Help with this setup

[Arioch5]

So I love my sage setup and now my dad and cousin are both jumping on board for sage too. However, they've both got a nicer setup than I do and I just want to make sure I know how to help them get it set up properly. Here's what I'm looking at.

I will be outputing video to a 1080p 56" HD TV. From what I've read you can only record HD OTA right now (is this correct) but either way the HD that's offered in the area isn't that great of a selection. So we'll only have SD cable available.

My dad is also buying a HD-DVD player that says it can "upconvert" standard DVD's to the HD definition. I know this won't be HD quality but I assume this helps reduce pixilization on these huge 56" screens.

The TV has 2 HDMI inputs that accept the 1080p inputs. So is my best bet for SD quality tv simply to get a very nice video card and do post-processing to try and get as crips of a signal as possible?
Are there hardware pieces that "upconvert" like the DVD player says it will, if so is it better or worse than the software optoin?

I just don't want the SD signal to look like crap on such a large screen. If I'm correct and just using the sage comptuer to process the signal is the best option can I get 1 or 2 videocard suggestions that people with these large TV's have been happy with?

Is there something I should know as far as codecs, drivers, etc to get the best output signal? I'm just not even sure where I should be looking for more info right now.

Thanks for getting me started. I can setup sage in SD no problem I just want to make sure there isn't something big I'm missing about putting out a signal with HDMI and high res.

[blade]

You don't need to use any software post processing. A good video card can do most of the work using its hardware capabilities and it will upscale the SD to HD resolutions.

The 7xxx series of Nvidia cards and the Nvidia decoder is going to give you the best quality. Outputting to 1080p is very demanding on the video card and "faster" models aren't always faster when it comes to playing back video. For example I've heard the 7600GT is actually better with video than the 7900GT due to its higher clockspeed. So you'll probably want to do a good bit of research on the video card.

I know a few others are ouputting 1080p so I imagine they'll have some good advice.

[lobosrul]

You will probably need to use Nvidia's Purevideo decoder for 1080p output (if you want it stutter free).

SD will look like crap on a 56" monitor. Theres really nothing that can be done about that. To my eyes it looks even worse on a DLP than an LCD/plasma.

I hope your dad didnt buy an HD-DVD player just for its upconvert capability, I bought a cheap (under $150), DVD player that upconverts to 720p (yes it does improve the pic quality). Of course now I use Sage so I dont really need it.

As far as Hi-def thru cable/sat check out this thread for cable:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9288

And this one for Sat:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...hlight=nextcom

The Sat solution is expensive, but if you can afford a 56" Hi-def, i guess it isnt that much. The cable solution has a major drawback (5C encryption on some chans, seemingly at random).

There MIGHT be a new devolopment, see this thread: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19871

I'm going to buy one of these cards when theyre released (mid October), and see if its feasible to use one. (if not I'll sell it back on ebay and lose 40 or 50 bucks).

[Arioch5]

As for the HD-DVD player it hasn't be bought just yet, but it's main purpose is to play HD-DVD's. I only mention it to ask about a hardware upconverter. But it seems a good video card can handle it.

I've seen the thread on Cable HD and quite frankly it's just to much for me to be able to set up the FireWire right now. I'll don't live in the same city as him and setting it up seems much to complicated with to much chance that it won't work right now. I think we'll be waiting for better integrated HD solutions as well as better HD options in his area.

The Sat solution I hadn't seen before. I'll look at it and see how expensive we're talking.

What I don't understand is why you said "SD will look like crap on a 56" monitor." The 56" DLP looked good sitting in Best Buy running off cable which was obviously being split to run a bunch of TV's. Wouldn't sage working off a non-split cable produce at LEAST as good quality as that? I mean I know it won't be HD.

[lobosrul]

Did you see a store demo with standard def being played back? Yes Sages playback of SD should look as good (if not better).

Its just the size of the TV, and only having 480 interlaced lines that makes it look bad. If your standing 20 feet away it would look OK i guess.

EDIT: It took me about 1 hour to get cable playback from firewire working. This was after I already had OTA hd playback working, and a firewire card installed, and after finding the guide on post #835 in that thread. Explaining it over the phone however would be virtualy impossible.

[Arioch5]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Did you see a store demo with standard def being played back? Yes Sages playback of SD should look as good (if not better).

Its just the size of the TV, and only having 480 interlaced lines that makes it look bad. If your standing 20 feet away it would look OK i guess.

Yea I wasn't there but he ask the sales guy to turn off the HD-DVD they were showing and tune it to the same football game that the others were showing. I guess the question here is ... was Bestbuy using an HD-signal for the football game. I didn't think about that, it could be that it was ESPN-HD they were running.

Originally Posted by lobosrul

EDIT: It took me about 1 hour to get cable playback from firewire working. This was after I already had OTA hd playback working, and a firewire card installed, and after finding the guide on post #835 in that thread. Explaining it over the phone however would be virtualy impossible.

WoW that's great! I'm off to post 835!
Now if only the cable provider offered HD in more channels! If I can do it with the Fire Wire that sounds like a LOT cheaper option!

Edit: For anyone else thats following this looking for HD info. You want post 831 I believe. There's a nice guide in both .doc and .pdf format.

[lobosrul]

Agh, sorry ya, #835. The one with the nice simple graph; im going to try and build a new graph sometime soon, to boost the audio levels.

[blade]

Sigh..........not the SD is going to look like crap on a large HD display again.

I have analog cable and two 57" HDTVs and the PQ looks fine. It's not going to look as good as an HD signal, but it's very watchable. There are many people with SD using HDTVs that size or larger. If the PQ was really that bad this wouldn't be the case.

[lobosrul]

Heh. Put it this way. It wont look any better or worse than a large screen SD monitor... which is to say, crap; atleast after your used to HD.

[blade]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Heh. Put it this way. It wont look any better or worse than a large screen SD monitor... which is to say, crap; atleast after your used to HD.

I totally disagree, both of my HD sets look far better than equal size SD monitors. Before getting a HD set I was using a 52" SDTV and it didn't hold a candle to my HD set when watching SD content.

I don't see how you can say they're going to look the same when a HD set has a much higher resolution.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by blade

I don't see how you can say they're going to look the same when a HD set has a much higher resolution.

Because the source is the same resolution. My neighbour has a large Sony flat screen CRT-projection, standard def. To me it actualy looks a little better displaying standard def than my 720p LCD.

I bet it has a "line doubler" though.

[blade]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Because the source is the same resolution. My neighbour has a large Sony flat screen CRT-projection, standard def. To me it actualy looks a little better displaying standard def than my 720p LCD.

I bet it has a "line doubler" though.

The source may have the same resolution, but it still displays more pixels. With a good signal and scaling a HD set can look better IMO than a SD set with SD content.