[JamesE]

I'm in the process of looking into buying or building a new computer. I haven't paid attention to the HT world for the last 5 or 6 years. Is there an advantage to using a HT computer rather than buying a separate Blu-ray player? All of my HT equipment is 10 years old. My projector has DVI-I inputs. My monitor has DIV-D and VGA inputs. I'm going to be upgrading but not all at once.


My office is in the same room as the equipment room for the HT so I'm not looking at that much extra to add a Blu-ray player, upgraded video card and sound card to the computer. Probably the same or less than buying a stand alone blu-ray player.


Would a Radeon HD 5770 process all of the blu-ray disks?

My situation is that I have an old Sony preamp that does not have hdmi inputs.


As far a sound card goes, I would be willing to get an Auzen X-FI Prelude 7.1 if it would send out the 5.1 audio through a S/PDIF to the preamp and the 2 back surround out directly to an amplifier with the volume controlled by the computer.


So what video and audio cards will work for my situation?

 

[Fallen Kell]

Well, unfortunately with Blu-Ray and s/pdif connections you get a much downgraded audio signal from what is available on the disk. The Xonar Delux will give you analog audio out which uses the higher quality audio stream(s) available on Blu-Ray. That said, you would do much better with the bitstream audio over HDMI in the long run and the 5770 will do that for you, and in the mean time just use the s/pdif connection from a built in audio on the motherboard, until you eventually upgrade your a/v receiver/pre-pro to one with HDMI and True-HD and DTS-HD support.


And yes, with the correct software player, the 5770 will play any Blu-Ray disk without issue (the 5450 can play them as well, it just can't do it as well... you really need a 5650 or above for HD formats).


That said, if your projector isn't HDCP certified you may have problems playing Blu-Ray disks above 480p resolutions. If it is more then 3-4 years old, there is a good chance that it might not be.

 

[JamesE]

Thanks for the reply.


I’ve been looking at the SAPPHIRE HD5770 1GB GDDR5 PCIE. Is there a better video card in the same price range?


Will all video cards with 2 or more ports display different images at the same time? Like on monitor #1 a spreadsheet and on monitor #2 a word processor?


What is required to show 3D movies like Avatar?

 

[JamesE]

I’ve been looking at a couple of different motherboards. Which one has the best audio chip set or does it matter?


GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD5 LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard : Realtek ALC889

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard: ADI AD2000B