PC based home entertainment center.

[hornet]

I want to play around with setting up a PC as a dedicated home entertainment system. I need a recomendations for a tv tuner card, both digital and conventional (I will decide later which I will actually use when I can accurately cost the setup). It must have either s-video out or component. I am concerned with the issue of conectivity between the dvd drive and the tv tuner card, I want the best possible picture quality when watching dvd's. The next issue is the sound card. I want optical out and have been looking at Logitech Z-680 speakers for my small loungeroom, but I also want optical to reduce wiring mess and so that I can upgrade to a conventional and higher quality home theater system later. Are there any issues of conectivity between the dvd drive and tuner card to the sound card in order to achieve 5.1 surround?
The next issue is the integration of a universal learning remote to the pc, I'm not sure what questions I need to ask here because I don't even know where to start.
My end goal is to be able to use the tuner card to record to the hdd and then later to a dvd burner in order to replace my vcr, and achieve good quality reproduction of recorded material as well as high quality reproducion of pre-recorded dvd's. All in 5.1 dolby surround.
Cheers...
hornet

 

[Crashman]

OK, I see you're a bit lost.

TV Tuner Cards are INPUT cards, they don't have S-Video or Composite out. Those are features of the VIDEO card.

You have a few options. ATI makes VIDEO cards with built in TV-Tuner, for example, that take the place of both a TV Tuner card and VIDEO card. These are called "All IN Wonder" cards, and their biggest advantage is...they only use 1 slot.

I've done what you're considering already. One day some kids came over and decided it would be cool to play some games on the PC over the TV. Of course, you need a good VIDEO card for that.

The best TV Tuner cards have built in MPEG2 hardware compression. Look to the PVR series from Hauppauge if you can afford them. The hardware compression takes most of the load off the CPU, increasing system performance substantially.

For a VIDEO card, I'd recommend the ATI Radeon 8500LE/9100 or better. Since this will be on a TV, the resolution will be limitted by the TV, and these mid-quality cards can still provide acceptable framerates in games, as well as being inexpensive and offering top notch TV-Out.

If you want a cheaper solution, the ATI All-In-Wonder 7500 has excellent TV out and a fairly good tuner (without full hardware compression). The All-In-Wonder 8500DV offers much better 3D, while being only slightly more expensive.

TV Tuners have nothing to do with 5.1 surround, this is handled by your SOUND card! In fact, the only sound associated with TV Tuner cards is the output from the TV signal itself.

So the best option is a top quality TV-Tuner and a medium quality or better ATI video card. The second best solution is an ATI All-In-Wonder card. Either solution requires a good quality soundcard.

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[Crashman]

BTW, if you would like to avoid learning all this stuff, I can build your PC for you, in a nice case that resembles a home stereo, and lable all the connections so you have no troubles hooking it up.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[hornet]

Hi Crashman, thanks for your help. Like all good answers though, it causes me to want to question a little bit deeper. After reading you reply I went hunting for more information and I think the "All IN Wonder" card may be the solution for me. I understand that a separate sound card is needed reproduce a 5.1 signal but I need to know if the digital audio cable from the DVD drive can accurately carry the soundtrack from a DVD movie? And similarly, is there a connection between the DVD drive and the video card. In your experience, can you tell me how the image quality from a DVD movie in this type of set-up compares to a conventional off the shelf DVD player of reasonable quality? Given that I only intend to use this set-up for watching movies, recording my favourite shows and playing a bit of music; are my options for achieving good quality video reproduction made any simpler?
What are the issues affecting the recording of my favourite TV show to the HDD?
I don’t intend to play games on this system and really, I would prefer to be able to just turn it on, chuck in a movie, press play on the remote and have minimum involvement with the operating system, but this raises all sorts of other (software) issues better covered separately. Cheers… Hornet…