Upgrade to support HDTV, HDDVD & Blu-Ray

[steve reaver]

My current HTPC is already spec'ed to play 1080p (Blue Ray, H.264) Infact I have watched several HDDVD movies off the harddrive. All I need to do is wait for the price of PC Blue-Ray players to drop to something sane and replace the drive that I currently have.

I really think, that by the time any such decoder card becomes available that CPU speed and software decoding will be more than adequate....

HDCP on the other hand will be the big issue.....

[activ]

I'm already watching 1080p content on my htpc.
All I need now is for mediaportal to be able to play hd-dvd an blu-ray ( and I would be willing to buy a codec or add-on or whatever to get it working ).

I would however still buy an add-on card if it improves playback ( smoother pans and better overal picture quality )

The one thing is though, I'm am looking for a solution to play these disc's on short term.

[druffski]

To be honest, I'm not planning an upgrade to watch 1080p content for at least a year.

As for blu-ray - just saw that the price of this has dropped. However I'm tempted to sit on the fence for another 6 months or so, wait to see what happens.

[Eabin]

i already bought a 8500GT, so i'm waiting for EVR support, which will enable HD in mediaportal for me.

[babaroga]

Originally Posted by dman_lfc

What GPU's in the MacMini? I heard they were getting a decoding on the motherboard...

DMAN

I myself need BD/HD Disc drive to be ready...and a decent player software.

On the other hand, Mac already for an usb h.264 accelerator card that cost around £50 ($100). Have a look at this, and I think that people would prefer USB solution than PCI card these days. Am I right, or am I right ?

http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file...cts_eyetvturbo

and the review

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/05...gato_turbo264/

regards
Darko

[dman_lfc]

Originally Posted by babaroga

I myself need BD/HD Disc drive to be ready...and a decent player software.

On the other hand, Mac already for an usb h.264 accelerator card that cost around £50 ($100). Have a look at this, and I think that people would prefer USB solution than PCI card these days. Am I right, or am I right ?

http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file...cts_eyetvturbo

and the review

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/05...gato_turbo264/

regards
Darko

No thats an encoder not a decoder.
Very cool though

DMAN

[Oculus]

Originally Posted by babaroga

Have a look at this, and I think that people would prefer USB solution than PCI card these days. Am I right, or am I right ?

Depends on the setup.

My HTPC has quite a prominent place in my living room, on top of a very stylish piece of furniture. It's not hidden away in an AV-rack.

I spend a bit of extra cash on a nice case so I wouldn't have to worry about concealing it ( and of course the WAF ) and stayed away from a slim-case, so I could put what I might need inside the case.

So in my case, PCI(e) is preferred.

A friend of mine build his HTPC around one of those small Mac Mini knock-off cases and while it might fit perfectly out of the way, on a shelf, it does start to look rather shabby with the amount of USB devices connected (tuner, sound et cetera).

Additionally, while CPU speeds will certainly have increased enough to allow for HD playback, when HD players and movies go mainstream, I have no desire to replace half my setup to accommodate a new CPU, if I could get a dedicated hardware solution that fits my current setup and leaves my with CPU cycles to boot

[salnajjar]

My cases only available expansion slot is already used by a PCI-X 16 GeForce 8600GTS 512Mb GFX card.

For HD though my media PC should be able to easily cope as is, which is why I spec'd it this way:
4 Gb Dual Channel DDR2 800 ram
Dual core 64bit AMD 6000+ processor
nVidia GeForce 8600GTS 512Mb GFX card
500Gb SATA2 16Mb Cache Western Digital (with liquid bearing system)

The motherboard has 1 spare PCI-X 16 and 1 PCI-X 1 slot available, but there's no slots in my case available.

[babaroga]

Originally Posted by dman_lfc

No thats an encoder not a decoder.
Very cool though

DMAN

Primary fuunction is encoder, however, it works both ways, especially on older Macs !!!!

[Gintas]

Already have gigabyte 8500gt passive+hdcp. It would be nice to have EVR support in MP.

Gintas