Hd Gear A Waste Of Money!

[PanaSung]

Not sure there's any need for me to say much more than I've already said.

I must admit I'm iching to buy a big dollar PC myself, but I have my own purchase guidelines that I abide by, thus maximizing my expenditure, especially when one factors in the limited "quality" content.

Wombat's comments about downloading HD content are interesting and also scary, ie, I wonder what his broadband plan costs per month...ouchhh.

FYI, 720p=approx 4gig per hour.

[50mxe20]

Wombat's comments about downloading HD content are interesting and also scary, ie, I wonder what his broadband plan costs per month...ouchhh.

FYI, 720p=approx 4gig per hour.

1080's are a lot worse.

There is an excellent thread on PCs called Faster Cpu Or Phatter Gpu? that is worth a look.

[drsmith]

1080's are a lot worse.

Some of those files are very large, as can be seen here.

Looking at hard drives, I found these WD 10,000RPM Raptors. Example here.

What are the advantage of these drives over the 7,500RPM drives to justify the large price difference relative to disk space ?

I'm specifically interested as to whether the Raptors would result in improved performance when playing full high definition material.

[betty boop]

Some of those files are very large, as can be seen here.

Looking at hard drives, I found these WD 10,000RPM Raptors. Example here.

What are the advantage of these drives over the 7,500RPM drives to justify the large price difference relative to disk space ?

25% faster writing/reading to/from disc ?. Seriously though for the bulk of us I do not think downloading 1080i HD content is really a reality. Most people dont have unlimited downloads for this kind of massive data downloads or have the rates to support it. Our computer would be pretty much useless and would need to pretty much be dedicated for download duties if this was how we were to get hd content.

there is hd content on TV, it might be limited but it is there - jsut check anthony semillions sticky

http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=28574

and plus with the hi-def disc formats ...plenty of gorgeous true HD to be enjoyed from that as source as well.

[50mxe20]

Looking at hard drives, I found these WD 10,000RPM Raptors. Example here.

It's a cost or bangs-for-buck trade off. I'd love to be able to have these drives in the system.

My solution is to have one of these as my system drive and then have the SATA2 320 Gbyte 16 Mbyte cache drives for my data. If I have two or more of the latter I stripe them. Some boards, these days, will do this for you and you don't even have to use the software to do it.

[ozdoc]

Most people dont have unlimited downloads for this kind of massive data downloads or have the rates to support it. Our computer would be pretty much useless and would need to pretty much be dedicated for download duties if this was how we were to get hd content.

Somewhat OT, but if you were with Telstra BigPuddle ADSL, and had accidently passed your download limit, a 1 GB HD download would set you back $150 (0.15c per MB) in excess usage fees.... Ouch.

[drsmith]

It's a cost or bangs-for-buck trade off. I'd love to be able to have these drives in the system.

My solution is to have one of these as my system drive and then have the SATA2 320 Gbyte 16 Mbyte cache drives for my data. If I have two or more of the latter I stripe them. Some boards, these days, will do this for you and you don't even have to use the software to do it.

For me it's a question of whether either of the above will result in improved performance with playback of high definition video.

[50mxe20]

For me it's a question of whether either of the above will result in improved performance with playback of high definition video.

There is no doubt 10,000 rpm drives will give you improved performance. If you can afford it and have the room, go for it. Trouble is they are half the size so you need twice as many.

[PanaSung]

There is no doubt 10,000 rpm drives will give you improved performance. If you can afford it and have the room, go for it. Trouble is they are half the size so you need twice as many.

Could you detail the performance issues associated with HD playback?

[50mxe20]

Could you detail the performance issues associated with HD playback?

Just a general statement mate. I do a lot of image processing (worK) and I can tell you there is no subsitute for HD performance. Although CPU and I/O are important too. It's my philosophy and experience that the better you have in each of these three areas, the better the result. I upgrade my PC's every couple of years.

[Anton-P.]

For me it's a question of whether either of the above will result in improved performance with playback of high definition video.

The main benefit of 10Krpm drives is speed of data seek & transfer. If your current 7200rpm drive can play HD video with no stuttering then no you won't see any improved performance.

You wouldn't want it able to finish a 10-minute video clip in 8 minutes would you?

Besides, you don't want higher noise level from 10Krpm in a HTPC.

[PanaSung]

Just a general statement mate. I do a lot of image processing (worK) and I can tell you there is no subsitute for HD performance. Although CPU and I/O are important too. It's my philosophy and experience that the better you have in each of these three areas, the better the result. I upgrade my PC's every couple of years.

Actually, I'm asking whether or not a 10k HD is required to playback HD-DVD/Bray smoothly?

[betty boop]

Somewhat OT, but if you were with Telstra BigPuddle ADSL, and had accidently passed your download limit, a 1 GB HD download would set you back $150 (0.15c per MB) in excess usage fees.... Ouch.

yes well some adsl plans a re a bit scarry. most though will eafult to lower snail pace rates instead meaning the big Gigabyte downloads for HD will end up costing not necessarily more money but lengthy amounts of time. For most not really a viable solution.

that said though I personally think theres plenty around HD wise without having to resort to the likes of bit torrent etc.

[Anton-P.]

Actually, I'm asking whether or not a 10k HD is required to playback HD-DVD/Bray smoothly?

Are you talking about ripping HD-DVD/Bray to a hdd?

If not then 10k hdd is irrelevant to playing back HD-DVD/Bray.

[50mxe20]

Actually, I'm asking whether or not a 10k HD is required to playback HD-DVD/Bray smoothly?

Probably not.

Somewhat OT, but if you were with Telstra BigPuddle ADSL, and had accidently passed your download limit, a 1 GB HD download would set you back $150 (0.15c per MB) in excess usage fees.... Ouch.

Better than the previous topic anyway!

yes well some adsl plans a re a bit scarry. most though will default to lower snail pace rates instead meaning the big Gigabyte downloads for HD will end up costing not necessarily more money but lengthy amounts of time. For most not really a viable solution.

that said though I personally think theres plenty around HD wise without having to resort to the likes of bit torrent etc.

Yes that's what mine does. Until the month is up and you start a new quota. Of course, there is an option to upgrade at any time. It's only money.

[PanaSung]

Are you talking about ripping HD-DVD/Bray to a hdd?

If not then 10k hdd is irrelevant to playing back HD-DVD/Bray.

Yeah, does one need a 10k HDD to playback 1080p content smoothly?

[Anton-P.]

Yeah, does one need a 10k HDD to playback 1080p content smoothly?

Definitely not.

HD-DVD/Bray data transfer rate is (in order of) 10 times that of DVD, whereas current 7200rpm drives are already much faster than that hence no need for 10Krpm.

[SenojNW]

This thread has taken on a life of its own...

What is the topic again?

[hoody1]

This thread has taken on a life of its own...

What is the topic again?

i think it's this -

'when i made the ridiculous initial post comments, I didn't realise the amount of HD content out there and now I am truly sorry for my ignorance and we should all now begin discussing where and how best to get this HD content to enjoy on our HD displays'

[Owen]

There is a VAST amount of 1080 content available.

An unlimited net account is available for well under $60 per month and any old PC can be used as a download box and left running and downloading 24/7.

You do need to be a bit computer savvy to get the job done and some effort is involved, so downloading is not a practical option for everyone.

An easier and cheaper option is to record what little HD content is available on free to air to a PC or PVR for watching at a time that suits you.

1080 HD has a very low data rate of less then 25mbps or a tiny 3.1MegaBytes per second, even a 1990’s vintage hard disk was good for double that.

Modern 7200rpm drives are good for around 10 times that so hard disk performance is a non issue.

10,000rpm drives are hot, noisy and have no place in a HTPC environment, nor do they offer any performance benefit for video.

A single 7200rpom drive is plenty for playback of 1080 video while recording one or two others simultaneously.

Ideally a HTPC would not have a hard disk at all and boot of a LAN, or have only one drive to boot off and store apps. Video data can be stored on a server which can have multi Terabyte storage capacity and RAID 5 fault tolerance. The server can be placed somewhere in the house where its heat and noise are not a problem.

A 100Mbit LAN connection can feed at least 2 simultaneous 1080 video streams, which is fine most situations and Gigabit LAN is overkill.

For smooth playback a reasonable video card is required, but any modern CPU will do.

512meg of RAM is also plenty, so the total system cost need not be high if you only want to play Mpeg2 content. VC1 and other Mpeg4 type video is far more demanding and can require a VERY fast CPU, as video acceleration is in its infancy for Mpeg4 formats requiring the CPU to do most of the work.

Most on line content is standard Mpeg2 transport stream format, the same as used here in OZ for HDTV broadcast, but usually of higher data rate.

For the best possible quality you need to spend big dollars on a video card.

I just replaced an nVidia 7800 with an expensive 8800 just to play video.

People thought I was nuts when I purchased the 7800 to replace a 6600GT just for video playback, but the 7800 was unconditionally smooth with 1080i where as the 6600GT was not.

Older cards like my Radeon 9600Pro work well enough in overlay mode, which is what most TV applications and media players default to, but quality is not as good as the better cards.

The 8800 does not really have significantly smoother motion then the 7800, but deinterlacing performance is noticeably better and colour accuracy, the lack of posterization (colour banding), improved image clarity and smoothness, as well as noise rejection and freedom from digital artifacts are all significantly better then any other video card available at this time. In fact I was surprised at how much better the 8800 was.

So for anyone after the best quality possible today, and have a big screen to take advantage of it, the extra cost of an 8800 is worthwhile.

[PersianImmortal]

On the topic of PCs, just quickly, as people have noted, 10,000RPM drives are mainly useful for reducing stuttering in games. If you have no stuttering playing back high def content on an existing drive, a 10K hard drive won't give any other benefit for video playback. However it does have other benefits of course. I personally use 2x74GB 10K Raptor drives in my system (Built it almost 2 years ago, details here), but they are paired up in RAID0 formation, so it equals one large 150GB drive. This pretty much means I don't get any real stuttering in games or video playback, and I have plenty of room for games, windows and files, but clearly it is costly.

The noise from the Raptors is only marginally above that of a normal hard drive, but if you want a silent HTPC they probably wouldn't be ideal, especially since they're better off with additional cooling.

If you want a cheaper solution, either buy a good large 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATAII drive, or better yet get two and pair them in RAID0, and that should be more than enough for smooth HD playback and give you hundreds of GB of storage as well. Or you can get one of the newer 150GB 10K Raptor drives and use it for storing only your HD content.

In terms of downloads, I'm on Internode ADSL2+, getting 22MBit (around 2MB/s in practical terms) download speed, 1MBit upload, 40GB download cap for $80/month, which I think is a good deal and gives plenty of headroom to download anything you want. If you want even more headroom, you can step up to 80GB cap for $120/month. Remember that the 'unlimited' accounts tend to be shaped at times, or can be subject to 'fair use' provisions whereby if you get crazy on them your ISP will shape or charge you extra.

[Owen]

IDE drives perform just as well as SATA, so if your mother board does not support SATA don’t worry about it.

RAID 0 is a BAD idea for a media PC. If one drive fails you loose ALL you data, and after a while you end up with hundreds of Gig on disk, which is not practical to back up.

RAID 5 is a much better idea, as the loss of a drive can be tolerated with no loss of data.

Speed is not important for storage or playback of video, reliability is.

[Anton-P.]

I just replaced an nVidia 7800 with an expensive 8800 just to play video.

Owen ... is your nVidia 7800 for cheap sale?

I assume it has a DVI output.

[Owen]

Owen ... is your nVidia 7800 for cheap sale?

I assume it has a DVI output.

Sorry you’re too late mate, it’s gone already.

[Anton-P.]

Sorry you’re too late mate, it’s gone already.

That'll cost you another answer then

I have a "spare" PC of Pentium-3 733Mhz vintage with a 120Gb IDE hdd.

Also have separately a spare 512Mb DDR2 ram stick.

Just want to play the occasional to-be-downloaded HD clips to my 50" Pana 768p plasma.

Do I need a new motherboard with a faster CPU? How fast?

Which would be a good enough but economical video card?

Thanks