Advice on a new setup for an old user

[Tander]

Both figuratively, and literally! (The old part, both a long time Sage user, and old

I currently have a small home theater setup running sage, using my 24" LCD computer monitor, a Hauppage 1600, plus an ATI DTV Wonder. I use OTA for HDTV, and Directv for my other stuff. (Running S-video to my Hauppage for DirecTV.)

I am using the Radeon 9550 for a graphics card. and running DVI out to my monitor.

Okay... I now have to move, and it's almost Christmas. so I thought I would just run out to Walmart, buy myself a large screen tv for Christmas, and since I am moving anyway, might as well upgrade to DirecTV HD as well. Then I can watch all those Lawrence Welk re-runs in Hi-Def! (Just kidding...)

But the more I look at it, the more I get confused! With my current Radeon, there seems to be no way to hook up to my hoped for HDTV, and keep my monitor hooked up as well. (Only 1 DVI output on my Radeon)

And then there is the issue of getting DirecTV's HD into my Sage system.... I've been looking at the Hauppage HD-PVR, but what I've been reading doesn't seem ideal.

It looks like I will need a new graphics card to run both my HDTV and my monitor, and I really don't watch that much DirecTV, most of my HD is OTA except for Dodger games, so maybe I'm better off just passing on the HD for DirectV.

Am I missing something? What cards should I be looking at, or maybe I should look at cable and a new hdtv card?

Hope this makes sense. I want to be able to use my new HDTV with Sage...

Thanks in advance!

[Apap]

The HD-PVR is working just fine with my Directv HD box for this Old Dude. Running 2 monitors from 1 video card might be problematic though. I dont think you can get hadware acceleration working on both monitors concurrently and that might be a problem when decoding the H264 .ts files that the HD-PVR generates. The simple solution would be to get the new HD-200 extender when it comes back in stock (Dec. 15?). Then all the decoding is offloaded to the extender leaving your HTPC to just record.

Apap

[Tander]

Thanks Apap! I'll check out and research the HD-Extender... that might solve the problem. I wasn't planning on watching both monitors simultaniously, just wanted to use the monitor on the computer as a computer, and the HDTV monitor for TV... but with only one DVI output, that makes it tougher. I didn't know if there where graphics cards out there with both DVI and HDMI outputs.

I may go ahead with the DirecTV HD then, thanks to your input.

Thanks Again