Is a PC DVD player just as good as a seperate DVD player?

I am building a media PC but havnt decided whether to use a DVD ROM drive to play DVDs or buy a seperate DVD player. The display is a 43" Pioneer 434HDE.

I will be using the HDMI connection to connect the DVI output of the GFX card to the HDMI in on the palsma. The sound will be outputed by a Terratec DMX Fire 64/24 through a ~ £400 amp to a set of KEF Codas ( 5.1) ~ £400

How will this compare to a £200 DVD player?

 

IMX about the same.

I use an HCPC, using a Radeon 9600 and TheaterTek, feeding a Z2 .. I also have a Momitsu V880. Both feed DVI and produce very similar results.

IMHO the difference is in the facilties the PC or DVD player offer.

The PC can play DVDs ripped to hard disk, with region protection and UOPs removed (or this can be done on-the-fly while playing from the DVD). The DVD player doesn't need booting .

BTW, I hope you're using SPD/IF to pass audio to the amp and not using the soundcard to decode.

 

Would spd/if be better than digital coaxial connection from soundcard to the amp?

How does the dmx fire 24/96 LT compare to the Audigy 2 Z2

 

The digital co-ax out from the soundcard will be S/PDIF. For Dolby Digital/dts there should be no difference between cards as they will just be passing through the bitstream untouched. I'm using a Trust soundcard that cost just under 20 quid. This has a co-axial digital out which happily feeds my Denon home cinema amp.

Cheers

Simon

 

Get an RME soundcard and you will be a happy man.

Make sure you set the PC resolution to 1:1 pixel mapping and you will whoop the crap out of any £800 DVD player, especially if you use a good media player like zoom player.

 

As Simon noted the coax is SPD/IF .. I assume you're asking about optical versus coax, in which case coax SHOULD be better because you avoid a conversion between electrical and otpical and bck again, though in practice I think few people will hear the difference on less than top-end equipment.

As far as DMX vs. Audigy, if you use SPD/IF to output the sound to a receiver then the point is moot since the soundcard is doing nothing more than shuffling digital data from the DVD out to the SPD/IF connector, the relative quality of the two cards isn't material.