HTPC... your thoughts...

Rockfella

Rockfella

Playing BFV
ex-Mod
Hi all,

Need suggestions buying a HTPC for a friend.

Prerequisites:

ATI video (on-board or dedicated with HDMI) Please suggest motherboard and cpu. Entry level ones only please. I don't want to run 64 bit OS and don't want to be future proof for 5 years and don't care if MS comes out with windows 10 that needs a quad-core. We don't need a powerhouse workstation. Dedicated sound card. Please suggest good ones. Asus xonar series is in my mind. Audio card & speakers need to be digital.

Dell 24” LCD OR any 32+” LCD TV.

Seasonic 380 W PSU.

Z5500 Logitech monsters. Any cons of getting these?

Cabinet: Lian Li PC C-34.

PC-C34

Any idea about cost and availability? Any other suggestions on HTPC cabinets? Hauppauge Win PVR 150 TV Tuner or something better?



Budget: 70k.



TIA.
 
You can get the new pineview ATOM dual core processors like D510.

Your previous ATI card ( 3450/3650 IIRC ) is good enough to pull the HD movies upto High@4.1 AVC profile. But if you want to play the 5.1 AVC High profiles too then you have to get nVidia cards ( GT210 is perfect for this need ).
 
Low power consumption is not highest priority. PC will be used for office work etc as well. What is 5.1 AVC High profile?

sabby said:
You can get the new pineview ATOM dual core processors like D510.

Your previous ATI card ( 3450/3650 IIRC ) is good enough to pull the HD movies upto High@4.1 AVC profile. But if you want to play the 5.1 AVC High profiles too then you have to get nVidia cards ( GT210 is perfect for this need ).
Click to expand...
 
H.264/AVC is a standard for video compressing. Long story short, it has various profiles as well as many levels for compressing video data into different bitrate. If you have a camera mobile, you might observe that it records video and store into H.264/AVC High@3.1 profile. Similarly, 4.1 level of the High profile is the standard for Blue-ray disk. H.264 codecs are designed such a way that GPU shaders can be used to decode the video. As the official Blu-ray profile is HIGH@4.1, all ATI cards support upto 4.1 level. But some encode at 5/5.1 level to reduce the size without losing much quality ( e.g. - various 1080p rips or some 1080p trailers ). nVidia cards support 5.1 profile.

You can check out further info here : H.264/MPEG-4 AVC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fortunately, almost all of the 720p videos are made into 4.1 level. :)

And if low power consumption is not your priority then go for the Athlon II X4 series.
 
Will it make a real world difference if i stick with ATI while running 1080P content? No ATI card supports 5.1 profile? :(

sabby said:
H.264/AVC is a standard for video compressing. Long story short, it has various profiles as well as many levels for compressing video data into different bitrate. If you have a camera mobile, you might observe that it records video and store into H.264/AVC High@3.1 profile. Similarly, 4.1 level of the High profile is the standard for Blue-ray disk. H.264 codecs are designed such a way that GPU shaders can be used to decode the video. As the official Blu-ray profile is HIGH@4.1, all ATI cards support upto 4.1 level. But some encode at 5/5.1 level to reduce the size without losing much quality ( e.g. - various 1080p rips or some 1080p trailers ). nVidia cards support 5.1 profile.

You can check out further info here : H.264/MPEG-4 AVC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fortunately, almost all of the 720p videos are made into 4.1 level. :)
Click to expand...
 
No no. Its not that all 1080p contents are created in 5.1 HIGH profile. But some of them are. As far as I know, no ATI card support the 4.1 HIGH profile so no DXVA. But a quad core athlon will do fine to render the content. Also, you may observe shutter for a moment while seeking and you can't run CPU heavy programs in the background.
 
This is interesting:

capturezj.jpg


http://www.guru3d.com/article/inno3d-geforce-gt-210-and-220-review/9
 
Stick to what TH has suggested.

About sound card and speaker, your budget is a key here. The Xonar is a nice contender but ain't a be all solution a higher budget bracket throws some interesting solution provided you need them. :)
 
dose a video card decode al the audio formats of blue ray and send to the hdmi port. if so is it necessary to buy Av receiver which again needs to do it. i am confused. is it not better to get a audio card if such model exist which can handle every formats available today
 
Please post whenever u have time. I am in no hurry but would like to know more.

sarang said:
Stick to what TH has suggested.

About sound card and speaker, your budget is a key here. The Xonar is a nice contender but ain't a be all solution a higher budget bracket throws some interesting solution provided you need them. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks :)

bigbyte said:
Well, in simple words, nVidia cards are better when it comes to decoding AVC videos, they are fully dxva compliant and nvidia's CUDA technology significantly reduces the CPU power required for decoding High profile AVC videos. As suggested previously GT210 is perfect for your need. This page may be of your interest Watching H.264 videos using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) | My collection of short anime reviews
Click to expand...
 
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