TV-Out and Sound Card HW Suggestions?

[JTestman]

I plan to have a dedicated HTPC to play DVDs and watch TV from cable or DTV and possible light gaming when family is visiting. I’m planning on not using a PC monitor and will connect to the system remotely if I have to.

My initial HTPC will be based off a Dell GX110 PIII 633GHz with 512MBs and a 7200RPM 120Gb drive. I plan to upgrade into a quieter smaller system if this works out.

After reading many posts on this forum I’ve decided on the PVR 250 as the capture card instead of the PVR 350 because DVD playback isn’t available.

1. What MPEG2 TV-Out card should I buy? From reading it sounds like the Matrox 550 TV-Out card supports interlaced video and looks good over Svideo, but won’t display the Sage OSD. Is this true? I’m outputting to a Sony Trinitron 35 Model KV-35V65 via Svideo or AV connections

2. What sound card should I go with that’s capable of feeding my Sony STR-DE685 receiver? The receiver can accept component video, optical, digital coaxial in and A/V hookups. I want the ability to have surround sound and Dolby 5.1 from DVD’s and whatever signal comes from DTV or cable.

Receiver manual:
ayuda.sel.sony.com/documents/tv/KV32S40.pdf (http://ayuda.sel.sony.com/documents/tv/KV32S40.pdf)


3. Any recommendations for a DVD drive, is there a special type for PCs that support progressive scan?

Any help would be great! I have a feeling this is going to cost more than a Tivo in parts but will have greater returns.

[mlbdude]

1. The 550 is just a normal video card with good TV out for standard TV's. Using its SVIDEO you can output in pure properly synconized interlaced mode. Not how it works myself but that is what I am told. You will still need to get an MPEG2 encoding card like the Hauppauge 250. The 350 or XCard are the hardware decoders that don't display the OSD (though the 350 will be supported in version 2.0).

2. You can get dolby digital output from DVD's with a soundcard that supports SPDIF passthrough and has an appripriate digital output. You can not use Sage and get 5.1 with digital cable. Only stereo and basic surround if it is encoed in the stereo stream.

3. If you ouput via the 350, or XCard you will not be able to use progressive output. You only want to do this anyway if your TV is an HDTV and can accept a 540p, or 720p signal. If you have a TV that can do this, then you don't want any of the above output cards. Get an ATI 9500 or greater with a component ouput adapter. Or you may be able to connect via a DVI. The ATI will allow you to display in almost any output resolution that an HDTV could support natively.