes with playback of native 1280x720 HD content using divx, xvid or x264 codecs. No dropped frames but 60-90% cpu usage depending on complexity of image at any exact second. It would not cope with decoding 1080p, but I don't use any as that is beyond my projector resolution, and would be pointless to try.
So you can do it fairly cheaply, I would think your system will easily cope with 720p HD, not sure about 1080p.
There are several things you can do to speed up decoding.
Clean Install, then get rid of any junk, stop background tasks, defrag it etc.
I also use Mediaplayer Classic as my default player, a stripped down version of the early microsoft player it can cope with most files except MKV extensions, for those I use VLC player which also comes with a load of useful codecs. If you install both of these you are sorted.
Enjoy
This is driven by my old XP Pro Pentium M 2 ghz Elonex laptop with Intel chipset Chinese motherboard, 1gb ram and Intel 855 onboard graphics using 32mb of system ram via the vga out port, Creative Sound Blaster PCMCIA Audigy 2 ZS Dolby Digital sound card direct via optical lead to my Sherwood 5.1 decoder and amp.
It copes easily with playback of normal dvd/vobs, it also copes with playback of native 1280x720 HD content using divx, xvid or x264 codecs. No dropped frames but 60-90% cpu usage depending on complexity of image at any exact second. It would not cope with decoding 1080p, but I don't use any as that is beyond my projector resolution, and would be pointless to try.
So you can do it fairly cheaply, I would think your system will easily cope with 720p HD, not sure about 1080p.
There are several things you can do to speed up decoding.
Clean Install, then get rid of any junk, stop background tasks, defrag it etc.
I also use Mediaplayer Classic as my default player, a stripped down version of the early microsoft player it can cope with most files except MKV extensions, for those I use VLC player which also comes with a load of useful codecs. If you install both of these you are sorted.
Enjoy
cheers all..
Well I set it all up. Fresh install of XP MCE all updates etc (inc wmp11) and does it work?........does it fvck!!
The thing runs no problems but just won't play WMV files for more than about a minute.
It does play that minute with no stuttering or dropped frames though.
Doing my head in.......in plays AVI's with no problem. It's just the format native to windows made by microsoft to be played on windows with media center, for windows, with media center in mind with all the codecs and updates loaded in to play a windows file on a windows machine.......and it doesn't fvcking work right!!!!! aaarrrgh!!
To clarify...what it does is start playing, no problems, get to somewhere between 15-80 seconds in and it stops and restarts the file....it then loops continuously. Different files stop at different times but always the same for that file. It does this using either wmp11, media center or xbox360.
Any ideas before I ebay the m/board/cpu and spend some cash??
Well I set it all up. Fresh install of XP MCE all updates etc (inc wmp11) and does it work?........does it fvck!!
The thing runs no problems but just won't play WMV files for more than about a minute.
It does play that minute with no stuttering or dropped frames though.
Doing my head in.......in plays AVI's with no problem. It's just the format native to windows made by microsoft to be played on windows with media center, for windows, with media center in mind with all the codecs and updates loaded in to play a windows file on a windows machine.......and it doesn't fvcking work right!!!!! aaarrrgh!!
To clarify...what it does is start playing, no problems, get to somewhere between 15-80 seconds in and it stops and restarts the file....it then loops continuously. Different files stop at different times but always the same for that file. It does this using either wmp11, media center or xbox360.
Any ideas before I ebay the m/board/cpu and spend some cash??
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