5.1 sound cards for laptops?

[woody183]

Hello.


I have recently installed a home cinema projector and would like to you a laptop as the source for playing films(heard this was best).
What i would like to know is what graphic cards in laptops are compatible with the powerstrip programme? and what if, any sound cards have a optical out to plug into my amp to give me 5.1 surround sound.
Any ideas on the cost of these cards would be great.


many thanks. woody

[MartinCo]

I presume you haven't bought the laptop yet?

a proper PC may be better - allowing you to swap components in/out for best output. sure most of the people here would agree with me on this?

but...

you can buy laptops with ATI or Nvidia graphics chipsets.. should work fine with Powerstrip.

you can also buy laptops with optical out, usually from the 3.5mm headphone jack..(via mini-toslink).

the only major bind is checking that the DVD drive can be made region free... quite a few dont have fixes available for this.

most of the P4 non-mobile laptops have a spec like this, plus a few of the higher spec Athlon ones also.

will cost you a bit more than a standard PC though... I'd expect you'd be paying £999 upwards to £1500.