FAQ for the 3D HTPC - Page 42

If you're still having issues after checking all the available settings, try connecting the GT620 directly to the TV. That way you can eliminate the AVR from the equation and see whether you can enable 3D directly through the PC to the TV.

OK, I am ready to upgrade my nearly 5 year old HTPC (Albeit it has had some enhancements over the year(s) and rebuild it to near bleeding edge status. I have never really been all that thrilled with the Gigabye GA-X48-GQ6 board it was based on. The Bios is pretty old school relative to the newer GUI interface system of recent Asus boards. I actually built a PC with a newer ASUS board and they just are nice.

My old Q6600 Yorkfield though has been pretty impressive, never really being that tasked. RAM, OTH has been pegged alot with 8GB of DDR2. I run 4 Linksys WME's and when they all stream, RAM usage can go pretty high. Ceton recommends 12GB of RAM to stream to 4 of their newEcho's so, this is where we start. I also want to keep all TV DVR and a large subset of movies on the HTPC. Sometimes, I have streaming problems from my older WHS V1 Server and there are skips, stutters, and occasional stutters so, here goes a list of components I intend to use. I am sticking with Windows 7 for now as it is comfortable for me to operate and I am not really convinced that Windows 8's GUI is very friendly for HTPC use. I have Win 8 on my daughters PC and it really needs an advanced touchscreen or pad to work best. Here is my parts list with questions.

CPU: Intel Core I73770K. (Although an HTPC, I am going to onvert all isos to compressed files. I game a bit and this is the mst important PC in the house; thus no skimping here.

RAM: 1 x G.SKILL Trident X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) Desktop Memory Model F3-2400C10Q-32GTX. Ditto here. I want gob loads of RAM. 1st to run all the streams without issue but wait, there is more. I intend to place Arcsoft TMT plus my rendering software on a RAMDisk, splitting the memory 16gb for the system and 16GB for the programs. I am just learning about this but I should see some amazing speed? Anyone try this yet?

MBoard: 1 x ASUS P8Z77-V DELUXE LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard. Many reasons to go with this board. It can do tons of crazy cool stuff. Here goes my ideas!!!

1). It has Blutooth and Wifi built in; well with an expansion device. This feature allows are fairly easy to configure "remote access" capacity. I intend to use this to sometimes control the PC via a touch device. This may actually go well with Win 8 in the future. Anyone try this?
2). It has the ability to integrate an external GPU with the on chip GPU and motherboard. It appears easy to configure.
3). Intel XPU technology to utilize the extreme speed RAM above.
4). SSD caching. Not sure I wil go this route but it is available.
5). Advanced FanControl2. This will allow custon fan control, ideal for an HTPC environment.
6). It has the superior Intel NIC. In addition, ASUS's network packet control features look easy to use and get good reviews.
7). 32GB RAM capacity -too cool
8). Slick looking BIOS as well as class leading software tools.
9). Enough SATA 3 connections for a 5 drive RAID array. If I use 3TB drives, that'll do it.
10). It can spped up USB 2.0 ports with ASUS technology as well as increase USB 3.0 throughput. I see this as potentially improving performance to my USB Ceton Tuner. Anyone try this on an ASUS board with improvements?

I have other less interesting reasons but in short, this is a state of the art board. It may be overkill but the way I look at it; my primary home HTPC must be fast, stable, and capable of running the home distributed video up to its max capacity.

CPU Fan: 1 x ZALMAN CNPS9900MAX-B 135mm Long life bearing CPU Cooler Blue LED. It's big quiet and from a good manufacturer.

OS/Primary Drive: 1 x SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD). Big enough, fast enough, good manufacturer.

Other Drives: 5 Red 3TB WD's in a RAID 5 format. (Never tried this before - onboard RAID can be tricky but I just need it to go fast enough to serve up media.

Optical Drive: My trusty BluRay/HDDVD Read/Write LG. I want it to play HDDVD's I have not copied over yet.

And now from my old HTPC.

Case: Silverstone CW02/Black. It's big, it's black and it is incredibly well made. Yes, it does not have USB 3.0 fronts and the I-Mon LCD is a touch buggy....... But I want a Marantz AV8801 Pre and they look like twins.


Tuner(s). I Ceton PCIE, 1 USB Ceton.

PSU. 1 x ENERMAX MODU82+ EMD625AWT 625W ATX12V Ver.2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Compatible. It too has enough juice for the whole box.

GPU: 1 x PowerColor Go! Green AX6750 1GBD5-NS3DHG Radeon HD 6750 (Dirt3 Edition) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP ... No fan, low power, works fine for my Sony VPL VW 95 projector.Does 3D. Don't need 4K yet.

Various other doodads and silent fans that I have inside the case. I guess you'd say the case is highly modded.

Software: Arcsoft TMT 5, Win OS 64 Bit 7 (Have copy to upgrade to Win 8), WMC, MyMovies and as well as a few other Media based programs.

So, the build starts next week. Yep, it is overkill but it is an important PC for the house and my old one has issues at times and is getting a touch long in the tooth.

I'm curious what your old graphics card is. When I changed from Radeon HD3850 to HD7750 TMT5 didn't play blu ray at 24p as well. I ran WinDVD and it did better. My guess is old vs. new drivers. I'm interested to see if you have a change in software playback performance. It looks like you'll have a killer PC though. I also agree sub your thoughts on Win8, without touch input I can't see it being too user friendly.

The Powercolor hasn't always received good reviews. For me though, no problems with any type of material. 24fps has not been an issue. ATI's new drivers and GPU's are really quite good. I have had the 4, 5, and 6 series. The only difference betweeen my 6 and 5 boards was 3D, other than that; very stable. I have had some sync issues when streaming iso's direct from the WHS Server but never when I first transfer a file to the drives on the HTPC. My homebuilt WHS server has consistently glitched via the network though. I have tried both onboard and add in NIC solutions. This is one of the reasons I want a Raid array in the box. One less bottleneck for all the DVR functions.

And thanks on the Win 8 feedback. I am getting better at my daughters PC but I have so much mental burn in on previous Windows O/S's 8 is proving to be a weird sort of dual O/S conglomeration that appears to create to many "Franken-PC" issues with media.

Hello everyone.I have some problems regarding playing bluray 3d on my pc
Here are my specs:
Intel core i5 750 first generation
Amd hd7850
Toshiba 42VL963 3D TV
Amd catalyst 12.10

1.With TMT5 I can play 3d blurays only if hardware acceleration is off, otherwise I get artifacts that makes watching almost impossible.On power dvd 12 I think it's the same problem but I don't have the option to uncheck hardware acceleration.
2.Even if I manage to see 3d blurays with TMT 5 , there are problems with subtitles...not all dialogues from the movies are subtitled and I am very sure the problem is not the subtitle cause I have an external 3d player(egreat r6s) and all dialogues in movies are subtitled.
In power dvd subtitles works fine but like I said I can't uncheck hardware acceleration
Could be a hardware problem with my card??I just bought it 4 days ago and in specs it says that it should support 3d playback
In other aplications the video card works fine, all games I've tested were running smooth (nfs mw 2012, far cry 3....)
Has anyone had this problem?
It's really frustrating cause I bought this video card especially for watching 3d blurays, otherwise my old amd hd5870 was enough for playing games and watching blurays

Sorry for my bad English.I am from Romania

I have an amd llano based htpc and I'd like to be able to play 3d video files (mp4, mkv) as well as 3d YouTube. I'm using a very small ITX case and there's no room for a discrete video card and no blu ray drive (I have a ps3 for that) .

Is this possible? If so, what software do I need?

Yes. To play back 3D files, try PowerDVD 12, TriDef 3D Media Player (not OEM but retail [only retail supports Frame packing]) and StereoScopic Player. 3D YouTube is just Side-by-Side, any graphics card will work (as long as your 3D display supports this format).

Any of you guys with a 3d projector(epson 5010) and NVIDIA experience any stutter/lag between the frames? Whenever there's fast movement, parts of the scene is either ghosting or transparent, which really causes headaches. I noticed that this happens way less when the projector is playing at 60hz@720p vs 24hz@1080p. I also notice this problem when I move a window from side to side very quickly, I get the same effect at 24hz. Anyone found a way to fix this problem? I have tried numerous attempts at making a custom resolution to play at 1080i@30hz but failed. Powerdvd frame interpolation doesn't do anything either. You guys think this has something to do with how nvidia can't playback at 23.975hz so everything is a little out of sync (picture and the glasses being out of sync by a tiny amount).

Holy Guacamole!!! I am in the midst of building one mother of an HTPC. CoreI7 Unlocked Ivy Bridge CoreI7, 2400Mhz 32GB Ram, Samsung 256 MB Sata III SSD. Just added the internal Raid for 8+TB of storage love. So far it's all golden. So, I install AMD's version of Ramdisk and stick TMT 5 plus my trusty little iso mounter and what is required to play blu ray iso's. I go from clicking on the iso file to the Blu Ray firing in less than 2 seconds!!!!!! Consistently!!!!!!!!!! I don't know if anyone else has tried the RamDisk stuff but this is so phsycho fast the WAF factor is going up exponentially.

You gotta try this! I still have gobs of Ramdisk space left to install a good rendering software. This is getting good!!!!!!!

I also need the HTPC to stream 4 otherWME's and I see this beast doing this at idle....... Coool, Coool, Cool.

Can you tell this is exciting to me???? OH BTW, haven't even plugged in my AMD 6870 card yet.

I have i3 530 with Intel HD Graphics on Asus H55 motherboard, and I'd like to add 3D playback to my HTPC. I'm thinking of adding discrete GPU like HD6570, but does power consumption will increase much during Blu-Ray playback, idle etc. ?
Can I find somewhere comaring test with this ?

Very roughly, +10W at idle, +20W at 2D/3D video playback.

Thank You very much for fast answer renethx, one more question does HD6570 can output video and audio separately on outputs, I mean on HDMI output Blu-ray 3D video signal, and on DVI to HDMI HD audio to amplifier with HDMI 1.3, if yes which model you recomended. Thank You.

The answer is No. But you can use Intel graphics to send HD audio to AVR and HD 6570 to send 2D/3D video to the display.

Any limitation or downside using this combination with dual GPU ? I hope this will be work with TMT5 but first I have to change TV with 3D in room where I have HTPC.
For now I'm thinkig is it any HD6570 with dual HDMI output like was older Gigabyte 5450, or maybe DVI there with HDMI adapter work like normal HDMI and can output also HD Audio.

For example my H55 Asus motherboard can't output audio on DVI output connected directly to TV, sometimes I use this connection if only browsing internet and I don't want to use AVR [idle power consumption ~120W ] connected to HDMI output in HTPC, but what is bad in this my TV can't receive analog audio, he think it getting audio on HDMI and cut off analog sound, so I don't have sound in this connection.
Thank You!
Edited by PeterPL - 1/24/13 at 6:38am

Using two GPUs to send audio and video separately is no problem, even with a commercial BD player such as TMT/PowerDVD. No single Radeon GPU can send HD audio and 3D video signals over two HDMI cables even if you use a correct DVI-HDMI adapter (or even if you use an active DisplayPort to HDMI adapter with HD 7xxx; I suspect there is no active adapter with HDMI 1.4a converter chip). GeForce card can send audio and video over two HDMI cables, but generally a Radeon card is easier to configure. GeForce GT 630 (with 1600MHz or higher effective memory) is roughly equivalent to Radeon HD 6570.

Thank You once again renethx for all information, so Radeon can or can't because you wrote there is no active adapter/chip ?
Edited by PeterPL - 1/24/13 at 8:15am

As I wrote above, no single Radeon GPU can send HD audio and 3D video signals over two HDMI cables. You have two choices:

1. Intel GPU for HD audio + Radeon GPU for 3D video over two HDMI cables
2. GeForce for HD audio over HDMI and 3D video over another HDMI (DVI+DVI to HDMI adapter is equivalent to HDMI)

Hi renethx, a while back you helped me decide on a graphics card for 3D BD playback. I'm currently using an Intel E8400 (dual core 3.0 GHz), 6 GB RAM, with a Radeon HD7750 and 3D plays back pretty good. Sometimes I wonder if 2D playback at 24p is stuttering or not and it seems like it might be related to which software suite I'm using for playback. Would upgrading to a current generation processor make a difference or is it the processing of blu ray all fall on to the GPU? I didn't want to pay as much for Intel so I was considering giving AMD another try (my last AMD was an Athlon 64 3000+ 754-pin) although I've felt Intel performs better overall in my experience.

Also, with regards to 3D playback software, PowerDVD has a slider to adjust parallax between left and right frames, I don't know if I saw these features on WinDVD and TMT5, but would this be the equivalent setting that my Sony BDP had as screen size under 3D settings? I watched IMAX Space Station 3D and thought it had some pretty bad cross-talk but it may have been PowerDVD rather than the disc itself. Is it best to usually leave at default unless the picture seems really off?

renethx - I looked at your buyer's guide, and maybe this power consumption in BD Playback should be maybe even less than 20W with GT630 If I will buy it, how do you think, here difference is only 5W.
(GT630 should be similar to GT430 I think)



Edit:
I'm searching and searcing and I found HD7750, I see this card have amazing performance per power consumption, but here in Blu-Ray playback it not shine, 22W compare to 12W on GT430 why so much ? maybe something changed in this, maybe this big power consumption was cause by older drivers, bios ?
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7750/24.html
Edited by PeterPL - 1/26/13 at 9:52am

Processor is mostly irrelevant to video playback. If you see stuttering, perhaps it's a software problem. Well, there are a couple of exceptions where CPU plays a major role, e.g. 2D-3D conversion, SVP. E8400 is perhaps too weak for them.

For me, cross-talk looks more related to the display (and glasses) itself. The slider is "3D scene depth" that literally adjusts the amount of 3D scene.
depth

GT 630 = GT 440 (a higher core clock version of GT 430) is a good choice. Make sure to choose a model with effective memory clock 1600MHz or higher.

In my test,GT 430 and HD 7750 consume more or less the same power, ~10W at idle, ~25W at BR 3D playback. Personally I recommend HD 7770 because it supports Jinc3 chroma/luma algorithm for every kind of videos. HD 7750 is good for films.

Thanks renethx. One more question, since the E8400 is a dual core processor, would a quad core or even a 6 or 8 core CPU handle background processes better? I think they final step in prefecting things would be to make sure when Windows Updates wants to run or Kaspersky updates that these won't bog down and cause choppy video playback. I'm not sure what was running earlier today when I started a BD, but it was choppy because something was running in the background.

Record CPU usage during the video playback (use, for example, HWiNFO [HWiNFO Sensor Status > Logging Start ]) and check it later. Unless total CPU usage goes above 90% frequently, perhaps CPU is OK.

After my thoughts I will choose from this two option:

1. I will buy 7750, it's will be I think enough for me, I don't want to much 7770 because this card need 6pin connector I don't know what this is I must check first , and do I need this for watching Blu-Ray 1080p/1080i, Blu-Ray 3D with TMT5 ?

2. I will replace my i3 530 and Asus H55 motherboard, to i3-3225 with HD4000 GPU and motherboard with Z77 with DVI output which can output HD Audio (As i remember AsRock motherboards with H55 can output audio on DVI) maybe you know which current Z77 micro-ATX motherboards also can ?

And my last question does HD4000 can output HD Audio on both outputs HDMI and DVI at the same time ?

Which option from this two you recomended specially for watching movies Blu-Ray, Blu-ray 3D ?

Thank You veeery much for all answers!

Edit:
I found your post here on my previous guestion
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1240499/faq-for-the-3d-htpc/900#post_21122837

So my question is only which micro-ATX motherboard support audio on DVI-HDMI output for Intel HD4000.
Edited by PeterPL - 1/27/13 at 3:45am

Personally I recommend Core i3-530 (CPU+HD audio) + HD 7750 because of better GPU (a lot more shader units, more precise "23,976Hz", support for full range RGB, better compatibility with XBMC [if you are interested in XBMC]).

If you prefer the second option, ASRock H77 Pro4-M / Z77 Pro4-M supports HD audio over DVI (with a generic DVI-HDMI adapter) and video over HDMI, for example.

I will listen you, you are expert and I will go for HD 7750 , yes I also woried about 23,976Hz on HD4000, same problem I have on my Intel HD Graphics, I readed still Intel not fix this, also using XBMC, Thank you very much rentethx for all replies!

EDIT:
I found I think nice card with low power consumption max 60W TDP, also no need 6pin power connection
http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/GTX650E1GD5/

I think maybe this will be better than HD 7750 for me, because should work framepacking to 3D display + HD audio to 1.3 AVR.
renethx what do you think about this card/model worth to buy instead HD 7750 ?
Edited by PeterPL - 2/6/13 at 7:07am

So, to follow up. I can load a 3D movie from iso in less than 4 seconds. This new build is very stable, although it took a lot of time to get the 8 TB Raid 5 Array to build. (Like 4 days)!!! Ram Disk is totally awesome. I wonder why more people don't say much about this technology. Tonight, I will completely back up the main drive and all I have left to accomplish is rendering stuff. I can stream 5 WME's no problem and watch a HD movie.

I have not loaded the LCD software from Imon yet and may just skip it as the whole LCD thing is kind of hokey.

I also haven't tried all the Wi-Fi Go stuff on the ASUS Wi-Fi and probably won't until I am totally satisfied everything is rock stable. I would also like to note the Intel on motherboard NIC card appears far more stable with better throughput than my older Gigabyte older Realtek NIC. This is a big improvement since so much stuff is going on via this primary HTPC. The build runs a bit cooler too and I was able to eliminate a PCI slot fan that was necessary to keep my Ceton InfiniTV cool enough. Result is a still quieter PC. (Not critical as it is behind enclosed glass in the media room). Nice though.

Hello everyone...

Wanting to upgrade my video card and looking for recommendations. Currently running an ATI 4550 and want the ability to pass 3D and bitstream TrueHD and DTS Master Audio. Other system info includes an MSI X58 Pro, Intel i7 2.26 GHz, 6GB Corsair 1333, Corsair 650w psu. Don't game at all. Looking for the best bang for my buck. From what I've been reading the nVidia GT 430 or the AMD 6570 would do the trick. Leaning twords the GT 430. Am I on the right track or are there other cards anyone would recommend? Thanks for any help/suggestions/advice!
Edited by Yawny - 2/18/13 at 8:43pm

Yawny,

If you're not gaming, have you tried just removing the ATI card and running the HD graphics from the i7?

HD 6570 is a good choice if you have a HDMI 1.4a AVR, GT 630 (DDR3-1600 or higher) if you have a HDMI 1.3 AVR, because only GeForce supports video over one HDMI and audio over another HDMI (you will need a DVI-HDMI adapter, of course).

Bloomfield has no iGPU...