really basic HTPC question - what equipment do i need? (1 Viewer)

[Richard cash]

obvliously i need a dvd rom drive (i have a 16x liteon) but what else.
do i need a decoder card or can i run the decoding off my athlon 2000+ processor.

How do i connect my sound blaster 5.1 live card to my amp so i can have 5.1 sound. can i use a coax lead. will i be able to use DTS aswell as Dolby digital or do i have to get a more expensive dvd rom? can i have 6.1 with it or am i limited to 5.1.

how do i connect it to my TV, can i use RGB or am i limited to S-VHS.

does the quality of the dvd rom make a massive difference.


lots of questions, i hope someone can help.

 

[Brian E]

Need more info. What kind of video card do you have? What kind of TV is it being hooked to?

The 16X LiteOn is a nice drive. Very easy to make Region Free.

Don't know about the 5.1 cards, but my original Soundblaster Live has a daughter card with a digital coax output.

 

[Jedd]

Basically there are 2 options
- you can use direct digital output from sound card and connect it to receiver(preamp), so the soundcard will just pass the row data (there are some issues with re-sampling on the sound card, but it's another story) and receiver will handle decoding, or
- you can use software players with programmed in decoding (xp 2000+ is more then enough) and use your audio outputs and connect them directly to preamp ins on you receiver (amplifier), here you are limited to the number of output channels on the board, if there are only 6 of them, you won't get 6.1 that easy.
Hard to tell which way is better without knowing your equipment.
That's about audio. I do use my 19" as a TV, so can't really say anything about video part. (but my friend has projector and it's really cool )

 

[Richard cash]

this is the full spec of my hardware:

AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Processor
AMD Approved Akasa 785 SE Cooler
15inch relysis monitor
512 MB PC 2100 DDR 266 Memory
Gigabyte GA-7VRXP Motherboard
80 GB ATA 133¬ 7200 rpm Fast Drive
Standard 1.44 MB floppy drive
LiteOn 40x12x48 CD-ReWriter Drive
LiteOn 16x DVD Rom Drive
64 MB DDR nVidia GeForce 4 MX 440
TV Out System with cable
Hayes v92 56K Internet Modem
10/100 MB Realtek Ethernet Card
Creative Labs 5.1 live Sound
Microsoft Scroll IntelliMouse 3
Microsoft Internet Keyboard
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
philips 28in widescreen TV (RGB and SVHS ready)

the post about the audio has confused mee even more now, what is the problem with resampling?

 

[Jedd]

Some massmarket cards (AC 97 based)used to resample all audio to 48KHz no matter what the original rate is. But if you already have 5.1 card with S/PDIF don't bother - it's good enough.