HTPC or good DVD

The "Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity" results can be misleading because they only test deinterlacing capabilities, which is only one aspect of image quality. For most decent film-source dvd's, it just isn't that important to have the best deinterlacing. For poorly authored video source stuff, a good deinterlacer can be quite important. HTPC's have a big advantage in scaling (dvd players can't scale at all, and HTPC's make some of the best scalers), cool image processing stuff (sharpening and denoise filters in ffdshow), and ultimate tweakbility. Plus, if your display device takes DVI signal, your HTPC can feed a bit-perfect signal. Lots of great little reasons to go with the HTPC, though it is certainly not for everyone - think of an HTPC as a pseudo-hobby.


We're all waiting on good video deinterlacing to debut on HTPCs, it should only be a matter of time with the processing power available. In the meantime, I find that ffdshow + linear blending deinterlace + resize + luma sharpen looks wonderful with my anime collection.


Mike U.

Dustin,


I have both a panasonic DVD player and an HTPC with DVI out.

I personally don't see a big difference in picture quality between the two.

Yes, there is a slight differenc but the average viewer will never notice.


The only real advantage that I see is the multitasking capabilities of the HTPC.

You can use it to play video, MP3 files, use it as a PVR, HDTV tuner etc.

Surfing the net on your big screen and playing video games is a real treat.


But I think the differances in quality of video between the two is over rated.

That is just my opinion however.

Good luck in your decision.


jammarjim

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You should see the picture quality coming out of my HTPC+AE100. Compared to a RP56+Transcoder, the difference is noticable and PQ is fantastic.


Sometimes I question the need to upgrade my AE100 at all... it looks so great! The HTPC on it's own doesn't mean much, it's what software you run on it.


Thank goodness this board is around. Using THeatertek DVD player, and FFDSHOW (as mulveling has already pointed out) yields a phenomenal picture. Without these tricks, the HTPC isn't noticably superior to the RP56 (Transcoder on AE100 yields a extremely clear picture without need for much scaling) But with them... it's amazing!


I'd say that a cheaper projector benefits even more from a HTPC. The more expensive projectors already have better processing built in.


However, if you are the type who doesn't want to put up with hassle or tweaking, then forget the HTPC. Just get a great DVD player and forget about it.

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Exactly. If you don't put a good deal of time and effort into the HTPC, you'll most likely get better image quality with a good dvd player. And that's perfectly fine, unless you're a videophile nut like most of us here. Personally, I've gone from a minimal-effort HTPC to an rp91 dvd player and now back to a "I'm willing to put the effort in" HTPC + ffdshow + zoomplayer (the curiosity of what the fuss was about lead to the second attempt). The ability to tweak the image to what *I* like is priceless.


I've found my projector's image controls aren't the greatest tweaking tools since they affect the color primaries differently, and once you've struck a good color balance over most of the IRE range it's best to leave them alone. With an HTPC, I've got a good way to adjust the brightness, contrast, and gamma controls in a relatively independant manner that affects all the colors in the same way, and I can store as many sets of settings as I like. Yay htpc!


Mike U.