Held back by old DP<->HDMI cable!

djoye

djoye

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 31, 2004
Messages
3,115
For many years I used a Dell Optiplex 990 for a simple HTPC, it played movie rips from a NAS using a variant of Media Player Classic; this Optiplex was connected via a DisplayPort<->HDMI cable I purchased years ago for the purpose of connecting this PC to my AV receiver. The Optiplex never recognized that my AVR supported the Dolby and DTS HD audio codecs, I just assumed that this particular Intel iGPU (i5-2400S) didn't support it.

I recently decided to purchase a newer ultra small form factor Lenovo M900 Tiny as a replacement (something with proper UEFI and modern AV support) and decided to buy a new DP<->HDMI cable to go with it. The cable I purchased was a $9 3-foot cable from Amazon, it arrived hours before the new PC. I connected the new cable between my AVR and Optiplex and found that the old Optiplex now recognized that my AVR supported Dolby TrueHD and DTS MA! I confirmed it worked by playing rips that contained those audio streams and verifying through the AVR's on-screen display that the AVR was receiving and decoding those formats.

I probably obtained the Optiplex around 2014. Did I buy a sub-par cable at that time or are the DP/HDMI feature software-dependent? Regardless, I'm super happy with the Lenovo M900 Tiny, it's an awesome little PC and, with an SSD and UEFI (no CSM), it boots super fast and is very snappy.

I'm currently using Windows 10 Pro since the UEFI has an embedded key; are there any 'media center' Linux builds?
 
Depends on what exactly you are wanting the HTPC to "do". Based on your description above, it's just file playback. In which case there isn't any real reason to change anything. Or you could run Kodi.

If you are wanting "WMC" for DVR (especially with record once flags), then from what I've read, no. Everything after Win7 WMC is a step backwards or just plain doesn't work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top