Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater HTPC

Heh, unfortunately I am one of those guys with a faster machine - with specialty heatsinks and fans and PSU's to eliminate noise. The reason I need the speed is for various filters provided by FFDShow which can be CPU intensive (resize, denoise, asharp, etc).

The problem that a lot of those guys have with the all-in-one solutions is the quality of such components, ie onboard video vs Radeon R300 core for a 10bit DAC. Onboard sound which resamples everything to 48khz vs say an M-Audio board which outputs at native sample rate, stability of misc drivers and apps on some of the misc chipsets (specifically the Via chipsets seem to give ppl hell, lot of initial problems with Via chipsets and the H3D)

Eh, I say if it works and your happy stick with what you have. I tried onboard video for a bit (Intel 845g chipset) and I didnt like it compared to the Radeon cores. Sound, I am still personally on the fence, currently I just use SPDIF out for DVD's out of the computer as my Audigy resamples anything else. I may look at the M-Audio Revolution later once the drivers mature a bit to see how the DACs compare.

Sidenote, I will probably build another HTPC from one of those shuttles boxes for my father, he is currently using an old machine that used a older Dxr2 for quite a while, it has a Xcard in it now (component out of the card vs jacking with transcoders on vga) but he wants to play some of the newer games so needs a little more speed.

-pd

Hey pd;

Don't get me wrong. I would spend the money if I needed too if there is definitely a quality of video and sound. Excuse me for being naive on certain things. Can you explain to me that since my mini ITX mobo is outputting my windows sounds and DVD and CD sound through the SPDIF that there is some processing involved on my mobo. I thought SPDIF is purely digital and the digital signal is sent to my Rotel receiver which then processes the sound. So when it comes to digital output the sound is only as good as the outside processor or the receiver. All my windows sounds, CD and DVD sounds play on my receiver and the HTPC is only connector to my receiver via SPDIF connection. So the built in sound chips on the ITX mobo resamples all the sounds from the CD, DVD and computer sounds if outputted to speaker out. But I thought with the SPDIF connector there is no resampling just the pure digital information. That is why I was not afraid to connect my Rotel receiver to that HTPC. Five years ago I would call a guy nuts to connect any computer equipment to thousand or tens of thousand dollar Surround systems.

I would definitely agree with you on the video aspect. The better the video card the better the output. Higher GForce card handle shadding, smoke and other terms like G buffer etc etc... But I was thoroughly supprised with the built in via of these new VIA board. Its tried a lot of built in ones and this is by far a clearest cleanest I've seen. It won't do double duty for 3D games thats for sure since I tried benching it using 3DMark. But for TV and DVD I don't know if you need all those. I'm still waiting for those ITX boards to come out with a 8x AGP slot. One nice thing the new versions have is a onboard connector to boot from compact flash. This even makes the format even smaller. Running an OS on a compact flash would definitely be very very fast but also kinda expensive. Even the new motherboards from AOPEN have tube sound tehcnology for processing sounds. Now thats nuts.

http://english.aopen.com.tw/tech/techinside/Tube.htm

Anyone wanna connect your power amps connected to M80s to the sound output of that motherboard.

Saturn

Saturn,

You may very well have a board that does not resample, they are far and few between from my understanding. A quick test would be the following, pop in a CD hit play and see what the receiver reports. In my case and many others it seems, it will more than likely report 48khz via SPDIF. I have an SB Audigy1, and while it does allow me to set 44.1/48/96 for SPDIF, it has been explained to me that there are a couple layers of resampling and its always best to set the card to 48khz and pass it a 48khz stream so it does not molest it on its way out (DVD's output 16/48khz and all the cards *should* output a bit perfect stream, but others report not always). As for system sounds, just for an example the XP startup wav file is 16/22 so in my case for my Audigy and my onboard sound it is output as 48khz instead of 22khz based on my receivers display.

Now does it really make it difference? Well if the card is passing resampling 16/44.1 to 16/48 PCM stream via SPDIF then the die hard guys will argue that it has been molested and is less than ideal.

I sat down with my box last nite for a good 2 hours or so with a set of Seinheisser headphones and listened to a couple CD's via my Technic's CD player, as well as the HTPC (ripped the CD to wav files). First I listened to PC via its native resampling, and compared it to the Technic's output (both going through the Denon, only difference is the Technic's output is analog compared to the PC's SPDIF interface). I was hard pressed to find any audible differences with my ear's once I brought the output levels, and tone on the PC to virtually the same as the Technics. I listened and listened and when I thought I heard a difference and replayed specific parts I could not really tell the difference. Next I decided to take the advice of some of the AVS forum members by using 'better' software resampling plugin's for winamp (SSRC directsound output plugin) and had it resample to 16/48 in software which should have not been touch/resampled again via hardware and thus should have been 'better'. As I could not tell the difference the first time, I dont know why I bothered as I could not tell the difference the second time. So either the Audigy's resampling is better than they (AVS forum members) want to believe or it simply doesnt matter as I do not have the 'golden ear'. Maybe next I will pick up the Revo board from M-Audio and see what a a native 16/44.1 PCM via SPDIF sounds like compared to the analog output of Technics player, maybe my Technics CD player is crap and I am just hearing crap all around (albeit I always thought it sounded pretty good, and had read long ago that it actually wasnt too bad for the money, its an older SL-PG300 4dac 1bit mash unit)

So I guess in the end it's really up to you and your ears. My biggest problem right now is that with the new Axiom speakers and headphones (picked up headphones this past weekened to trouble shoot some stuff I heard via the speakers) is that I am discovering that a lot of what I listen to (classic rock) are poorly mastered and I can hear bits of distortion. I need to pull out the turntable and see if the distortion is present in the vinyl press, if not I may pick up the Revo card sooner than later and record the vinyls as 24/96 wav files and dump them to DVDR. Or maybe look into some of the universal SACD/DVDA and see how they compare (problem with this is that I don't think a lot of what I listen to is available yet)

Yeah video stuff seems to be changing, with DirectX9 and VMR9 things are going to get really interesting (no more overlay battles). I will have to look into the chipset on your VIA board, I know there are a few guys using the NForce based boards which are NVidia based and seem to have decent outputs for built in video.

Do any of those ITX boards have an AGP slot at all? I know one of the shuttles do, but I dont think that is ITX. If so that would kick ass due to the sheer size and video quality you could get out of such a small box (audio aside as I wouldnt care so long as it output bit perfect DVD SPDIF streams). I could even build a game 'console' out of one for my setup.

That AOpen board looks interesting, would love to hear it for myself just to see if the tubes make any difference

-pd

The AOpen board is a gimmick and nothing else.

Tubes are very sensitive to EMI and there aren't many places in your home with more EMI than inside of a computer. Putting a tube based amp right next to a massive switch-mode power supply is not exactly an ideal situation...

What's more, tubes run hot. That's how they work. The added heat from that device will make quiet cooling significantly more difficult with no real pay back due to all the EMI.

The best option, in my mind, is to offload all your audio digitally to external equipment and deal with it there, be that from an expensive DAC and amp or simply a good receiver.

What pd says regarding the capture cards is largely true. Pretty much all of them suck and can be a pain in the ass. Personally, I'll be using the Hauppauge PVR-250 because it's one of the few cards that's compatible with Win XP MCE and I want the interface to prevent me from having to explain the HTPC to my roommates every day.

If you're married, you'll likely find that interface helpful in dealing with the wife as well...

Semi:

I was going to take the PVR-250 myself but I do not think there is a hardware decoder onboard. There is a hardware encoder for PVR activities. In your case since you will be using the GForce or ATI I believe they have onboard DVD compensation which I am not sure is hardware or just sofware. The PVR-350 is the only one with both hardware encoder and decoder.

pd:

I do not believe any ITX boards have AGP slot. THe board I have has a built in AGP 2d/3d card. I know its not as good as the GForce or the ATI since I benched it on 3DMark. But it does a good enough job on DVD since it has DVD hardware chips on board for motion compensation. and the CPU isnt chugging along during DVD playback.
If you want and ATX slot then for small form factor the Micro-ATX board do have the AGP slot. Its a little bigger than the ITX. But I believe some of those Shuttle box do have proprietary boards built by MSI motherboards and they have AGP slots but in a weird form factor around the size of ITX.

Saturn,

A 933MHz C3 should have absolutely no problem doing the decoding in software. Whatever program you use for watching DVD's (I like Ravisent's product, personally) will rely on your CPU to do the decoding.

Semi:

So if I get any DVD software none of those hardware MPEG decoder doesn't help with the prcessing? I will try out the Ravisent's product. I am still finding a program that will do all medias DVD, VCD, TV, CD. With the Intervideo prduct I have to switch between PVR and WinDVD. It doesnt run within one app like ATI does. Have you tried out that DScaler program?

Saturn
Saturn

Hardware MPEG decoders were necessary when processors were barely breaking the 400MHz mark. Now, they're largely unnecessary. Unless you plan on doing a lot in the background while watching movies, I wouldn't waste the money.

A lot of the functions you want are pretty well served in ShowShifter and its interface is perfect for televisions. I recommend checking that out.

Dscaler is actually what I use to watch TV in my room on my PC as I didn't like having a TV in here any more taking up yet more space. It's picture quality is unparalleled but it's not exactly TV friendly as far as the interface.