Looking for HDTV recommendations.

[philly_phenom]

Right now I have two standard def televisions, but I plan on getting an HD set for our rec room - since MediaMVP doesn't support, HD, I plan on building a client (likely using XP).

Any recommendations for specs?

Would I need quad core? or is dual core sufficient? What are you guys using for display cards?

Thanks.

[bogyver]

I record and play back hd on my system with a sempron 2800 (single core budge processor for those who don't know) and I use a ati x1550 video card using purevideo and only have 512 megs of ram. IMO dual core is more than whats needed and quad core is over kill. Also i have my machine hooked up to my lcd through vga

edit:
My sig changed because I did an upgrade to my system, mobile processor to reduce heat, more ram because more is better

[Koenie]

I absolutely agree with bogyver. By far the main thing is the video card which needs to handle the burden. X1550 or HD2600 are the minimum spec (stay away from anything less, especially the HD2400 is bad).

My machine is somewhat more powerful as it has to do much more than just GBPVR. Looking at current processorprices I would go for the AMD BE-xxxx series if yr machine needs to have some more headroom, otherwise the LE-xxxx will do perfectly fine (these two are much less hot and thus nicely silent).

Concerning the VGA connection: mine is trough VGA also. If you want to use HDMI make sure the native res of the panel you by is in one of the HD native resolutions. Otherwise only use VGA driving the screen directly in the native res. Not driving the screen in its native resolution causes ugly "double scaling" artefacts as both the videocard and the TV set are scaling the videosignal.

[philly_phenom]

Thanks!

[Rickos]

Hi,

A lot of people are going the 2400/2600 radeon route, I've not tried them, but speaking from experience with the NVIDIA hardware, I'm very pleased with my Geforce 8500/8600GT but you do need Cyberlinks PowerDVD installed to make use of the hardware decode in directshow.
It then uses "purevideo HD" which is different from "purevideo" and works well, it offloads a fair bit from the host CPU depending on what HD type you're playing.

I'd be weary of anything too low spec, it more depends on what type of HD you're playing through it, olde-worlde purevideo doesn't do the new native HD formats from what I can tell it's MPEG only, download a few different type of HD vids and see how they play.


I purpose built my current setup to handle HD, and it does it well.
My set is only 720p, but the hardware can happily handle getting some full 1080p source and decode/rescale on the fly and use very little cpu.

Also, worth considering, the newer CPU's use less power than the older generations, so by using old kit, you end up spending more on electricity.


My Spec is:

Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2 Motherboard
this has 4x pci slots for your tuners, 1xpci express and 1xagp, and can take ddr or ddr2 memory

I've tested both Geforce 8600GT / 8500GT with it, both passively cooled, yet to measure any actual performance differences, but there's no usage difference.
The MSI passive 8600GT is very nice though, runs a good 10 degrees C cooler than my Asus 8500GT.

CPU is Core 2 Duo E2160, very cheap, and I specced this so it can handle anything the GFX card can't in case I want more from my system later on.

Mem: 2x512MB of plain old DDR RAM


Reading about the radeon kit, looks like you can push your sound through the HDMI connector from it, you can't with the NVIDIA kit.

I'm using DVI->HDMI, sound comes from the built in sound hardware on the mobo.
I would say also, that the Cyberlink PowerDVD codec/driver introduces crackling into the sound somehow, I think i read somewhere that it downsamples it, so if you do go that route, you might want to change the sound decoder/renderer in GBPVR to another one.

I'd be interested in what you do finally build, and how it performs, keep us posted!

Cheers
Rick

[Smoker]

I am trying to use a 6800GS card (component out) for HD with a hvr1600 (pci) here. In your opinion is that "strong" enough to do what I want ?

[bogyver]

I think it would be, other may disagree but let me put it this way, when I first started doing hd play back all i had was 6200 pcie card. Supprisingly it was able to play back 720p just fine the only issue I had was playing back 1080i would get stuttering due to the deinterlacing (probably a lack of processor power with my budget processor of that time issue).
Given that i was able to play back for the most part with 6200 and your 6800 is way better than my card and supports more of the features of purevideo (the 6200 had the bare bone features)
You should be fine IMO

[daphatty]

The 6800GS will do just fine. I also used to run a 6200LE and I liked the performance. I the 6800GS is considerably more powerful and has more on board memory. I see no reason why it wouldn't work well.

[Smoker]

Good to hear I think hmmmmmm I have to find some other reason then that my clear qam channels play livetv in "slow motion"