Hey,
I recently bought an Onkyo HT-S3305 AV receiver and 5.1 speaker system to make a decent HTPC setup in my bedroom.
I have been running normal DVD's from my 360 in dolby digital 5.1 and it sounds awesome, and DVD rips from the computer sound great as well.
When I came to try out the blu-ray drive in my pc for the first time since I got a TV worth watching them on, I found out my graphics card is not capable of sending TrueHD / DTS-HD found on blu-rays through the HDMI cable and in to my receiver.
My spec is:
Intel Core2 Q9550
Asus P5E deluxe
8GB Kingston HyperX
ATi 4870 1GB
Asus SoundMax soundcard (shipped with motherboard)
Sony BDX10S Blu-ray reader.
TV is a Toshiba Regza 720p.
Ive done some research and as far as I can tell, in order to get full HD sound, ie TrueHD / DTS-HD from blurays, you need to bitstream the audio through the HDMI to the receiver, and ATi 4xxx cards are incapable of doing so.
Im using PowerDVD9 / TMT3 to playback blu-rays if that makes a difference.
Anyways if this is right, Im seeing 3 options:
-Buy a dedicated Blu-ray player for ~ £140
-Upgrade sound card to an Asus Xonar HDAV1.23 for ~ £130
-Upgrade graphics card to an ATi 5xxx for ~ £130
So their all roughly the same price, the most simple is probably to get a dedicated player, although I would prefer to be able to play BDrips in MKV files which would still require an output capable of bitstreaming, although im not sure if rips are ever encoded with TrueHD anyways.
If I had to choose between the gfx / sound card upgrade, I would prefer gfx upgrade, as I use the PC to play some pretty intense games also, hense the overkill spec for a standard HTPC, and I was looking at the ATi 5770 which is bitstreaming capable, but apparently its only around the same performance as the 4870, except its DX11 capable, if I was spending money on a GFX card I would want a decent upgrade for gaming, which bumps up the price considerably to get a 58xx series. Any suggestions on a decent upgrade to my 4870 which can bitstream HD audio?
So am I missing anything? Is there another way around this?
Sorry for the long thread but I have a couple of other questions..is it normal for windows to be a little unclear on LCD tv's? Video playback seems fine, but Windows7 doesnt quite look properly sharp, no matter what res I use, (ive tried 1920x1080 and 1280x720 upwards)
And also, will the resolution I actually display windows in, have any effect on how a Blu-ray looks during playback?
And finally, Im not 100% sure on what all the different audio codecs actually are, I know DD5.1 and DTS and SD surround audio found on standard dvd's, and I know TrueHD and DTS-HD are the HD versions found on blu-rays, but I keep reading about PCM and LPCM and I really don't understand what they are?
Anyways I think thats everything, thanks for reading, any help is much appreciated.
Stu.
I recently bought an Onkyo HT-S3305 AV receiver and 5.1 speaker system to make a decent HTPC setup in my bedroom.
I have been running normal DVD's from my 360 in dolby digital 5.1 and it sounds awesome, and DVD rips from the computer sound great as well.
When I came to try out the blu-ray drive in my pc for the first time since I got a TV worth watching them on, I found out my graphics card is not capable of sending TrueHD / DTS-HD found on blu-rays through the HDMI cable and in to my receiver.
My spec is:
Intel Core2 Q9550
Asus P5E deluxe
8GB Kingston HyperX
ATi 4870 1GB
Asus SoundMax soundcard (shipped with motherboard)
Sony BDX10S Blu-ray reader.
TV is a Toshiba Regza 720p.
Ive done some research and as far as I can tell, in order to get full HD sound, ie TrueHD / DTS-HD from blurays, you need to bitstream the audio through the HDMI to the receiver, and ATi 4xxx cards are incapable of doing so.
Im using PowerDVD9 / TMT3 to playback blu-rays if that makes a difference.
Anyways if this is right, Im seeing 3 options:
-Buy a dedicated Blu-ray player for ~ £140
-Upgrade sound card to an Asus Xonar HDAV1.23 for ~ £130
-Upgrade graphics card to an ATi 5xxx for ~ £130
So their all roughly the same price, the most simple is probably to get a dedicated player, although I would prefer to be able to play BDrips in MKV files which would still require an output capable of bitstreaming, although im not sure if rips are ever encoded with TrueHD anyways.
If I had to choose between the gfx / sound card upgrade, I would prefer gfx upgrade, as I use the PC to play some pretty intense games also, hense the overkill spec for a standard HTPC, and I was looking at the ATi 5770 which is bitstreaming capable, but apparently its only around the same performance as the 4870, except its DX11 capable, if I was spending money on a GFX card I would want a decent upgrade for gaming, which bumps up the price considerably to get a 58xx series. Any suggestions on a decent upgrade to my 4870 which can bitstream HD audio?
So am I missing anything? Is there another way around this?
Sorry for the long thread but I have a couple of other questions..is it normal for windows to be a little unclear on LCD tv's? Video playback seems fine, but Windows7 doesnt quite look properly sharp, no matter what res I use, (ive tried 1920x1080 and 1280x720 upwards)
And also, will the resolution I actually display windows in, have any effect on how a Blu-ray looks during playback?
And finally, Im not 100% sure on what all the different audio codecs actually are, I know DD5.1 and DTS and SD surround audio found on standard dvd's, and I know TrueHD and DTS-HD are the HD versions found on blu-rays, but I keep reading about PCM and LPCM and I really don't understand what they are?
Anyways I think thats everything, thanks for reading, any help is much appreciated.
Stu.