Dell 8300 + nvidia 6600 good enough for HD?

[weyker]

I was wondering...

When will cable companies stop providing SD signal to TVs with no set top boxes?

If I get a downconverter box after that date will its output be tunable by SD encoder cards?

Suppose I want to upgrade to watching broadcast HDTV with the latest sage version.

Will the following system be enough to encode and later decode and display one broadcast stream of HDTV (almost never at the same time).

Dell dimension 8300 3Ghz P4HT 800Mhz FSB 2GB Ram 40GB+250GB HD

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...0/sm/specs.htm

256MB nvidia 6600 AGP card (not GT)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...86#DetailSpecs

Soundblaster Live 24bit sound card

I will be watching on a 21" CRT computer monitor and 2ch stereo from about 12 ft away.

I read earlier that 3Ghz is not enough to decode HD smoothly. But I also read some video cards and encoder cards can help.

Would I need a CPU faster that 3GHz P4 HT for 720p? 1080i?

Do I need to use progressive modes on a computer so as to avoid having to deinterlace if my system is marginal performace-wise?

If I will need a CPU upgrade, what kinds of CPUs could work in the dell 8300 that would be fast enough to allow smooth playback?

If no CPU fits that description, what's the least costly video card that would take enough of the load to allow for smooth playback?

Similarly, what are the cheaper of the sage-approved broadcat HD encoder cards that will encode smoothly in this system at 720p? at 1080i?

Finally would I benefit significantly from 3rd party sound and video decoder software given the modest display size and 2ch sound?

Thanks.

--Shayne

[Jesse]

Hi,

I currently use a P4 3.0e, 1gig ram, an evga 6600gt and the nvidia pure video decoder out to a 42" Panny plasma. HD is silky smooth. Dont know how it will go with the non GT card, but my 3.0 gig processor will do 720p just fine. If your machine has a pci-x16 slot I would go for the 7600gt as it will do inverse telecine (sp?) and bad edit correction. And yes, a quality decoder will certainly make a difference.

For capture I am using two vbox usb HD tuners. No complaints at all.

With the right vid card you should be able to do 720p/1080i no problem.

Jesse

[paulbeers]

I use a sempron 2600+ and a geforce 6600 silent (non-gt) and it works just fine outputting 1080i in overlay (I don't mess with FSE since there were so many problems in the past I just use Overlay for the WAF).

[mikejaner]

weyker,
This PC (Dell Dimension 8300), has more than enough horsepower to do HD, with room to spare. If you use the Nvidia Decoders, you are going to be looking at about 15%-20% CPU utilization being used during recording and playback of HDTV. You have nothing to worry about with this setup.

[Humanzee]

I can tell you that an agp 6600gt is not really enough to run 1920x1080 with any other setting than overlay. Even with the graphics card overclocked vmr9 pegs my cpu. My set does 1080p natively so a 720p resolution is not something I have tested.

There are reports of problems with full fluid motion with even a 7900GT. So I think some of the problems have to do with DirectX and some to do with the PureVideo Decoder and some to do with the graphics drivers. If you are stuck with AGP then you can't do much better than a 6600. If you use Overlay you should be fine.

[weyker]

Thanks for the replies.

Two more questions...

Why do people care about overlay vs VMR9? I assume VMR9 looks better on some displays but how big a display/resolution do you have to get before it makes a difference between overlay and VMR9?

Second, the machine I'm currently using for sage is a 1.6 GHz P4 with an AGP FX5200. Output is a CRT computer monitor. Video is on a different drive than Sage/Windows.

Assuming there is such a thing as standard-def digital broadcast signals, would that older machine be able to encode and play (never at the same time) standard-def digital TV smoothly? What about 720p HD?

I currently have limited-service cable with comcast and get some really crappy reception on some channels. So even before jumping to HD it'd be nice to have an alternative way to get broadcast channels.

I suppose if I wanted to be really cheap I could just get an antenna and hook it to my Hauppague 250. But I suspect the digital signal will look nicer.

--Shayne

Re: Comcast , they are very likely gone from my house when Verizon FIOS (fiber to the home) arrives in Columbia, MD soon with cheaper broadband access and probably better Quality of Service. I might pass for a while on the TV service though.

[paulbeers]

First off: Humaneze, you know there is a huge difference betwen 1080P and 1080i/720P right? Whatever you are displaying is having to be upconverted to 1080P. You are basically asking your computer to either Deinterlas 1080i or upconverting 720P upto 1080P, both are rather difficult and would tax a lot of computers (hence yes requiring a much more powerful video card). In my case, my geforce 6600 runs great for outputting 1080i, because there is very little upconverting. 1080P is only just coming out (okay maybe 6 months now), but certainly not the mainstream and considering HD content is 1080i or 720P, completely overkill at this point In My Opinion. I can run FSE on my computer, but it does take more power and I have run into too many problems in the past that I just don't care.

FSE looks better because it does things like transparent menus. What do I mean? Well overlay basically takes images and lays them ontop of each other. So only the part that doesn't have something laying over it is seen. FSE allows Sage to take over your computer (like a video game) and render the screen in a single "picture" rather than seperate layers. I hope I explained that well enough. Anyhow, FSE does look better, just more difficult to pull off.

As for your image problem, I have the same thing with Mediacom. Some of my local channels look rather crappy. I have them just being pulled off a standard antennae and set that antennae to just pull my regular ota broadcast channels, since I use MediaMVP's for several clients and they can not play the HD OTA that I record (I actually record many shows twice, once in SDTV and once in HDTV and then can watch on any tv I want).

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

First off: Humaneze, you know there is a huge difference betwen 1080P and 1080i/720P right?

Yup, Thats what I got, so thats how I roll.

When I first got the set, I tried making a custom resolution that would be the equivalent of 720p. It only showed up in the center of my LCD. I would have had to then use the TV's fill feature to fill the screen. When i did this, it looked a little soft and fuzzy. So I switched back to 1080p. I'm hoping that the next machine I build will have enough nuts to handle it with vmr9.

The other benefit of VMR9 is that it has more colors. I think overlay uses 255x255x255 where as VMR9 uses 256x256x256 thats 195,841 colors missing in overlay. People say that black colors tend to get crushed in overlay. I.e. larger area's apear as just black instead of a dark gradient. I could be wrong about that though, its been a long time since I read up about it.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by weyker

Thanks for the replies.
Assuming there is such a thing as standard-def digital broadcast signals, would that older machine be able to encode and play (never at the same time) standard-def digital TV smoothly? What about 720p HD?

The encoding should be done by your capture card. That being said if it is a digital broadcast all your card needs to do is dump it to the hard drive, I.e. no encoding. Well, none unless it is an encrypted signal. But that is a different topic.

Regardless, you will need a different card to capture a digital broadcast directly. There are digital broadcasts of standard definition content in my area but I am not sure if comes in with any less resolution, or if the broadcasts are just scaled up before transmission.

It is a little harder to answer as far as what your old system can play back. If you have broad band you could search the internet for some HD files to download. You could try a search of the microsoft site for HDWMV (maybe its wmvHD)files. They have some trailers up there. If you can play those files your computer could probably play an HD signal. The HDWMV files are compressed so you machine should theoretically have to work harder to render them than a stadard HD signal.

As far picture quality of digital vs analog broadcasts, there is no question. Digital is superior, however, if you have marginal reception and infinite patience analog will let you watch a bad picture. I am sure that we have all endured watching television in analog with a crappy picture at one point or another. You can't really do that with digital, either you get it or you don't. When the signal gets weak, you get artifacts at best, but more typically it will drop out entirely or cut in and out. Not fun to trouble shoot either, makes you wonder if it is your renderer or your reception. I am lucky to have pretty good reception where I am now, we plan to move soon though, so I might have to get a big antenna to stick in the attic.

[paulbeers]

[QUOTE=Humanzee]Yup, Thats what I got, so thats how I roll.

Wouldn't it be nice if HDTV was more like SDTV (in that they have one set resolution). Oy.

[weyker]

Well I tried the WMVHD test files adrenaline rush (720p) and robotica (1080p) on computers with no other significant apps running and the unsurprising results were

1.6GhzP4 + 128MB FX5200 can't really play 720p (video something like 0.2FPS, so a bit of help from less compressed source is unlikely to do it)

2.4 Ghz Celeron-D + radeon 9250 PCI 256MB can play 720P but not 1080p

3.0 Ghz HT P4 + 6600 plays 1080p.

So if I just wanted 720p OTA it sounds like I could watch it with the 2.4 Ghz machine. Since 1080i files/streams would have to be deinterlaced anyway to look good on the computer monitor I watch, I think I'd have to go with the 3Ghz machine for 1080i.

--Shayne

--Shayne