The HTPC - a little hub of joy to reside under your television. Its nothing new - they've been around for ages, but yet for some reason no matter how much thread searching and googling I do, I find it difficult to get a straight answer on... anything really... So after a few weeks of endless searching different forums and google queries I have come to you, my league of extraordinary computer-men for some answers... So lets talk hardware. What sort of hardware do I need to get proper 1080p High Definition playback, and what sort of hardware do I need to get an acceptable level of DVD quality playback? With regards to the 1080p, I presume that you will need a fairly powerful set-up to get it going... or do you? I notice that some go for the latest in graphics cards, Radeon HD 4800's and the like, but others manage with lower hardware specs. I happen to have a spare 7600GT lying around, which has this PureVideo stuff, and from what I can tell, it is designed for 'High Definition' applications - Sony used it in their Blu-Ray capable Vaio line... So basically, to be able to play a Blu-Ray movie/ Rip, will I need a GTX280, or will a 8500GT or 7600GT suffice? Or even better, could anyone recommend a nice mid-range graphics card designed for such applications On the other spectrum of things, what do I need for a less hardcore HTPC? I'm sure that most systems could manage playback at standard resolutions, but what about SFFs? Could something like an Intel Atom 1.6 manage to play video at DVD resolutions or better on a 47" HD TV? I suppose Jetway's Mini-ITX C2D capable boards have the umph required, but wha' aboot tha Atom, eh?! Hardware Acceleration I understand to be the use of a graphics card to take some of the load of the CPU during processing (or whatever its called) and I think I'm right in saying that this allows for better HD resolutions confused. Could someone please just explain the use of Hardware Acceleration, when its needed and how to actually do it... Blu-Ray and High Def Playback And finally, how do I play High Definition stuff? If I get a Blu-Ray drive, I understand that software is available for playback, but what if I come across a Rip? Is there software available which can play high definition files? Thanks for time you can spare on the matter, MGT
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=153585 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/02/05/home_theatre_pc_motherboards_feb_08/1 I'm currently testing a 780G and the Jetway 8200 again with HQV and two 45W AMDs, including an £18 Sempron to see if it's HD capable. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/05/20/jetway-jnc62k-geforce-8200-mini-itx/1 Atom I answered last week: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/09/10/gigabyte-ga-gc230d-atom-mini-itx/7
Thanks again to Bindi for those links. The Jetways looks to be a phenomenal little board... OK, another quick question: Should I be able to use a graphics card with a SFF board? A lot of them have a number of PCI slots, so should I be able to use a PCI graphics card with one of these... or would you advise just to stick with the onboard graphics?
