HTpc Newb

[chrisb1]

Hey everyone I recently started thinking about an HTPC for PVR functions and have found this site. I have a 36" hd crt set, and use digital cable with no hd source at the moment.

My current understanding is that for the best quality I should use a hardware based mpeg card like the pvr 250 or 350 and then use a good video card with a component adapter coming out of the pc to the receiver/ tv. If I do this then I dont think I would need a multimenia specific card like the AIW but Im not sure. I have also read that you have to run several filtering programs to get a decent picture, but most of those people sounded like they had very large displays and mine is only a 36".

Please tell me if that sumation is wrong, also, the 250 and 350 cards have tuners built but I will not need the tuners since I have dig cable. That isn't a problem right? Can you just bypass the tuner option? I know I will need an IR blaster or something to control the cable box. Is there generally a big delay in response when using this type of solution? I have seen mention of using serial ports to control sat boxes, my motorolla cable box has a serial port, is that a possibillity?

I may upgrade to an HD cable box, I know there is no solution current to record the HD channels but would I be able to record those channels in standard def? Would non HD channels be a problem through the newer box? It would be motorolla as well.

I know lots of questions, any input is appreciated

[stanger89]

Wow, this all sounds familiar. It's a lot like my setup.

SageTV to 36" 4:3 RCA MM36110 (if you're interested).

Sounds like you have it pretty well figured out, should work fine, but I'll post a couple of thoughts.

-No point to the 350 if you have an HDTV as you won't be using the decoder.
-Don't need (or want) an AIW, I'm using a Saphire Radeon 9500, it works great.
-I'm just using Sonic Cineplayer Decoder and the PQ is excellent, I've played with Elecard+Dscaler but it wasn't much different.
-Lots of people here used Cable/sat boxes with the x50s. You could also probably connect the cable directly to the 250 to record the analog channels. Some people have 2 tuners set up, one strait of the cable for analog, and another through the box for everything, that way you get most of the benefits of multi tuners without the complexity of mutiple cable boxes.
-I've heard IR takes a couple seconds, since it has to be transmitted slowly to guarantee it works.
-Serial should work, hopefully someone else can verify.
-Should work just fine with the HD box as well (if it has S-vid or composite out), you might even be able to record things from the HD channels (in SD) if the box outputs them over S-Vid as well.

[chrisb1]

Good input, thanks

BTW, it sounds like you do not use the IR, do you have a cable / sat box to control?

[stanger89]

I just have standard cable, no box.

[chrisb1]

How is your PQ on replay and watching live through the pc? I know cable doesn't look that great on a HD set anyway but are you loosing any PQ through the pc?


Do you use your set for DVD watching? A lot of guys claim that if you use the filtering and de-interlacing programs it is much better than a dedicated DVD player but most of them are running huge projectors. I am curious if someone with the same size tv as me sees a benefit.

[cassis6]

I have a 29” monitor (800x600). Using ffdshow + elecard codec + dscaler improved the PQ a lot.

The big picture improvement for me was using the ffdshow filter to scale to my native monitor resolution.

[stanger89]

Originally posted by chrisb1
How is your PQ on replay and watching live through the pc? I know cable doesn't look that great on a HD set anyway but are you loosing any PQ through the pc?


Do you use your set for DVD watching? A lot of guys claim that if you use the filtering and de-interlacing programs it is much better than a dedicated DVD player but most of them are running huge projectors. I am curious if someone with the same size tv as me sees a benefit.

Here's my experience on two TVs.

36" RCA 4:3 HDTV @1280x1024i
The TV displays 480i at 480i so you get highly anoying scanlines.

Through SageTV the picture is much better than direct to the TV. I attribute this to a) the PVR 250 having a better tuner (my cable is not good) and b) my Radeon 9500 having better output to drive the TV than the TV's tuner stuff.

DVDs, SageTV vs Pioneer Elite DV-C36
DVDs are also much better. The biggie is that the DVD player must resize anamorphic DVDs from 720x480 to 720x404, loosing about 80 lines. With SageTV and Sonic Cineplayer filters (Same as used in Theatertek), anamorphic DVDs are displayed at 1280x720, the picture is quite noticably sharper. The color is probably a notch better out of my Radeon than the Pioneer.

46" Mits 16:9 HDTV @1776x1000i
This is my parents' and is on better cable. The Mits automatically deinterlaces 480i to 480p. Here SageTV is a solid tie with direct to the TV, I can't tell the difference between direct and through SageTV.

DVDs (vs. same Pioneer Elite)
This is also a close one, I haven't done any great comparisons, enough to prefer one over the other for strait DVD playback PQ wise. There are some distinct advantages to the HTPC; ripping DVDs "Movie Only", avoiding trailers/warnings; online DVD library, watch a movie at the press of a button; and (not Sage Related) WMVHD, the newest Coral Reef Adventure in High Def Windows Media is awesome, much better than DVD.



I took my Pioneer DVD player home to my parents since I haven't used it now that I use SageTV for everything.

[chrisb1]

Good stuff, thanks