Legit Reviews

Now Im plague-ing the ATI end of the forum. So the idea is pretty simple- my dad wants to use his 42'' HDTV to the fullest by buying a blu-ray player, but I have a better idea! With little persuasion I might be able to convince him that upgrading my old pc could be more cheaper and that may be more functional. Currently my oldie has a P4 2ghz cpu, 640mb (256+256+128) of 233mhz RAM, two HDD's, 550W PSU and a free AGP slot. I am thinking of writing a shopping list of

1. GPU- HD2400 or HD2600.
2. Some cheap blu ray player.
3. Creative sound card
4. Wiring- dvi-to-hdmi adapter and some audio cables.

I would like to know if such config is enough to process blu-ray hi-def content. What is the image quality when using such adapter (FullHD?). What are the options about audio connections to a reciever (I heard that some ATi cards have audio in HDMI). Maybe you could also suggest some not-so-expensive audio card for such system? My Avance97 or something integrated audio really sucks though it supports 5.1 speaker config. Maybe some card with digital audio-out?

What level of HD are you thinking, 720p, 1080i or 1080p? The latter two will need more power than the first.

You might just be able to get away with HD playback with that CPU, easiest thing to do is to download some sample HD movies and see if they will play OK on the PC.

You'd preferably need more RAM.

Would boot up times for the PC be something your dad would put up with?
I've been weighing up the pro's and cons of a HTPC and how long it takes to boot compared to a dedicated player is a really big negative.

Dan

Well I'm thinking of 1080i or 1080p (my tv supports both). Upgrading RAM won't be a problem, but my main concern is the cpu. Will 2ghz be enough? Because I'm not sure what socket my mobo has and how powerful cpu it supports. For one I'm sure- it wont support multi-core cpu's so I might be forced to purchase a higher clock single-core. And what did you mean by saying, that boot times will be a problem? Win XP boots in about 30sec! Also right now I'm choosing a nice ATI card also... Any suggestions?

I guess 30seconds isn't that bad, I was thinking of a fully bogged down windows (which it doesn't have to be for HTPC).

You should get a graphics card which does the HD encoding from the CPU. But they are all PCIe, and I guess this board doesn't have PCIe?

Dan

You're right about the absence of PCIe, but HD2400 and the 1650 pro is available on agp interface. Also GF7600 has some HDTV abilities. Even the ATI 3XXX low range series have agp, but they are kinda expensive..