Home Theater PC Thread

[gIzzE]

Marcus,

get yourself "Powerstrip" and the drivers for the sony w900?? monitor, this will allow you to get a pixel perfect set up for your plasma.
You may need to adhust the timings in powerstrip, but when you get it right it will snap into place.

You could also download Dscaler and a cheap Pakard Bell Tv tuner card (use the S-video/composite input only, not the tv tuner) to scale external devices to match the native resolution of your monitor.

Once you have Powerstrip set to match the native resolution of your monitor you should have an image to rival a dvd player costing ?1000's.

[gIzzE]

Powerstrip can be found here

http://www.entechtaiwan.net/index.shtm

In your plasma manual it should have the timings you need to get your display pixal mapped, it will look somthing like this


H res: 852
V res: 480
Refresh rate (Hz): 60
Pixel (Mhz): 30
H visible (dots): 852
H total (dots): 955
H front porch (dots):19
H sync (dots): 48
H back porch (dots): 36
H blanking time (dots): 103
V visible (lines): 480
V total (lines): 525
V front porch (lines): 10
V sync (lines): 2
V back porch (lines): 33
V blanking time (lines): 45
H frequency (kHz): 31.413
V frequency (Hz): 59.835
V sync polarity (TTL): -
H sync polarity (TTL): -
Dot rate (Mhz): 30

If you dont have the manual search on their website, well worth doing as the diffierence is not subtle

[marcus]

Ive changed the resolution to 852 x 480 as mentioned, yet theres still a (roughly) 2 inch border around the desktop.

This also results in a bordered DVD window when using Theatertek and Letterbox option.

I have also set it to 848 x 480 and have the same border. If anyone can help me optimize my screen Id appreciate it, the manual I have is very little help at all. I tried stretching the screen, but it wont go far enough. I thought the idea was that it would output to my entire screen, with no borders?

[marcus]

I have now what I believe to be a pretty high quality DVD performance, using FFDShow and Theatertek. Ive given up on 1:1 pixel mapping as I simply could not get it to work, instead, the image is scaled to the desktop resolution of 1024 x 768, and still looks pretty good.

[Mike UK]

Well I have a Hewlett Packard Media Centre PC m390n. Closest link I could find:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/hpdirect/shopping/scripts/product_detail/product_detail_view.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1892598459.1081523888@@@@&BV_EngineID=cceeadcleidgfddcfngcfkmdfondfgf.0&landing=computers&category=desktops/media_center/m400y_series&subcat1=rts&product_code=EPP_00_DQ171A%23ABA&catLevel=4

It runs Windows Media Centre XP, and I use it that software to record TV, play music, view photos, listen to the radio etc. You can of course control it all through the remote control, so it hasn't been switched off since I got it (just pressing a button on the remote puts it to/from standby). Having Tivo capability definitely changes the way you watch TV, (I like the way you can search by keyword, actor or director name etc) and the ability to ffwd adverts is invaluable (especially in the US where I live). The tivo service is free as well once you have the PC, it just d/l's the latest schedules for your area from the net. Plus the DVD recorder has been earning its keep as the 200gig HDD gets full after a week or two of recording four or five programs a day.

I have it hooked up to an NEC LT240K projector via the DVI output, and standard CRT flatscreen monitor. Speaker wise I have it plugged into my home theatre system. The only part that hasn't gone as I would hope is that I haven't been able to get the Audigy 2 to output 5.1 surround. My amplifier only has digital audio in (coax and optical), and line in sockets. You need a six socket pass through apparently to output 5.1 to a system with a built in DD decoder.

Since getting it I have recently added another 1gig of DDR400 RAM, and as it turned out the 512mb already in there was DDR400 (which I didn't expect) I left that in there too, so it has 1.5gig of RAM! I also upgraded the gfx card to a Radeon 9800 pro. This gave me some cooling issues, but I've since installed a couple more case fans and it runs smoothly again. On 3Dmark2k3 I'm getting around 5800 or so with no o/c.

The box itself looks pretty stylish, and I've been generally impressed with the HP's I've had before so here's hoping this one goes well. Oh, and the 7 in 1 card reader is useful for d/l my digital camera shots quickly too.

Total cost, $1240 for box (corp discount), $150 for monitor, $160 for 1gig crucial RAM, $215 for Radeon Pro 9800, $30 on case fans. Just under a grand in pounds (gotta love US prices!).

Any questions on the Media Centre software etc, just post or pm.

[gIzzE]

Ive changed the resolution to 852 x 480 as mentioned, yet theres still a (roughly) 2 inch border around the desktop.

This also results in a bordered DVD window when using Theatertek and Letterbox option.

I have also set it to 848 x 480 and have the same border. If anyone can help me optimize my screen Id appreciate it, the manual I have is very little help at all. I tried stretching the screen, but it wont go far enough. I thought the idea was that it would output to my entire screen, with no borders?

Did you install powerstrip?? you need to change the porch settings etc. till it is a perfect match for your display, it is the only way you can do it.

[marcus]

I altered them quite a bit, on different resolutions but could not change them enough to properly fill the screen before the signal went out of range and unviewable. I felt in the end, it wasnt worth the hassle as I must of spend about 3 hours trying to get it right, and got nowhere at all really. So its 1024 x 768 for me, Im also tinkering with FFDshow which I think gives me a slightly more defined picture.