HD HTPC ?!

Phrik said:
Is the X-Fi XtremeMusic good for TrueHD and DolbyHD at 5.1 ?
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Yes.. I'm using that one right now. There are only crappy drivers available under Vista at the moment, but it works pretty well. TrueHD sounds amazing.
 
why a 8600 card? Didn't think it even had HD do dx9 cards not support HD?
 
Glow said:
I'm well aware of the card I had a gigantic thread on the crappiness of this generation but I've been enjoying my x1950xt but in the meantime I forget what was it the 8600 was lacking some sort of playback or something vs. the 2600
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The 8600 doesn't do the encryption decoding, whereas the HD2600 supposedly does. I never got a chance to get the 2600 working right because AMD/ATI doesn't know how to make Vista drivers properly in order for it to work long enough so you can test it. Some people here and there get lucky with it working, but there is a huge thread on HDbits about it not working right too.
 
w1retap said:
The 8600 doesn't do the encryption decoding, whereas the HD2600 supposedly does. I never got a chance to get the 2600 working right because AMD/ATI doesn't know how to make Vista drivers properly in order for it to work long enough so you can test it. Some people here and there get lucky with it working, but there is a huge thread on HDbits about it not working right too.
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thats what it was! okay was driving me nuts earlier today
 
HDCP compliant TVs, how will you know that it is HDCP compliant ?
 
The HDTV will have a digital input (DVI or HDMI) that says HDCP compliant on it. Most likely these will be the 1080p HDTV's, but you'll rarely find 720p/1080i HDTV's with HDCP. Some of the newer ones are showing up with HDCP compliant inputs, though I have tested none of them.
 
the last 2 weeks i upgraded my HTPC to HD just by adding the Xbox360HD-DVD + an HD2400 + PowerDVDUltra.. This is coupled to a Westinghouse LWM42-w2 through DVI port (using the Ati DVI->HDMI Adapter and then a regular HDMI->DVI adapter for the TV)..

works great so far..


the rest of the System is


AMD X2 3800+
1Gb DDR Ram (400mhz)
Vista Ultimate (32bit)
750Gb of HD Space
Xmystique


at first i was going to use My Movies to autoplay the HD-DVD but i find its just as good to create a programs shortcut in Media Center and then just goto Programs/PowerDVD and start it up (Media center minimizes and the same remote works for PowerDVD)..

when you want to switch back to media center just hit the green button..
 
w1retap said:
Because ATI's driver support is beyond horrible.
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in the past their drivers have been flawless ever since they came out with the catalyst suite and on time monthly updates (unlike nvidia's total random driver releases)., just seems this HD stuff isnt that great.
 
H-street said:
the last 2 weeks i upgraded my HTPC to HD just by adding the Xbox360HD-DVD + an HD2400 + PowerDVDUltra.. This is coupled to a Westinghouse LWM42-w2 through DVI port (using the Ati DVI->HDMI Adapter and then a regular HDMI->DVI adapter for the TV)..

works great so far..


the rest of the System is


AMD X2 3800+
1Gb DDR Ram (400mhz)
Vista Ultimate (32bit)
750Gb of HD Space
Xmystique


at first i was going to use My Movies to autoplay the HD-DVD but i find its just as good to create a programs shortcut in Media Center and then just goto Programs/PowerDVD and start it up (Media center minimizes and the same remote works for PowerDVD)..

when you want to switch back to media center just hit the green button..
Click to expand...


I thought that HD-DVD playback support is nicely integrated with MCE on Vista... :( Oh well at least the MCE remote control will still work with PowerDVD Ultra. Because there is no way I will be putting a keyboard or mouse near that room. It's strictly media server and player, either music and videos. If maintenance will be required, I will do it remotely off my other PC.

Anyhow how is DivX/Xvid or MPEG4 or Matroska or OGG or H.264 playback support with Vista ? Just the usual XP codecs to be used ? I looked at the sites, and it says nothing about a Vista installation package so I'm assuming they flow the same.

Shoot.... I still have to buy some sound dampeners to seal it up :D

Cheers !
 
i wish HD-DVD was in vista.. kindof sucks that all this DRM requirements are built into vista but the MCE doesn't support the basic HD-DVD/Bluray playback..

its not bad though.. hopefully in the future it will be added..

you can see here http://thegreenbutton.com/blogs/mike/archive/2007/01/14/158640.aspx

he tells you how to auto-start PowerDVD + the shortcut method (i just go with the shortcut myself)
 
H-street said:
i wish HD-DVD was in vista.. kindof sucks that all this DRM requirements are built into vista but the MCE doesn't support the basic HD-DVD/Bluray playback..

its not bad though.. hopefully in the future it will be added..

you can see here http://thegreenbutton.com/blogs/mike/archive/2007/01/14/158640.aspx

he tells you how to auto-start PowerDVD + the shortcut method (i just go with the shortcut myself)
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Noted ! I will see what info I can find on that link when I get home. I'm still waiting for my copy of Vista... it takes a long time to get something in EN version in this country :mad:
 
Phrik said:
Anyhow how is DivX/Xvid or MPEG4 or Matroska or OGG or H.264 playback support with Vista ? Just the usual XP codecs to be used ? I looked at the sites, and it says nothing about a Vista installation package so I'm assuming they flow the same.
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Use the same XP codec packs. They work excellent under Vista.
 
H-street said:
i wish HD-DVD was in vista.. kindof sucks that all this DRM requirements are built into vista but the MCE doesn't support the basic HD-DVD/Bluray playback..
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OMG!! the DRM in vista is there so you CAN play protected media NOTHING MORE, it doesnt magically stop your computer from playing all your ripped and downloaded content what so ever, %99 of people who complain about Vista DRM have never even run into it, a few people had legit complaints, but for the most part it is just somethign people dont understand and toss out to bash MS.


what is stopping you from playing HD dvd's in vista....
 
MrGuvernment said:
OMG!! the DRM in vista is there so you CAN play protected media NOTHING MORE, it doesnt magically stop your computer from playing all your ripped and downloaded content what so ever, %99 of people who complain about Vista DRM have never even run into it, a few people had legit complaints, but for the most part it is just somethign people dont understand and toss out to bash MS.


what is stopping you from playing HD dvd's in vista....
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hddvd.png



the point isn't that the DRM stuff is bad.. its that VistaMCE includes all the required DRM but not the basic playback.. (take a breathe, all of us aren't against the DRM in vista)..
 
H-street said:
hddvd.png



the point isn't that the DRM stuff is bad.. its that VistaMCE includes all the required DRM but not the basic playback.. (take a breathe, all of us aren't against the DRM in vista)..
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That isn't "DRM". Upon Vista's development and release HDDVD/Blu-ray hadn't come along far enough to be able to integrate it into the media center. Hell, PowerDVD is the best solution out there right now to play the next gen formats and it is still having problems. They are releasing patches every month or so just to try to fix it. In the future once we see HDDVD and/or Blu-ray reach a more mature level, you'll see it integrated in with Vista Media Center.
 
w1retap said:
Upon Vista's development and release HDDVD/Blu-ray hadn't come along far enough to be able to integrate it into the media center. Hell, PowerDVD is the best solution out there right now to play the next gen formats and it is still having problems. They are releasing patches every month or so just to try to fix it. In the future once we see HDDVD and/or Blu-ray reach a more mature level, you'll see it integrated in with Vista Media Center.
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IMO this is BS. For one thing MS is one of the guys who helped create the HD DVD "standard" so I would assume that they have some fucking clue as to how to integrate it into VMCE. Second MS has had been saying that Vista would support HD DVD natively. I wonder what happened with that but, shit, they even made the 360 HD DVD drive plug an play with Vista and yet, somehow, VMCE doesn't have the ability to playback a video format that MS helped create?

I can understand MS not writing in support for Blue Ray but no HD DVD either?! Come.The.Fuck.On.

Then again VMCE was simply a visual update and tweak of MCE2k5. I just wish some of the new things that they added in were optional (I don't want Sports Lounge. I don't need it. I want my fucking valuable screen real estate back MS). Then again there's a lot of stupidity to be had when it comes to MS, Vista, MCE and even Extenders.
 
They didn't include it for a reason. They can't even iron the bugs out of Vista so it operates normally as an OS, let alone playback HDDVD's flawlessly. :p
 
CrimandEvil said:
IMO this is BS. For one thing MS is one of the guys who helped create the HD DVD "standard" so I would assume that they have some fucking clue as to how to integrate it into VMCE. Second MS has had been saying that Vista would support HD DVD natively. I wonder what happened with that but, shit, they even made the 360 HD DVD drive plug an play with Vista and yet, somehow, VMCE doesn't have the ability to playback a video format that MS helped create?

I can understand MS not writing in support for Blue Ray but no HD DVD either?! Come.The.Fuck.On.

Then again VMCE was simply a visual update and tweak of MCE2k5. I just wish some of the new things that they added in were optional (I don't want Sports Lounge. I don't need it. I want my fucking valuable screen real estate back MS). Then again there's a lot of stupidity to be had when it comes to MS, Vista, MCE and even Extenders.
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You do have a point there though... :p
 
w1retap said:
They didn't include it for a reason. They can't even iron the bugs out of Vista so it operates normally as an OS, let alone playback HDDVD's flawlessly. :p
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I think the point I'm getting at is that everything surrounding HD DVD and Blue Ray is seriously flawed. On the PC side I think it's fair to say that we're use to crap like this happening (manufactures intentionally crippling their stuff for the PC market; eg NV making Purevideo a hardware feature and yet requiring you to buy certain software in order to use it) but we're also adapt at getting around these limitations (most of the time at least) but when other then the better video quality (but only if you have a TV big enough to see it) everything connected to both Blue Ray and HD DVD seem to be filled with problems/issues. Hell, not even their respective standalone players are unaffected (eg, having to buy another BR player when their next major update comes along cause it's going to be unsupportable on the "older" hardware).

HD DVD was a standard that MS helped create and despite being as involved in it as they are I can't believe that it wasn't included some how (even as an update after it shipped) into VMCE and yet they found the time to not only get the 360 drive plug and play with Vista but to also write support for HD DVD into the 360 almost a year ago and yet we still don't have native support for it in VMCE.

Thats just fucking incredible.
 
Dothan + 7800 is not bad, but I'd think the CPU usage is still quite high. Also it lacks HDCP encryption so Blu-Ray or HD-DVD is out of the question. (Of course you can get around this with AnyDVD, etc.)

Not sure why the link I posted takes to the flower show? I meant to link "BBC Motion Gallery: Japan". That clip is brutal. (Go back to HD Gallery and look for 'BBC Motion Gallery: Japan')
 
Dumm question:

I understand that the 8600 cards will decode H.264, do I still need to install x264 for playback of other media files that are encoded in x264/H.264 ?

I researched and couldn't find an answer... so what do you do if you already have an 8600 (HDCP compliant) video card ?
 
I finally got everything assembled. It's awesomely quiet ! It's like passively cooled !

...anyway...

I got the TV all hooked up and etc. I'm not running Vista yet because it's taking like forever to get an english copy here. I'm testing with XP MCE right now. But here is the problem...

The TV says the resolution that it is providing is 1920x1080 and on the PC itself says it's set to 1920x1080. They seem to understand each other well. But the output is kinda out of the screen limit. it's like a 50pixels out of the screen on all four sides. I can't see the taskbar, I can't see the side most icons. But they are there...

Any suggestions ?
 
hmm.. at 1920x1080 @ 60hz, it should not be past the boundaries. Maybe try going in the TV's menu and changing it to dot-to-dot (1:1 pixelmapping), or something similar. Make sure it not doing some sort of zoom mode.
 
Phrik said:
The TV says the resolution that it is providing is 1920x1080 and on the PC itself says it's set to 1920x1080. They seem to understand each other well. But the output is kinda out of the screen limit. it's like a 50pixels out of the screen on all four sides. I can't see the taskbar, I can't see the side most icons. But they are there...

Any suggestions ?
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It's called overscan and it's perfectly normal. There are adjustments for it in the control panel for the video card. Sometimes it's called screen size.
 
Found the problem ! Yes it was just zooming at 16:9 basically overscanning... I've set the TV to "Just Scan". It's giving me 1920x1080 exactly on the screen. I have to replace DVI/HDMI cables though cause this ordinary stuff kinda really sucks. It's like having cheap VGA cable on a 1680x1050 monitor. Everything has a shadow...
 
Ok guys there goes one, hope somebody can help me with it

Right now I'm building a new home theater, already bought onkyo tx-sr805 and internal HDDVD drive, my HTPC is a P4 3.4 EE, 1GB DDR433, and ATI HD2600 pro AGP, so far I haven't bought a TV set with HDMI or DVI inputs so I was thinking that for the moment I could use my TV component video inputs to watch HDDVD and enjoy Dolby true HD sound until I buy a new tv set.

My problem is that when I set powerdvd 7 ultra to down convert HDDVD to standard definition I get the image on the computer monitor but in the extended desktop I get nothing.

Can somebody tell me how can get HDDVD material through component video outputs.

Thank you.
 
Video will only be played back on the primary moniter (in this case the PC moniter, it won't play on the extended moniter).
 
Two options:

Clone Mode and the same resolution on both screen. Then it will work.

or

Extended mode, start the movie on the main monitor. Drag it over to the secondary. In Vista it will continue to play but in XP it won't. Simply stop the movie while its on the secondary monitor and start it again. I think it has to do with DXVA, it does only activate on the monitor where the movie plays.
 
w1retap said:
The HDTV will have a digital input (DVI or HDMI) that says HDCP compliant on it. Most likely these will be the 1080p HDTV's, but you'll rarely find 720p/1080i HDTV's with HDCP. Some of the newer ones are showing up with HDCP compliant inputs, though I have tested none of them.
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Not a true statement. Taken directly from hdmi.org

"With certain exceptions, nearly all HDMI devices on the market include HDCP support. DVI devices, in particular earlier versions of DVI, are more likely to lack HDCP support."

So if it has HDMI inputs, you are pretty safe.
 
So if it has HDMI inputs, you are pretty safe.
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Also, not exactly true. A lot of the early HDMI equipped TVs didn't do HDCP for one reason or another. Any recent devices with HDMI will support HDCP though which is true for the most part of DVI equipped devices as well (about 90% of DVI inputs will also support HDCP but read your box/manual and do your homework before assuming that it does).
 
wheels2040 said:
Not a true statement. Taken directly from hdmi.org

"With certain exceptions, nearly all HDMI devices on the market include HDCP support. DVI devices, in particular earlier versions of DVI, are more likely to lack HDCP support."

So if it has HDMI inputs, you are pretty safe.
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That why I said it will say HDCP compliant on it if it is. I didn't think it was really that hard to understand.
 
Crap I still can't find anything about my HDTV if it's HDCP compliant. If anyone finds any info if my Samsung LE-37M86BD is HDCP Compliant, please let me know folks !

Cheers !
 
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