DVD Drives - High Quality Picture & Sound (1 Viewer)

[Dingiswayo]

I'm trying to avoid buying a separate DVD player (from my comptuer) because of what I think will be connectivity complications between my computer, receiver and tv. So I'm wondering if anyone makes an upconverting DVD drive. And I've heard that video cards can't support an HD signal from an HD DVD drive or Blu Ray. Is this true?

Also does the sound going from my DVD player via the AC-3 connection to my audio card retain digital quality? How does the quality differ as compared to a nice DVD player?

I have: dual eVGA 7600 GT's in SLI
Blue Gears b-Enspirer 7.1 audio card (w/ optical out to my receiver)
Onkyo TX-SR604 Receiver
Olevia LT32HVE

I have a bigger and more complicated question here but if I can get a digital sound quality out of my audio card and HD picture out of my video cards then I don't have to worry about it. Thanks,

matt

 

[Dingiswayo]

Okay, so I printed out a bunch of stuff from the HTPC forum. Once I go through it all I may have some answers to my own questions which I will post here in case anyone else wonders.

 

[Rommel_L]

Matt,

In PCs, it's not the optical drive that's doing the upconverting, it's the software.

 

[Dingiswayo]

Sweet, this brings me to another point. I just discovered that WinDVD Platinum 8 doesn't play .ts files, which stinks since lots of HD files are in that format. Do you know a good DVD playing software that plays HD or upconverts? I used Media Player Classic until now but other forums say that the guy who made it can't update it any longer.

And in my forum-reading I discovered that my receiver is doing all of the decoding (since I'm assuming that it has a better DAC than my audio card) so all my audio card does is ease the strain on my cpu when I play video games and the like, and my video card should do fine for quality picture. All I need now is a good DVD player, and maybe a better TV, but upgrading is the never-ending addiction.