New to HTPC - Have ?'s

A

AceCurby99

n00b
Joined
Nov 9, 2005
Messages
50
Ok, I'm setting up a small HTPC to hook up to my new Westinghouse 42 LCD that runs 1080p.

I'm gonna be running a P4 3.0 w/ 1GB Ram and a 120GB HD. Basically, its gonna be used to watch TV and play Civ 4 and Eve Online. Maybe a little BF2. I doubt I'll be doing much movie watching - I have my 360 for that. Its an older MB - AGP and PCI only.

I need to know if theres a tuner card that will do full 1080p yet. I can't seem to find one, but I could be looking for the wrong thing. I've read here where I may need two cards - one to do SD and one to do HD. Yes? No? Any tips on a decent AGP card to run to run the above mentioned games at the highest res possible would be grrreat. Thanks all...
 
No such thing as OTA 1080p, so any of the decent OTA HD cards would be fine. Avermedia A180 or VBox DTA-150, something like that. For SD, the nVidia Dual TV, ATI Theater 550, or Hauppauge PVR-150 are good cards.

The ATI Theater 650 is a dual SD/HD card, but if you search here, you'll see it has a few limitiation which make it pretty worthless in that regard. I suppose it's probably decent if you use it as either an SD or HD card only.

Since your westinghouse has a native res of 1920x1080, you're going to need a pretty good AGP card to game at that res. Maybe something like the ATI x1950Pro AGP (which isn't out yet?), 7600GT, or one of the x850 cards? I suppose a 6800GT or 6800Ultra might work as well, as long as you kept the graphics options turned down.
 
The HD capture cards he referred to don't output the video, they capture it from an antenna. Your output will be coming from your video card (most likely from DVI), which is why having a semi-powerful vid card is important when driving your 42" display.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top