ClioSport.net

Register a free account today to become a member!
Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Read more here.

i've got an lcd.. now what!!



  172 M69 eater
morning!

wondering if anyone can help me, I've just bought a 32" samsung tv and I now want to get surround sound / dvd / hard drive / hd etc...

what do I buy and why!!!

patty
 
  172
Media Centre PC with surround sound card?

Or surround sound kit and a Hard-drive & DVD recorder.

Personally I'd go for the Media Centre PC, but I'm good with computers, so it depends on your knowledge and confidence.
 
  Better than yours. C*nt.
If you want a Media PC, chuck us a PM with what you want from it, I'll tell you what to order from where and sling us £50 I'll put it together and build it for you...
 
just imagine how much bigger a gash is on a 42" screen !!!!

i know i have one lol. mines off back thos its developed problems !! just going to stick with my old crt for a bit longer as i cant be arsed with the hassle anymore either that or i may just buy a 32" one to tie me over
 
  Rav4
lol its not going to be 10" bigger.

CRT, look so small now:(

LCD's are going so cheap now, i remember the old sony wega CRT's going for 1200!!!
 

Iain C

ClioSport Club Member
out of interest what do u need to make a media center.
pc world are selling em for £1700 with a sony lcd screen.
Im guessng the pc doesnt have to be very powerfull? Just a big hard drive/dvd writer/ good graffix card?
I love all this "get a bigger screen!" I have a 27" and i think that is big enough?
 
you need a pc there you go sorted oh then some software to make a nice front end if you like that sort of thing

and a tv tuner if you want to watch/record tv on it thats all

specs really are just depending on what you want to process on it if you want 1080p you need a semi decent pc

id recommend 2gig ram
dual core cpu of some description and a graphics card with dvi output (depends on your tv tho ) if you could get one that did support hdcp aswell it could help with hd dvd and bluray playing from the pc

oh and shitloads of storage 1 TB should be a starter
 
  Better than yours. C*nt.
you need a pc there you go sorted oh then some software to make a nice front end if you like that sort of thing

and a tv tuner if you want to watch/record tv on it thats all

specs really are just depending on what you want to process on it if you want 1080p you need a semi decent pc

id recommend 2gig ram
dual core cpu of some description and a graphics card with dvi output (depends on your tv tho ) if you could get one that did support hdcp aswell it could help with hd dvd and bluray playing from the pc

oh and s**tloads of storage 1 TB should be a starter

If you want it to process 1080p, then get a mac. Only the Intel CoreQuadro Extreme has anything approaching what you need processing wise for it, and you also need an 8-disc SATA-II RAID-5 array or a decent U320 SCSI RAID array to be able to throughput the necessary data for uncompressed HD video stream.

As for a normal system, I'd spend a decent amount of money. The XBox360's failing is the enormous amount of noise it makes.

I'd aim for a Core2Duo system, as they are much lower power consumption and generate a lot less heat, or even a Socket 479 solution using laptop processors. A Core Duo T2500 is plenty enough for this, and generates naf all heat (and is designed to run slightly warmer anyway!) - and then you just need a 1x PCI-E slot for a decent DVB-T dual tuner card, a 16x PCI-E slot for a passively cooled X1600 or 7600 GeForce card, and a low speed HDD for running OS on.

Then, look at getting something like a Buffalo Terastation or other Gigabit NAS which you can locate elsewhere, and this means you don't have to have 4 disks whining in your ear permanently. Gigabit Ethernet is more than plenty for SD broadcasts.

Alternatively, get Sky+. It's a sin, I know, to recommend lining that jerk's pockets, but it's so much slicker (and more variety!) than a HTPC. Then, get a system not dissimilar from mine which is a Small Form Factor Dell Optiplex GX260 - which is near silent, costs £50 off ebay and all you need then is a £35 low profile AGP graphics card. Plug that into your network, run a NAS or have all your music and smut shared on a big computer elsewhere, and there you go - all the stuff you don't have on your Sky+.

I prefer the latter approach - computer is cheaper, the TV is left out of the equation and it is only slightly harder work, but if you've got a HD Ready screen you want to whack the HD on there and to have a machine process HD signal for the fun of it is stupidity.
 
you dont need all that to play 1080p at all dont be silly a 1080p ts file at about 25mbs upto the full 35 will run fine on a core 2 duo with a half decent graphics card even a mac mini can decode 1080p not the solo one tho
 
  172 M69 eater
its only in his bedroom in a shared house so he wont have huge space (this is unless he has moved )


aye - this man is correct i went for the 32" as it ain't too massive here!!

so help me out, what will a media pc give me? better pic quality? storage? dvd player?

ta

patty
 
depending on your tv and dvd player it may very well give you better video quality but you will most prob have to live with under/over scan unless your tv supports 1-1 pixel mapping


the beauty of a htpc is that it upscales everything to the resolution that your displaying at.

it will also give you alot of storage for ripped dvd's downloaded films, music and a handy way to access it all oh and you can record tv

thats about it they are good but unless you really need it they cost alot for not much use
 
  Better than yours. C*nt.
you dont need all that to play 1080p at all dont be silly a 1080p ts file at about 25mbs upto the full 35 will run fine on a core 2 duo with a half decent graphics card even a mac mini can decode 1080p not the solo one tho

There's a difference between decode and encode. There's only one HD input card on the market at the moment, and that's the Blackmagic, which they've also confessed is going to need a huge amount of processing throughput to record/pause HDTV.

Any further questions?

Adobe PremierePro sysreqs:

Intel® Pentium® 4 1.4GHz processor for DV (Pentium 4 3.4GHz processor for HDV; dual Intel Xeon™ 2.8GHz processors for HD; SSE2-enabled processor required for AMD systems)

Shedloads more power than any Pentium D system going, and only the Core2 Extreme and CoreQuadros come close.

Dedicated 7,200RPM hard drive for DV and HDV editing; striped disk array storage (RAID 0) for HD.
 
  Better than yours. C*nt.
depending on your tv and dvd player it may very well give you better video quality but you will most prob have to live with under/over scan unless your tv supports 1-1 pixel mapping


the beauty of a htpc is that it upscales everything to the resolution that your displaying at.

it will also give you alot of storage for ripped dvd's downloaded films, music and a handy way to access it all oh and you can record tv

thats about it they are good but unless you really need it they cost alot for not much use

There's also the issue that 99.99% of 'HD' displays, including LCDs and Plasmas, are only 1024x768 panels. Only the 5k Pioneer job is a true 1920 pixels wide.
 
the blackmagic card only also does 1080i
at no point has anyone been talking about encoding 1080 footage purely decoding it !
no one would want to encode 1080p footage anyway as no one has any way of capturing it in the first place !
and who said pentium d ?? i said core 2 duo and we are still talking about encoding s**t here he wants to watch TV NOT start a film studio !!!!!!


why only 7200 rpm why not go faster lol i mean the ammount of money you want him to spend he might as well go for the best of everything lol


maybe i should use one of my new servers for hd encoding :)

dual cpu dual core xeon 5130's with 4gig ram 2 15krpm master disks in raid 1 with another 3 10k ones in raid 5 ;)
 
depending on your tv and dvd player it may very well give you better video quality but you will most prob have to live with under/over scan unless your tv supports 1-1 pixel mapping


the beauty of a htpc is that it upscales everything to the resolution that your displaying at.

it will also give you alot of storage for ripped dvd's downloaded films, music and a handy way to access it all oh and you can record tv

thats about it they are good but unless you really need it they cost alot for not much use



There's also the issue that 99.99% of 'HD' displays, including LCDs and Plasmas, are only 1024x768 panels. Only the 5k Pioneer job is a true 1920 pixels wide.

and also on that front your wrong ;) my tv is a 42" lcd supporting 1080p on hdmi, vga and dvi and that cost £989 also th sharp xd1e range is full 1080p as does the sony w series
 
my tv doing 1080p
pc1.JPG


oh and the 360
3601080p.JPG
 
  Better than yours. C*nt.
Wow, isn't your penis so much bigger. There's a rack of 30 near identical spec blades sat next to me, maybe I should use them??

I'm talking about ENCODING because he wants to watch it on his TV, not watch his TV on his computer. Unless he has a HD source, then he won't be decoding jack. So he wants a 1080i compatible video card, which now nVidia and ATI offer in Forceware and Catalyst drivers respectively.

And if you look hard into the spec of the Blackmagic, then you've got 1080p24 and 1080p25 capture.

This sort of expense is why I suggest, certainly at the moment, you need to get Sky+ to record your TV (or similar, but if you get SkyHD you get both that and HD TV) and then you only need a £50 SFF 2ghz PC with a half decent graphics card to get a decent HTPC.
 
what he asked is what can a htpc do for him

he can record tv to a htpc using a tv card that will be encoded in either mpeg2 or mpeg4 but it will not be in a resolution oh higher than standard pal due to the fact the source is only standard broadcast pal !

once he starts watching a recorded tv program back or a dvd or a clip downloaded from teh net he is decoding !!

oh and hd source material is all over the place so he would have lots to decode

he wants to stick a dvd in his pc and for him to hit play and for it to be displayed on his tv (thats decoding) i dont see a mention of him connecting up a very high end sony camcorder to create hd movies ?
 
  Better than yours. C*nt.
lots of irrelevant pictures

My TV will show a 1920x1080 resolution as well, but what I'm saying is the native resolution of the panels are only 1024x768. The TV processes the signal down to fit, because the pixels are rectangular. My Xbox also shows me the same screens, and guess what? So does my 6600 based HTPC, as does my old X1950, now dual-8800 based gaming PC. Truth of the matter is, actually, pixel for pixel my Dell monitor is more precise...

Trust me, I'm not a pub expert ;)
 
  Better than yours. C*nt.
oh and hd source material is all over the place so he would have lots to decode

he wants to stick a dvd in his pc and for him to hit play and for it to be displayed on his tv (thats decoding) i dont see a mention of him connecting up a very high end sony camcorder to create hd movies ?

You've obviously gotten yourself very tied up in your pub knowledge - my whole post at the top of this thread (which you need to read again) suggested two very good boxes which are not of the sort of caliber you're insinuating that I suggested.

You brought HD into this, and I pointed out that to put any HD signal into a computer, you need a hell of a lot more processing power than you seem to believe.

Decoding a file that's on the computer already is only the half of it - but you'd still need a fibrechannel array or a good stack of disks to be able to stream it. Simple answer is disks STILL cannot stream a consistant 25mb a second on their own.
 
  Racin Blue 182
morning!

wondering if anyone can help me, I've just bought a 32" samsung tv and I now want to get surround sound / dvd / hard drive / hd etc...

what do I buy and why!!!

patty

Personally, instead of all this media PC stuff, (which, lets be honest you've got to spend well over 1k to put a decent future proof one together), I'd get a decent dvd/hdd recorder such as the Panasonic EX75 or the Sony 860 along with an all-in-one surround sound system.

This would give the OP the things they required and not cost as much.
 
lots of irrelevant pictures

My TV will show a 1920x1080 resolution as well, but what I'm saying is the native resolution of the panels are only 1024x768. The TV processes the signal down to fit, because the pixels are rectangular. My Xbox also shows me the same screens, and guess what? So does my 6600 based HTPC, as does my old X1950, now dual-8800 based gaming PC. Truth of the matter is, actually, pixel for pixel my Dell monitor is more precise...

Trust me, I'm not a pub expert ;)


my tv does 1-1 pixel mapping fact the panel is made by auo

also an other error is you stating the pixels are square this is only the case on alot of older plasma displays to compensate for the fact they only display a 4x3 image, not lcd's most lcd's have a resolution of 1366x768 and upscale 720p to fit its oddball resolution my tv has a 1920x1080 panel supposedly the same one thats in teh sharp xd1e 42" wich is a CMO panel
http://www.cmo.com.tw/cmo/english/product/showtv.jsp?flag=20050408182850
 
oh and hd source material is all over the place so he would have lots to decode

he wants to stick a dvd in his pc and for him to hit play and for it to be displayed on his tv (thats decoding) i dont see a mention of him connecting up a very high end sony camcorder to create hd movies ?

You've obviously gotten yourself very tied up in your pub knowledge - my whole post at the top of this thread (which you need to read again) suggested two very good boxes which are not of the sort of caliber you're insinuating that I suggested.

You brought HD into this, and I pointed out that to put any HD signal into a computer, you need a hell of a lot more processing power than you seem to believe.

Decoding a file that's on the computer already is only the half of it - but you'd still need a fibrechannel array or a good stack of disks to be able to stream it. Simple answer is disks STILL cannot stream a consistant 25mb a second on their own.


WE DONT WANT HD IN ONLY OUT !!!!!!!!!!
 
  Better than yours. C*nt.
my tv does 1-1 pixel mapping fact the panel is made by auo

also an other error is you stating the pixels are square this is only the case on alot of older plasma displays to compensate for the fact they only display a 4x3 image, not lcd's most lcd's have a resolution of 1366x768 and upscale 720p to fit its oddball resolution my tv has a 1920x1080 panel supposedly the same one thats in teh sharp xd1e 42" wich is a CMO panel
http://www.cmo.com.tw/cmo/english/product/showtv.jsp?flag=20050408182850

Aw, poor you with your inferior blacks.
 
but you think a hd dvd drive can lets take the HR-1100A hd dvd drive as an example it connects via udma 33 (standard ide cable) its bandwidth is far lower than sata2 (missed off a bit) let alone fiber !
 
my tv does 1-1 pixel mapping fact the panel is made by auo

also an other error is you stating the pixels are square this is only the case on alot of older plasma displays to compensate for the fact they only display a 4x3 image, not lcd's most lcd's have a resolution of 1366x768 and upscale 720p to fit its oddball resolution my tv has a 1920x1080 panel supposedly the same one thats in teh sharp xd1e 42" wich is a CMO panel
http://www.cmo.com.tw/cmo/english/product/showtv.jsp?flag=20050408182850

Aw, poor you with your inferior blacks.

the blacks are fine its the coloured smearing (screan goes black then get lovely smearded coloured lines up it) that i object too lol hence its off back ;)
 
  Better than yours. C*nt.
but you think a hd dvd drive can lets take the HR-1100A hd dvd drive as an example it connects via udma 33 (standard ide cable) its bandwidth is far lower than sata2

It can because it's not the same technology. The fact of the matter is, no matter how much we've changed the interconnects, we're still facing the same drawback. We're spinning a sheet of metal around at 5400-10000rpm tops in home pcs to read data off which is also fragmented. A HD-DVD is completely unfragmented and the technology used is capable of sustaining the transfer rate - the single bottleneck is the media we use. Enter the next generation of flash-backed hard disks. ;)
 
i agree but tbh you are usually lucky to find a drive that will hit its max playback speeds anyway there are always overheads. i mean ultra 320 scsi cant sustain its max thearetical bandwidth either. regarding sas is the future for servers these days anyway unless you really want to spend far too much on a san implimentation
 
  Better than yours. C*nt.
i agree but tbh you are usually lucky to find a drive that will hit its max playback speeds anyway there are always overheads. i mean ultra 320 scsi cant sustain its max thearetical bandwidth either. regarding sas is the future for servers these days anyway unless you really want to spend far too much on a san implimentation

I'll buy a pint to anyone that can tell me why CD read speeds have stalled at 52x (with only one drive ever making 60x)...
 
one good reson cd's can explode when hitting 52x +

actually there was a 72x cd drive but it used 7 lasers and an actual rotation speed of 10X
 


Top