OK, I've been on the sidelines long enough! This time I'm definitively going to do it...I think! :p I'm not gonna buy another projector for a loong time, but the 2 1/2 year old HTPC has to go. So now I'm gonna build one with enough power to do HD-DVD and a drive (which I can get for around $140 here in Norway now). Later on it will probably get a BluRay drive as well (when they have at least cut the price in half - a simple reader costs more than $ 400 in Norway now), so it's gonna be able to do both. But what would be the simplest (and for now) cheapest way to get the signal to the projector? I have a very good VGA to Port 3 cable, so if I can make do with that for now (until they start limiting VGA output in the movies) that would be very nice! And that's what I'm gonna do if I'm not missing out on anything doing it that way. So what do the gurus say?

Chance that D9 to 5*bnc and go with port5. It's better port in 808s and high resolutions make difference even bigger.

But I had a port 5 cable first and noticed a clear difference to the better when I bought the Port 3 cable!

Just for your info - LG is soon coming out with a pair of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray combo drives. Best Buy had the LG GGC-H20LI for $299 US and the LG GGW-H20LI that will write Blu-Ray for $399 US. Not too shabby! However, they're no longer listed on their website but I read elsewhere that the drives will be available in the third week of October. I have no idea if, or when, these drives will be available in Norway.

You could also get AnyDvd-HD that will strip HDCP for $79.

Alan, that's interesting! For that price I would get one for sure. They probably won't be that far behind in Norway, we're quite quick at picking up new computer stuff here. And by strip HDCP do you mean that I can output full high definition through the VGA port? In that case that sounds very much like the solution! Do you know if that will give me a better or as good an image as using one of the converting solutions?

Garco Braphics? :)

You tease! You know what I meant! ;)

Does the resounding silence mean that nobody's really tested this, or just that nobody cares? :(

Does the resounding silence mean that nobody's really tested this, or just that nobody cares?

I care, but I have not tested any of it yet. Yes, AnyDvd-HD will remove HDCP encoding so that you'll have unencrypted high-def analog out. You'll also be able to rip HD to disc, but you don't want to do that, do you? :D

No, I don't really want to rip. Isn't that illegal? ;) Seriously, I don't, but that's because it's too much hazzle to do that before a show, especially since it probably takes a while to do a rip. Anyway, Mark_A_W has a nice writeup of his system in this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11826474#post11826474) thread about playback software, and it seems like VGA is just as good as his HDMI input card. And that's really good enough for me. I'm not yet at the point where I'm annoyed that with some reference material and fast A/B switching it may be possible to see a minute difference. :p

But I am at the point where I want to check an ATI Radeon HD2600XT A/B with a GeForce 8600. If I can get them working as they should on my projector with XP, that is. Some say that Vista is the only way to go to get the best playback quality, so I guess it's gonna be a four way installation, with dual boot XP/Vista setup. Now that makes for an interesting weekend...not to mention an interesting week installing all that stuff!

Does the resounding silence mean that nobody's really tested this, or just that nobody cares? :(

No but if you are asking a HTPC question, perhaps you would get better answers in the HTPC forum?
I run HD DVD on my PC via the XBox HD drive. The systems is an ABIT MB, 1G DDR2, AMD X2 4400+, PowerDVD (latest version), XP Pro, NVidia 8800GTS. Run 1080P 60 or 72 into my PJ via RGBHV. Work very very well, stutter free playback.
I have also built another PC in out BR that runs HDMI into an LCD TV that uses the ABIT FD190HD MB w built in video HDMI, Intel Core Duo 4300 (I think thats the number) 2G Ram (it was cheap when I built this), PowerDVD 7.3, XP Pro, 1366 x 760 @60, XBox 360 HD DVD and it works very well as well.

Terry

Terry

Are you using custom timings or just the Nvidia defaults for 60 and 72Hz?

Terry, asking in the HTPC forum won't help much because 9/10 (probably more) of the people there hasn't used a VGA output for several years. They all use DVI, HDMI and other funny acronyms with the D as the common factor! It's really fitting that one of the very few sensible answers to the question "what gives the best VGA output, nVIDIA or ATI" came from Mark_A_W! :D

Besides this is not a HTPC question, like the one I asked there. It's much more of a CRT question because I'm wondering what's the best solution for "the last mile", from the signal source to the 5BNC/Port 3.

Aww..shucks...now I'll all embarrassed...:)


You don't need Anydvd to use Analogue out.

Analogue out is perfectly legitimate, and totally allowed (well, unless they set the Image Constraint Token).

Tor, you don't need a new PC, just a new video card and a drive. My PC has turned out to be massive overkill now that hardware acceleration is working.

But I have no idea about Port 5/Port 3 etc, other than to add I have given up on HDMI and gone back to pure analogue.

Mark

If it helps I can always say that I know you have dark sides to your personality that you don't want others to know about, like torturing spiders... ;)

Anyway, I do need a new computer, because I want to have the option to run HD-DVD without hardware acceleration, preferably with FFDShow, if it isn't possible now, it probably will be in this HTPC's lifetime. Also I have had my current HTPC for two and a hald year now, and that's a new record for me, so I was right in going what some people called "totally over board" in building it. Actually I have never regretted putting too much horsepower into a computer, but I have really regretted the opposite. Not to mention that right now rather extreme processing power (a Q6600 will run at 4 gHz with the right cooling and voltages) is cheaper than ever before. And of course it will be even cheaper in half a year, but in that time I will have enjoyed a lot of nice HD-movies in my home theater! :D

@Mastiff

I would recommend to use a digital output from the computer (e.g. DVI-D) and pipe it to one of John's DVI-D input devices that does the digital-analog conversion very 'close' to the beamer to port 3 (now sold as HD-Fury I believe). In my setup I replaced a 7,5m analog cable with a digital one and for 1920p@47,9.. the difference is quite noticable. IMHO this is mainly caused by the bad output filters on the analog VGA graphics card port (and not the cable) which you don't use then.

On the HDPC details I can't really recommend anything - my current PC is in my office and only used for in-frequent tests (I still love my Momitsu for day-to-day DVD watching) cause I'm somewhat reluctant to build a PC only for movie watching.

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Thanks, Trinitron! I have decided to go for VGA for now, but that may change later. Are you sure your port 3 cable wasn't of bad quality? I have heard about large differences in the cables, and I have seen it on my system (cheap 5 x BNC versus better BNC cables versus Port 3).

I'll give you an alternative to an HTPC that still uses a PC. I have this fantasy that someday I will get another projector and edge blend them. It probably will never happen but I like to think that it will and I'm acting accordingly. Anyway, electronics to do edge blending is pretty expensive and there aren't many vendors, consumer or pro, that include an edge blending option. One company, TVONE, has several scalers that do, the cheapest of which lists at ~$1750 (two needed). But it also has a PC card called the C2-260 ( http://www.tvone.com/c2-260-main.shtml ) for $999 list with edge blending included. This card only uses your PC as a power supply and will accept the VGA output of your video card or any other component/RGB source (as well as composite and s-video) but otherwise does not interact with the PC, although through its RS-232 connection you can use your monitor for its Windows Control Panel software. There's also an onscreen display. Input is via a DB-40 connector. Look at the bottom of the spec sheet for a photo of the DB-40. Pretty clunky looking, don't you think?

The TVONE scaler does not use or rely on somebody else's scaling chip. It's all on firmware and features may added or upgraded as TVONE sees fit. I like that. The scaler is the same used throughout the TVONE scaler line and should be just as easy to use, undoubtedly easier than an setting up a HTPC. My goal is a box featuring the C2-260 and one of the coming LG Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drives, and AnyDVD-HD. I suppose I'll need a good video card also. For me this is attractive because I can sell my current scaler and HD-DVD player and come out about financially even with the bonus of adding Blu-Ray playback. And if my blend dreams ever come true, I can just add another C2-260 and I'm there!

Maybe I don't know what I'm getting into but it appears that I'll soon find out.

It seems like a very cheap solution to blending, yes. But I'm not gonna do that, so I don't think I'm gonna go beyond the regular HTPC with VGA output for now.

@Mastiff

actually yes, I compared it both to my 7,5m Port-3 cable and my 10m VGA to BNC (i.e. Port 5) cable. My point is that you are not using the analog output from your graphics card whose quality depends highly on the cards manufacturer. But with a resolution of 1080p you are using a bandwidth where even the best cards may reach the limit of their analogue electronics ... and with digital you simply bypass it (you still need a high quality DVI-D cable though to not loss any digital data).

Would be great when someone would simply build a 'frame doubler' that doubles the 24p output from an HD player into 48p (with porches and gamma control please) but I'm sure that's not that easy...

.

Gotcha. I may go HD Fury in a while. I guess it's not that expensive anyway, so it's worth buying and trying.