[dan76n]

Hi all,

Im looking at upgrading my PC and wondered if it would be possible to use my existing PC as a HTPC?

Below is what I have.


Processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz

Processor Speed 3.12 GHz

Memory (RAM) 2048 MB

Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition


I would need to add a Blu ray player and a HD digital tuner.

Would this be worth it or is my PC to outdated to do this?

 

[whiteboy714]

It can be done with a decent video card. But that depends if you even the right slot. Theres not many good cards for HD that are agp.


I would not want to try to run hd video on a single core processor.


People will tell you it can be done or they do it but I wouldnt try it.


If your mobo has pci express you can slap a decent card in there and offset the video decoding to the gfx. Well your gonna have to do that if you have a chance with that rig.


This is asked every couple days you can probably get better info from those other threads.

 

[davdev]

Can Blu-Ray be done on a P4? Yes, if perfectly setup, however more than likely you will have issues. A dual core is typically a minimum requirement

 

[candre23]



Quote:
Originally Posted by davdev /forum/post/16963732


A dual core is typically a minimum requirement

Nonsense. Any current-gen video card will take care of decoding for BD playback. As Whiteboy said, as long as you have a PCI express slot to load up a Nvidia 9000 series or an ATI 4000 series card, you'll have no problem.


By way of example an ION-based system has no trouble with BD playback, and that only has a 1.6GHz Atom processor. The 9400M GPU does all the heavy lifting.