[pimpadelic]

I'm almost set to pull the trigger on starting my HTPC, but I have just a few questions before I do:


1st. Will the Nforce2 board encode *any* analogue source to DD? I see that it has on-the-fly encoding to DD, but my concern is for PVR purposes. I would, ideally, like to record any show I want to DD and then burn it to DVD for archiving or lending to friends. I thought that I was clear on this, but, as is usually the case, the more I read on these forums, the more confused I get. Also, of the Nforce2 boards, which one should I get? The all have their problems, but, from what I've read, the Abit seems the way to go for stability and OCing. Help?


2nd. I have found a site ( www.excaliburpc.com ) that can guarantee me a 1700+ Tbred "B" with almost any MB you can think of, and they give the stepping codes for all chips they sell. This chip, as many of you probably know, can be OC'd to astounding speeds withough even upping voltage (or not too much for really extreme FSB speeds). What kind of CPU and case fans should I get? I know that there are a multitude of "smart" fans out there that can change speed according to heat dissipation, but I'm not sure which ones they are, and, of those, I'm not sure which are the best. Any help here would be greatly appreciated.


Finallly. I decided to go with a Radeon AIW 8500DV as the vid card. I have read multiple threads that praise the radeon line, but I'm unsure it is the best choice for my purposes. I want to be able to play intensive games and display them on my 50" Toshiba RPTV through the component input. I did my research on the ATI site and it said that this was one of a few cards that could use the component dongle and, therefore, save me $150 to $200 USD for the transcoder. I guess my question is this: Will this card faithfully display computer images at 1080i? Will I be able to capture to an Xcapture and still display HD quality from the files recorded?


Sorry for the multitude of questions, but I have become thoroughly confused as to what I'm going to need to use.


Thanks for any help.


Pimpa

 

[orbillius]

the nforce does real time DD encodign for playback, but i do not believe it does this for recording.


I am using an MSI nforce2 board with a 1700"b" I have my chip at 1.6v and it runs all day at 2300Mhz.

 

[lennyr]

Quote:

Originally posted by orbillius the nforce does real time DD encodign for playback, but i do not believe it does this for recording.

Yes, this is correct. Also, when it does the DD encoding, all it does is encode - it doesn't really virtualize. For instance, if you take a two channel source, you can have it create a center channel and an LFE, but if you have it make surrounds, it will just mirror the front L&R (although you can put them out of phase). What the nForce does is in no way comparable to PL2 or L7. You should also be aware that the DD encoding compromises the quality of the audio - its not horrible, but its noticeable.


IMO, the only compelling use of the DD encoding is for taking multichannel positional audio from games and passing it to your receiver/prepro via the SPDIF. If you're a gamer, this is a killer feature, and you won't notice the degradation of quality from the encoding.

 

[pimpadelic]

Thanks, y'all, for the quick responses. That helps to clarify some of my questions. However, it has created another one: Should I even bother using the s/pdif on the board for recording? I have a santa cruz that i had intended to leave in my old machine, but i could yank it out in lieu of this new information. What do I do for recording. I would like pretty good sound for the things that I record, so this is kind of an important issue for me.


thanks again,

Pimpa