Htpc And Xbox360 Add On Drive

[Guest teflon]

I have done a big search of this forum and AVS and I think I might need to upgrade my HTPC or buy an xbox but I was wondering if anyone thought it could be possible for me to get smooth HD playback from my current gear. Thanks first to AndrewW who's given me some help already.

My HTPC:

P4 3.4 Ghz single core

2Gb of RAM

Nvidia 7100GS video card (limited to low profile because of a small form factor case and couldn't locate a 7300 card which would have been preferable).

I installed the xbox 360 add on drive (recognised the drive, but didn't recognise the contents of the King Kong HD DVD in windows explorer... is that normal?). Installed anyhddvd trial version, but couldn't get the movie to run in either WinDVD8 platinum or power DVD 7. Thought I'd try power DVD 7 ultra (bit the bullet since if I want this to work, I thought I might need the program anyway - painful credit card experience)... movie played but very jerky.

I understand that my system is bordering on the minimum required and that the first cheapest step might be to try a new video card - difficult to locate a good half height one though. Is it possible to get HD playback on my current setup? I will try ripping it to the hard drive, but would prefer not to do that everytime. The other option is to do a fresh install of everything, because the HTPC has far too many apps on it and is also connected to the internet. Might be best to keep it simple and for home theatre duties only. If it's not possible with the current rig, then I guess I'll either give the add on drive to my brother or buy an xbox360 myself or upgrade the PC.

Thanks in advance

[IanD1503559705]

I have done a big search of this forum and AVS and I think I might need to upgrade my HTPC or buy an xbox but I was wondering if anyone thought it could be possible for me to get smooth HD playback from my current gear. Thanks first to AndrewW who's given me some help already.

My HTPC:

P4 3.4 Ghz single core

2Gb of RAM

Nvidia 7100GS video card (limited to low profile because of a small form factor case and couldn't locate a 7300 card which would have been preferable).

I installed the xbox 360 add on drive (recognised the drive, but didn't recognise the contents of the King Kong HD DVD in windows explorer... is that normal?). Installed anyhddvd trial version, but couldn't get the movie to run in either WinDVD8 platinum or power DVD 7. Thought I'd try power DVD 7 ultra (bit the bullet since if I want this to work, I thought I might need the program anyway - painful credit card experience)... movie played but very jerky.

I understand that my system is bordering on the minimum required and that the first cheapest step might be to try a new video card - difficult to locate a good half height one though. Is it possible to get HD playback on my current setup? I will try ripping it to the hard drive, but would prefer not to do that everytime. The other option is to do a fresh install of everything, because the HTPC has far too many apps on it and is also connected to the internet. Might be best to keep it simple and for home theatre duties only. If it's not possible with the current rig, then I guess I'll either give the add on drive to my brother or buy an xbox360 myself or upgrade the PC.

Graphics cards don't offer very much acceleration for VC-1 until you get up to the likes of the 8800, so you may find even a better graphics card is not enough for high bitrate movies. Unless you also want to do gaming, I think money would be better spent on a faster system than a better graphics card, although I believe cheaper 8xxx graphics cards should soon hit the street. First thing to determine is whether the CPU is enough with your current setup.

Make sure de-interlacing is not enabled and try with hardware acceleration enabled and disabled to see if it makes any difference.

It might also be an idea to bring up the process manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and see how much CPU is being used by PowerDVD: if it goes above 90%, you might be running into CPU limit.

Try outputting audio as analogue rather than SPDIF as I think sometimes outputting digital audio can cause problems.

If none of this helps, then a system upgrade might be in order.

If you only want to play HD-DVD, 720p H.264 or mpeg2 HD, then a reasonably priced upgrade is an Asrock 775Dual-VSTA (or 4CoreDual-VSTA) mobo (~$90) teamed with an Intel E4300 (or E4400 when released, ~$200 and $250 respectively) as it has DDR and DDRII slots and a PCI-E and AGP graphics card slot plus 20pin ATX and 4pin power connectors: great for re-using components from the previous PC. By overclocking the E4300 to 266MHz FSB with stock HSF, the speed is roughly equivalent to a Intel E6600 (the E4400->E6700).

With a similar overclocked E4300 upgrade and an ATI X300 graphics card, I can play HD-DVD with about 50% CPU and it isn't jerky.

[Guest teflon]

Thanks IanD... Will try a fresh install first and see what happens. I was thinking that the best interim solution would be to get an xbox 360 and do a proper PC upgrade with a bit more research and funds handy ... I wouldn't want to upgrade now and then need to upgrade very soon... PowerDVD was only using 40% CPU when playing back the movie. Will report back after the system rebuild (hopefully it doesn't take too long!)

[IanD1503559705]

Thanks IanD... Will try a fresh install first and see what happens. I was thinking that the best interim solution would be to get an xbox 360 and do a proper PC upgrade with a bit more research and funds handy ... I wouldn't want to upgrade now and then need to upgrade very soon... PowerDVD was only using 40% CPU when playing back the movie. Will report back after the system rebuild (hopefully it doesn't take too long!)

If PowerDVD is only using 40% CPU, then I doubt your system needs upgrading. However, make sure that wasn't a spot check at the beginning or during a quiet scene: VC-1 is variable bitrate and can drop quite low during portions of low motion, giving a false idea of the actual load; the jerkiness you mention could be during peak bitrate.

If you were using digital audio output, then try analogue audio out as I believe there were some issues with spdif usage.

An Xbox 360 has a few limitations: mainly no multichannel analogue audio or HDMI audio to make use of TrueHD and other high resolution audio formats (maybe resolved with the release of the HDMI enabled Xbox 360), plus possibly noisiness and of course cost. But if you want to do gaming too, then it could be very worthwhile.

[Guest teflon]

Thanks again. I am aware of the limitations of the xbox 360 especially in terms of sound ... analogue output would be best for me since my receiver is a Denon 3805 - I'm therefore waiting for the toshibas to drop in price a bit. I was hoping to use the add on drive as a temporary solution since it's not too expensive. I'll check the CPU usage again once the rebuild is done (almost complete!).

Will also try analogue audio out as a measure too but in the long run I would prefer spdif of course. Am currently using a USB2 Audigy NX as my sound "card". Do you know of any low profile sound cards that output spdif?

In terms of gaming? Perhaps I would if time allowed ... if I didn't game I could always set it up as a media centre since it would have better WAF than a HTPC ... WAF is still important in my house with regards to the HTPC even though my wife works in the IT industry. Go figure!

[ocujos]

teflon,

have a look at the link I posted here.

You should be able to watch smooth HD with only a $200 upgrade for a Nvidia 8600GT!

[drsmith]

I too have purchased the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive and hooked it up to a PC.

Connection to the PC was a complete success with Windows Explorer able to identify the "King Kong" disc. I was also able to browse the contents of the disk.

The drive itself is noisy when reading the disc and to make matters worse it is a higher pitched noise than that generated by PC fans. I was however able to copy the contents of the King Kong HD-disc onto a hard drive with Windows Explorer, but it did take an hour vis the USB cable.

Unfortunately, I am unable to play the King Kong movie from either the 360 DVD drive or from the copy on the hard drive. PowerDVD version 7.3 (all singing and dancing, bells and whistles) baulks at the graphics card driver (which happens to be the latest from ATI) describing it as incompatible and refuses to play the movie.

[Guest teflon]

Did a rebuild of the PC ... plugged in the xbox drive and it detected and installed automatically but still unable to browse the contents of the Kong DVD. Tried to play it on power DVD 7.3 and still no love. Picture's jerky on analogue or SPDIF and the PC only seems to be running at 60% max through all scenes. Tried it with hardware acceleration on and off... Am currently copying Kong to the hard drive with any dvd and will see if that makes a difference.

Thanks ocujos ... I did see that thread and am having a read through it now ... it does sound promising, but I've only got a half height case and they look like full height cards - what a pain in the arse.

Will report back soon ... an xbox 360 purchase may be on the cards or I'll be buying a full height case/PSU, a mobo, a CPU and a video card! The former sounds like the easier option at the moment! Or give the HD drive to my brother and wait for the toshi players to fall in price!

[Guest teflon]

A quick update ... minor success anyway... Ripped the DVD to the hard drive and it played with the screen resolution set to 720p but was still a bit choppy at 1080i ... Relatively happy with that since I thought the picture looked better at 720p but I'll see if I can tweak anything to make it play from the drive itself at 720p... makes me think if I had bought the 7300 card and modified it to suit my case then I might not have these current problems... Display panel is a hitachi 8900 plasma... Debating whether to fork out another $130 or so for a video card or whether those funds are better directed towards either a proper upgrade or xbox 360.