I am done tweaking! This is the ultimate DVD HTPC!  

I am done and should finally be able to enjoy my 400+ DVD library "the way it was meant to be played". Thought I'd share this with the other members.

The Hardware:

CPU and video card are worth elaborating on, while other components are not that important for the image quality. CPU should be able to handle software MPEG2 decoding in VMR9 and do rezise to your output resolution. In case of 1280x720 the lowest CPU for smooth playback is P4 2.53 Ghz 533 FSB (this is CPU I have in my second HTPC). After going through a massive number of video cards (just to mention last 18 mos: Nvidia MX-420, Leadtek GF4 Ti 4200 with VPU, FX 5200, FX 5600, FX 5950, ATI 8500, ATI 9600 Pro, ATI 9800 Pro, ATI 9800 XT, Fire GL X2), the favorite by a nice margin is FX Quadro 1100. This is workstation series card based on FX 5700 GPU. Not sure if FX 5700 would provide the same performance. I have this theory that workstation cards just have better drivers, so I finally decided to splash $600 on this card. This card was the last missing link in my setup. I am not sure if FX Quadro 500 could do the job. That is FX 5200 based card that costs about $250.

FireGL X2 (the best of the bunch before Quadro) was good, but for some reason was not able to produce so rich and lifelike colors as Quadro. Colors realy became alive with this card. After some initial VMR9 tearing, 56.72 drivers proved to be perfect. Fresh XP install was necessary to get rid of tearing. FireGL was never able to provide right output for HDCP DVI display, so black level and shadow detail was less than perfect, and whites were a too bright. Whatever I did (clipping signal levels to 16-235, changing colorspaces in FFDShow), someting was missing and now when I have Quadro I know what was missing. Furthermore, FireGL did not have perfect VMR9 chroma/luma synch that Quadro has. This shows as slightly blurry image because chroma portion of the image is a tiny bit shifted compared to luma information. This is finaly gone and I have never seen a more beautiful and clear VMR9 image. Things are poping out right from the screen in 3D. All in all everything this card does is for the lack of the better word, perfect. Output is via DVI 10ft Belkin dual link cable at 1280x720 to my Samsung HLN617W RP DLP display, viewing distance about 1.5 times diagonal screen size (7.5 feet). All gear power stabilized/conditioned with AVS 2000 / HTS 5000 combo.

Despite the high price of the video card, I believe you could put this system together for little over 1K if you save up on the other parts, so at the end of the day this can be afordable HTPC setup. Even with Samsung 61' display, this setup is below 5K and it will blow you away.

The Software:

XP Pro or home (SP1 no updates), with DX 9.0b, Forceware Multimedia Beta DVD playback software, FFDShow (last built in March 04), Avisynth 2.5.5., Nvidia 56.72 drivers. After trying out all the usual suspects (PowerDVD, WinDVD 4.0, 5.0, NVDVD 2.27, 2.55, Sonic), Forceware is clearly a winner. It supports FFDShow postprocessing as well as reclock (that is not necessary as Forceware provides superb sync). FFDShow settings are quite simple. Lanczos (parameter really does not matter that much, I usually have 10) resize to my output resolution of 1280x720. On my main HTPC with AMD FX-51 processor overclocked to 2.42 Mhz, before FFDShow resize I run Avisynth resize with either bicubic (blur and sharp neutral at 0.5) or lanczos resize (depending on the source material) at 1408x792 (max my CPU can handle). Double resize softens the image a bit and gives it more of a filmlike image without loss of detail and even de-rings a bit, again with no loss of detail. All Nvidia driver settings are default. Forceware Multimedia settings are enable Nvidia postprocessing and FFDShow postprocessing and VMR9 support. For the benefit of others, I hope Nvidia will release this software soon.

The Image:

After calibrating my Samsung HLN617W RP DLP display for default settings in Nvidia drivers, the result is what I always dreamed of. Image is very bright, colors are extremely rich and perfectly saturated, level of detail is superb, dynamic levels are excellent with no crushed whites or blacks, blacks are really blacks (probably because greyscale holds almost perfectly) plunge test passes, resolution patterns look great especially the last one in Digital video essentials with green stripes (no other card could produce such solid green edges). I can say without any doubt that this setup produces as good of an image as an average movie theater (of course subject to limitations of a particular DVD transfer), only brighter and smaller. Even good transfers of old movies look wonderful. All in all this is DVD heaven.

Special Thanks:

Goes to Nvidia. Despite my earlier basihing on your drivers etc. you did a hell of a job. Congratulations.

WT-46809,

To the best of my knowledge Nvidia's Quadros (workstation cards) do not support "dongle". Nvidia has some other cards that do. Workstation cards generally have dual DVI output (with two DVI to RGB adapters, so you can go 2xRGB). Not sure about the other workstation cards. Other cards I mentioned, with exception of FireGL X2 are "gaming cards". Difference between workstation cards and gaming cards is primarily in drivers. Workstation cards have drivers optimized for OpenGL applications, and to me they do a better job rendering video with VMR9.

IVB,

As I said in my post I hope Nvidia will release Forceware Multimedia soon, but not sure when.

Gary Rees,

All FFDShow setings are default, so the driver is controling colorspace conversion and is obviously doing it right. I believe DVI interface uses RGB24 colorspace, although most displays have their own proprietary colorspaces. For example, my Samsung (according to Powerstrip and EDID information) has "Samsung0074" colorspace capable of producing 14+ million collors, instead of 16.7 that RBG24 has, and its gamma is 2.4 as opposed to Windows default of 2.2.

NightRain,

I hope you are right, however from press release and review on the web I was not able to figure out significant new features that could improve the image. PS 3.0 looks like all pure 3D without impact on 2D textures in 3D engine.

I hope you will enjoy your 6800. Otherwise no comments.

Andrew,

Yes, you got my FFDShow settings right. I forgot to mention that I use noise reduction filter on my display, so there is no need for using FFDShow noise reduction. Samsung's filter is very good and comes without CPU charge. There is also no need for additional sharpening when I am doing 2xLanczos resize. If I want to soften the image I do 1xBicubic and 1xLanczos or Spline. So, if you don't use noise reduction on your display and if you are doing only one resize I can see a need for using other FFDShow filters.

Jason,

I like the image with FFDShow better than with DXVA. FFDShow scaling is what makes the difference. And with multiple scaling you can get subtle filtering without loss of detail. Forceware Multimedia is very good in software mode, with no apparent chroma bug when used with FFDShow (at least of film based material). Forceware in software mode outputs either YUY2 (without Nvidia post processing ) or UYVY (with Nvidia post processing option, both colorspaces being 4:2:2 with up-sampled chroma), and FFDShow (with default settings) then converts this to 4:2:0 YU12 format for faster processing and outputs in the same format. Video card then up-samples signal into one of the 4:2:2 formats (not sure which one) and ultimately outputs RGB24 for DVI output or RGB32 for RGB output. It is kind of a long way around, but at the end of the day looks great. One could force FFDShow to work with YUY2 or UYVY colorspaces and avoid this additional colorspace conversion, but CPU hit is huge which makes this option impractical.

Li On,

I checked this morning and in my setup with default settings FFDShow input is "YU12 (uncompressed)" and output is "YU12, adj." Although this causes an extra colorspace conversion, it significantly lowers the CPU load for resize. If I "forece" resize in YUY2 mode, I can not do double rezise where first resize has resolution in excess of 1280x720. UYVY is similar colorspace as YUY2, and while image quality is the same, UYVY option reduces CPU utilization by some 5-10%.
Dubmaster,

FireGL 7.93 driver is the most current one that should work with 2.14.3 Rivatuner for 9800 Pro chipset. As noted in my previous posts, I used the most recent driver, moded only to load and function in "limited" mode, not to unlock OpenGL features of FireGL.