DVD thru Sage

[paulbeers]

OKay....so I am going to make the plunge. I had (what I thought was) a nice Progressive Scan DVD player from Toshiba (piece of junk it turned out) and it died on me after only owning it for 7 months (90 day warranty on a BRAND NEW dvd player not refurb) and so rather than spending 120 bucks on an upconverting DVD player, I am trying to convince my wife to let me buy a new DVD burner (probably an NEC 3550a) and put an old dvd-rom/CDR drive into my Sage client (currently only has a hard drive and no optical drive). This will be the first time I have used a dvd-rom thru a computer hooked to a tv. What are the draw backs of doing this? What is the WAF on using a sage box with dvd rather than a seperate component? My wife liked the simplistic life with a component dvd player. What am I going to have to buy in order to keep Doby Digital and DTS as far as a Sound card (yes I am only using crappy onboard sound right now)? I do not need the card to decode as my receiver already has built in decoder so I just need to pass the digital stream? What about the chaintech 710?

P.S. I am using cyberlink codecs so that is not an issue.

[AboveUnrefined]

Seeing how you are using the AMD64 platform I'd bet that your "crappy" onboard audio has some sort of SPDIF output. You'd need a sound processor (a good home theater unit) that can handle your SPDIF output -- There is also a chance that your DVD ROM might have a spdif out, but I never dealt with that before.

We need to know what hardware is exactly in your computer to determine this, at least what major chipset your board is using (nforce3/4?).

You'd probably find it easier to rip your dvd's on your computer for easier access, but I think you should be alright as far as dvd playing goes with your current setup after some tweaking.

[paulbeers]

Actually my server has spdif output, but my client is a SIS 760GX chipset and does not have spdif output. That is why I am looking for a cheap card with Spdif output. My Receiver is a Kenwood 409? w/ DD and DTS decoders w/ both Digital Coax and Optical inputs. So am I to assume (and we know means to assume) that the sound card will just pass the raw digital audio track with no conversion whatsoever via digital connect and therefore do not need anything "special" as far as the audio chipsets? If so I am probably going to go with the el-cheapo Chaintech AV-710. I "have to" end up with DD and DTS out of my receiver (hey I spent this gosh darn money on everything I had better have the sound I paid for!).

[AboveUnrefined]

The only thing that stinks about it is that you are using a SIS chipset and you're eating a PCI slot away... SIS + PCI SOUND = High probability of imperfection in sound (clicks/pops) and system instability.

If I was you I'd just try it and see how it goes, SIS can get funky but when you get it to work well it usually stays solid. I'd definately stay away from soundblaster.

Have you seen this: http://royalbusiness.com/product_inf..._id/6173/scs/1

??? that might be better though I can't say because I don't have it -- it is cheaper and cooler (Unless you NEED 7.1 audio, which I think is overkill already).

[dfitz43]

I have a couple of clients with the AV-710 and digital out via sp/dif to receiver. I don't know anything about the SIS chipset, but as far as the Chaintech goes, I have no problem getting DD and DTS to my receiver from my DVDs and no issues with sound quality. I'm definitely not doing anything "special"--pretty much just works.

cheers,
Dave

[paulbeers]

Great! That is exactly what I wanted to know. Guess my next step is to order a new DVDR (slide an old one from my main rig into my client) and a Chaintech 710! More toys!

[mruseless]

I've been very happy with my HDA X-Mystique Gold. It converts most signals to Dolby Digital Live on the fly, and will pass DTS over S/PDIF too. I use Toslink cables (optical). Sounds great.

My motherboard is a Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra. It does have onboard audio and S/PDIF, but I find the X-Mysique sounds better. I've got a Denon receiver and B&W speakers.

Eric in Denver