some HCPC questions, sorry I'm new to this

[Threadkiller]

I've read through the threads & there are still a few questions that I can't find answers to. Appologies if they've been answered a thousand times before. Currently I run a pioneer 525 with an svid cable directly to a panasonic LC75e, and I'm considering going the HCPC route

When I play back a dvd at he moment on my PC it jerks, does a dedicated pc run software to buffer the playback to prevent this?

Do you connect the pC to the Projector via RGB 15 way D type as you would a monitor, or via another method?

Do you need a dual head (currently have a G450) or will a single do?

Thanks

[Gary Lightfoot]

You need a half decent processor to play DVDs without jerkyness, and something like an AMD 950 Duron should be fine (it's what I'm using).

Curently the best video card is a Radeon, and 3rd party ones can be found very cheaply. Under £30 is not unusual. Some radeons have dual output, but the DVD playback will only go to the primary display IIRC. I've never used the 2nd output on mine, but it's a good idea to be able to use a monitor to setup the pc so you don't waste the projector lamp.

Yes, you connect the projector to the pc in the same way you would a monitor using the 15pin D sub conector.

What other components are you using? You can build a basic HTPC for around £300 and you won't notice much of an improvement spending a lot more.

HTH

Gary.

[Threadkiller]

thanks for the reply,

I have a spare 1g duron to put into a mobo, with a 40 G hdisk. Iwas going to use my Matrox G450, and Hercules sound card with 5.1 out.

Currently I run an O/C 800 duron with a raided board, 512k Crucial Ram on w2k which as I said jerks.

But the bit I wasn't sure about was the video streaming and whether it was buffered by software. The description on dscaler gives that impression, and I see it mentioned in several threads.

If you still use a 15 way dsub, how do you cope with loss over cable length? My PJ is due to be ceiling mounted, and the cable run will be a good 10 meters or so

Thanks

[Gary Lightfoot]

DScaler is a deinterlacing program which will allow you to convert any s-video or composite signal using a tv capture card such as the Pinnacle PCTV Rave card. It's useful for Laserdisk players or Sky.

I do seem to remember somewhere over at avsforum.com that someone found a way of increasing the DVD player buffer, but I think this was for WinDVD - I can't remember exactly. An 800 should be enough I would have thought, but you might as well use the 1 gig Duron.

Someone else here had all sorts of problems using a Raid board, and bought a cheap ECS K7S5A mobo for £50. All his problems dissapeared then. It's the same mobo I'm using btw...

I'd still reccomend a Radeon card though - ebuyer.com has some 3rd party ones going very cheap right now.

My pj is also ceiling mounted, and I'm using a 25ft vga to vga cable which I got from ITM components. No visible ghosting, and picture quality is excellent, so you shouldn't have any problems provided it's a decent quality cable. Mine was around £35 IIRC. They can be found here

HTH

Gary.

[Threadkiller]

Thanks for your replies Gary, I seem to be on my way,

radeon 7500,
1gig Duron 512m ram
pioneer DVD
10G HD (for now)
Cant make up my mind between W2K or XP pro yet.

I'll have to wait now for all the bits to arrive & see what it performs like

[Gary Lightfoot]

Sounds good!

I think there are some sound driver issues with W2K and XP, but I'm not sure of the details.

Try them and see if all goes well, otherwise WinMe should be OK - I'm using it and get full DD/DTS passthrough via spdiff from an old Aureal SQ1500 soundcard.

See how things go with the Hercules, and maybe visit avsforum.com for any other info if you need it.

Let us know how you get on.

Gary.