Setting up a PC home media center for newbie advice sought.

[geepondy]

Hey guys, my friend emailed me the following and I'm not really knowledgeable enough to give him accurate advice and thought this would be a good place to post this as the people here have helped me in other areas.

Hey, I wanted to set up a PC at home as a Media Center PC, and I wonder if you have ever done anything like this?



I know I need:

HDMI card… to drive my plasma TV
Quality sound card to hook up to my stereo
TV tuner card


I have a pretty new PC with Vista Premium, so I think this should all be possible, although I have no idea how to do it.

[Nelson37]

HDMI card, yes IF and ONLY IF it supports HDCP.

Sound card - probably not, if this is a new pc, should be OK out of the box.

TV Tuner - no. Almost obsolete already, will be completely useless in a year or so.

Does he wish to record? Or just play back movies?

If recording is desired, a whole bunch of options open up. Free OTA digital capture, with HiDef? Real-time MPG, or more compression desired? Simple video-in? How technical is he?

A DVR with HD is easier.

[hulinning]

You can either get ATI Radeon Sapphire HD2600 XT or NVIDIA 8600GTS to ensure you can play all movies to your HTDV set through hdmi port.

Only these cards that I would recommend to you can support hdcp that would allow you to view blue-ray/hd dvd movies.

These card is not only good for playing movies but also good enough for playing video games in Vista using DirectX10.

You got in the right direction that uses a PC as HTPC for playing your movies. It is a little not convenient as network dvd but it is never obsolete and can support all kind of movie formats and subtitle format.

It might cost a little more than network dvd but it would save you a lot in the long run.

I use it as a media player to direct video signal to my HDTV HDCP set and send digital audio signal (AC3/DTS) through spdif to my audio receiver. All of my movies are stored in other pc located in my office and served as media file server.

It would save me money and time for burning movie to dvd so I can play on dvd. it is now in the past. No more buring video on dvd.

You also need to install the latest version of ffdshow to allow you to send digital audio to spdif to your receiver.

Make sure you got a audio card that can support spdif output and install latest driver that support in Vista and spdif output.




Thanks