Software for htpc?

Mike_J_Potter · 05-18-2005, 04:40 PM

I just ordered the parts today for a basic hometheater pc. Win XP pro (Celeron 2.8ghz) 512megs of ram, Geforce 6200GT with HD out, and a leadtek 5.1 sound card with digital optical out. I will be using it mainly for playback of various media files including HD content. I am planning to get a copy of powerstrip, and already have WinDVD. Will I need anything else to playback any files. I won't be doing any recording on the pc No remote yet I will be using a wireless keyboard and mouse. The picture will output through component to a hdtv 1080I native

Harris_C · 05-19-2005, 12:11 AM

A couple of things.

When you say the picture will output through component, do you mean you are going to use the S-Video to Component dongle that comes with the card? If so, do yourself a favor and go over to Bluejeans cable and buy a DVI to HDMI or DVI to DVI, and use straight digital. The reason is that you will be unable to play DVD's on your HDTV at 1080i throught the S-video connection. The macrovision protection will only allow you to output the video at 480 which is not what you want I am sure.

Next, with the new NVIDIA drivers, you may not need powerstrip, although it is great to have. NVIDIA with the new releases does a much better job of compensating for underscan/overscan and have nice new features.

Scott L · 05-19-2005, 12:37 PM

Zoom Player + NVDVD + FFDSHOW handle most of my needs.

Consider using Zoom over WMP. It handles all types of media better and gives you more display options as well.

Ian-Fl · 05-19-2005, 01:16 PM

Here's a setup guide to using ffdshow,zoomplayer and dscaler.
http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=ffdshowdvd_1
To get dolby digital you have to click the external tab in zoomplayer and highlight SPDIF output.
ffdshow requires alot of processing power so you might have to overclock the CPU.

Mike_J_Potter · 05-20-2005, 07:15 PM

Thanks for your help, the parts will come in on monday I'll let you know how it works out. Looks like I'll have a few days of tweaking to get it right. Though my choice of board has me a little worried, I may return it since I didn't realize that it was a AGI not agp slot which supposedly has compatibility issues.

**HTF Ads**

Harris_C · 05-20-2005, 09:39 PM

Great let us know how it goes.

Mike_J_Potter · 05-22-2005, 10:12 PM

I had to order a new board turns out mainboards with an AGI type agp slot (turns out it is two pci slots combined don't work with the majority of agp cards (including my geforce 6200( and for that matter slows the video down. Word to the wise avoid the Intel 845GV chipset if your building a pc, unless you always plan on using built in video. The new board should be perfect and even has Serial ATA so I can put up to 6 hard drives in it so it will be perfect for my eventual plans which require allot of space

Mike_J_Potter · 05-25-2005, 09:17 PM

PC is up and running, I was able to playback some SD content in Xvid format, unfortunatly the extra dvd drive I have is dead so I couldn't play around with that yet. I'll try it out in the next few days and see if I can get my extreme edition Terminator 2 to work in HD. Looks good so far, though a quieter power supply and fan are probably needed.



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