View Single Post - HTPC Recommendations

acruxksa · Rated XXX

Kilamon,
You may want to seriously consider getting one of the Radeon 5000 series cards because they are purported to have the ability to bit stream hi definition audio. Last time I checked there was no software support, but it was supposed to be on the way. I'll believe it when I see it, but still the future proof potential is there. I touched on some of the pitfalls of blu ray audio and even a bit of HTPC stuff in a couple reviews I did for BB.com this spring and summer. Basically, my impression was that blu ray hi def audio wasn't ready for the pc. I've actually given up on it and purchased a standalone blu ray player. I just got tired of dumping cash on software players that had limited support and had long lists of movies they didn't support. I'm not trying to discourage you, just point out some of the pitfalls with htpc's and blu ray playback. If you aren't interested in HD audio, then the software works much better. In my case however I just couldn't settle for the standard digital surround when I knew the HD audio track was available. I often can't tell the difference between them, but there are times when it's a noticeable difference.

I was also able to construct a pretty quite HTPC using an undervolted q6600 running at 1.8Ghz. It was way more cpu than was needed, but I had one handy and wanted to see how it handled blu ray. You could probably get excellent performance and thermal results with an undervolted dual core cpu in the 2.0Ghz or higher range.
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