I had bought a Packard Bell which has 1.5ghz p4. and a nvidia mx400 64mb(tv out) baefore i bought my ae100e.
Is this machine capable of giving me a great pic through vga on the panny?
if so ,do i have to do anything to the pc or just put a film in the dvd drive and play it?

any help cheers....
woody

[azzo]

Your machine is definitly quick enough. I get good performance out of a PIII550!!!
You need custom resolutions from you video card to get the perfect picture out of the projector. You will need a program called powerstrip to do this. Search for powerstrip on this forum to work out what settings to use for the AE100. You may need the latest drivers from nvidea. (It wouldn't work on mine without them) Oh and by the way you should be connecting your PC to projector via VGA cable and NOT TV out. You should expect to see a WIDE480 mode on the panny when it is all working. It is well worth it if you can afford to have your PC in the same room as your projector.
If you want Dolby Digital you need a sound card with digital out and some DVD software to play back. Most people here use PowerDVD. Which also does DTS on some versions.

Good Luck.
Azzo

[Timh]

The missing piece is to download and install PowerStrip:
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/ps.htm

You need to create a custom resolution compatible with the WIDE480 mode of the AE100. You might also want to try the WIDE720 mode - some people prefer this.

Here are my final WIDE480 and WIDE720 PowerStrip settings.

PowerStrip timing parameters:
856x480=856,40,72,80,480,4,5,11,31500,342

PowerStrip timing parameters:
1280x720=1280,56,120,240,720,4,6,20,76500,342

You should just be able to cut and paste these in.

Another tip is to make sure the OPTIONS/PC PRIORITY setting of the AE100 is set to WIDE.

Finally, I use a test bitmap, created by Mark Rehjon, as my windows background. It was designed to help you synchronize the projector and PC pixel clocks to get perfect pixel mapping. If the pixel clock setting in Powerstrip is incorrect, you see really bad vertical banding (caused by aliasing) in the part of the image that is made up of alternating black and white vertical lines.

Pop over to the HTPC section for mote help.

I shall try and do as you advised.Hopefully the pic difference will be worth it. I shall let you know how i get on and thanks again