[JeffreyJohnston]

Hello all. I am currently in the process of upgrading my gaming rig and using the old parts for a decent HTPC. The specs of it are/will be:

ASUS A8N-SLI
Athlon XP 3500+
2GB Corsair XMS Memory
1x 36GB Raptor HD (for OS)
3x 150GB Raptor X HD (for shows, music, videos, games, etc....)
BFG Tech GeForce 7800GTXOC w/ 256MB DDR
Wireless Logitech Mouse/Keyboard (Bluetooth/Laser)
Sony 16x DVD-ROM
Sony 8X DVD-RW
Windows XP MCE with remote


This rig will not be playing any DVD's. Just TV shows/music/music videos from the net and such.


I have a few questions about setting up a HTPC. Now, I work in the Home Theater field, but I've never had to set up a HTPC for any customers. My first concern is, audio. I want something with SPDIF (COAX) outputs. My motherboard has it onboard so I guess that would serve well enough.

My second concern is the video. I currently have my 17" Dell MCE laptop hooked up to my TV using DCI-HDMI and I don't like the way it looks. The TV is a SONY KDF-E55A20. The max resolution of the set is 1368x768. How can I make the video/text look the best through the HDMI connection? I noticed on the laptop that games like wow and surfing the net... the text appears all blocky and unable to be read clearly.

If anyone wants to help me with my issues with the video, you can IM me on AIM: sonyxplodjetta or just email me: jjohnston12385@gmail.com. I want to get this issue fixed prior to building the HTPC.

Please let me know if any of y'all can help me with it. I would love to get this up and going within the next month or so. Thanks in advance.

[Rommel_L]

for the audio question: Onboard audio may support SPDIF but the quality isn't guaranteed to be good. A separate audio card with digital audio out will be in oreder here, as other members will chime in as they read this post.

for the video question: A few questios first:
- What are the resolutions supported by your TV?
- What is the model of the laptop's video card and it's specs?
- Have you tried using the Cleartype option on your laptop?

[JeffreyJohnston]

What do you mean the resolutions supported by my TV? If you mean HD signals then it's 480p, 720p, 1080i.

The video in the laptop is a GeForce 7900GS with 256MB DDR.

No I haven't tried using the Cleartype option, but I thought that was only for windows desktop and not for apps.....


Edit: Also I guess I should've noted that I have to use the Underscan feature on my videocard in order to fit the screen correctly without having to move the mouse to see the rest of the desktop....

[bobbyg2]

Quote:

ASUS A8N-SLI
Athlon XP 3500+

I would go for a C2Duo, but that's a little more expensive.

Quote:

BFG Tech GeForce 7800GTXOC w/ 256MB DDR

Not necessarily the best graphics card you could really get. For that price, I would try to find the best ATI card.

Quote:

Windows XP MCE with remote

PERFECT! I recommend everyone to stay with Windows XP for a little while and upgrading to VISTA after December. There's a lot of bugs still in VISTA.

Over-all a good system. I'm not too familiar with sound cards, since my motherboard has on-board 7.1 audio with works good enough for me. I don't really use the 7.1 that much anyways.

[orestes]

Be careful with the asus mb and its "Promise" (from Promise Technology) embedded RAID controller. I have an asus MB (p4c800-e deluxe), but so far I cannot upgrade properly to Vista since there is no driver for this "Promise" raid controller. Since I didn't build my PC (someone did for me under my advice), I went and disabled "Promise" in the BIOS setup menu for the time being so that I may eventually upgrade to Vista. Updgrading to Vista is a pain in the butt even when I have great (almost new hardware) on my desktop.

Even upgrading my toshiba laptop (which was bought back in Sept. 2006) with the latest hardware--model p105-s6084) is going to be a headache.

I am planning to move my current desktop pc to be a file server, and then buy another desktop with Vista pre-installed. So be aware that upgrading to Visita is not a walk in the park. By the way, if you buy the Vista upgrade, MS is not offering "clean" installs, but you can find a workaround to do a clean install on the Net.

Good luck!
orestes

[JeffreyJohnston]

Well I'm not going to upgrade to Vista. I've used it and hate it already. Also, the video card and mobo/processor are the ones from my gaming rig that i am upgrading. The rig is getting the new shit while the HTPC get's the hand me downs. The stuff that it is getting though, isn't all that bad. I'm just looking to watch videos that I've downloaded and such so the whole dual core thing isn't needed. Plus, the HTPC is only going to be on when needed, not 24/7. I have my DVD, X360, PS2 to keep my busy

[Ken Chan]

Quote:

I noticed on the laptop that games like wow and surfing the net... the text appears all blocky and unable to be read clearly.

On the laptop's screen? When connected to the TV, or always? If text is always blocky, there's the simple matter of making sure the Windows desktop is set to exactly match the notebook LCD's native resolution. The laptop screen and the TV's screen are separate, but suffer from the same effect.

Unless the TV specifically has a 1-to-1 pixel mapping mode (a high-end feature), it's always going to do some scaling/cropping of the video signal. So if it actually can only handle the well-defined HDTV resolutions, you will feed it, say, 720p (1280x720), and the TV must scale that to its 1366x768, maybe chopping off a little on the edges (which is OK for HTPC usage) and you have the same effect. What was for example a single, clearly defined white dot on a black background in 720p is now a white pixel surrounded by eight slightly grey pixels when upscaled. When used for full motion video, you might not even notice. But if you use it as a computer monitor, things will be fuzzy. It bothers some people more than others.

So if you can, set the laptop to 1280x720 @ 60Hz. Forget what that looks like on the laptop screen. If you can get that to look good on the TV, you should be able to do the same thing with the HTPC. If that works well, you can start playing around to get the resolutions to match exactly, but that may involve a lot of fiddling.

Quote:

Onboard audio may support SPDIF but the quality isn't guaranteed to be good

That seems like something that shouldn't matter, but because things in the real world can be complicated, it just might. After all, since the sound is all-digital, and especially with an optical connection, as long as the light pulse generator is not affected by the electronics in the computer, how could that go wrong?