Best video card for a new media center PC

bluslice

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Jan 3, 2005
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I'm looking to build a media center PC and am looking into what video cards are available on the market. The obvious choices for brands are nvidia and ati. My needs are to watch tv (DVR capability), watch movies with home theater quality video and to use for web browsing. I'm thinking of getting a dvi input 32" lcd hdtv monitor to use with the media center pc.

I've found a list of potential multimedia video cards but I don't really know what the difference is link
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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Mind that for future proofness on HDTV replay, any video card you buy now will be headed for the bin come 2007. That's because none of the cards available today does HDCP (content protection).

Anyway.

DVR capability is best done by a separate PCI or PCIE TV-input card.

If you want quiet operation above all, a Radeon 9550SE or Sapphire's plain 9600 will be good fanless AGP cards. Their DVI output is way good enough even for HDTV LCDs. If you want H.264 replay assist, you'll have to aim much higher, to Radeon X1 series - but these are power hungry, and loud.
 

bluslice

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Jan 3, 2005
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I did a quick read about HDCP and it seems like it's made so that only the person who recorded the TV show can watch it.

"HDCP is not designed to prevent copying or recording of digital content but to protect the integrity of content as it is being transmitted."

This tells me for example, I won't be able to send my friend a showing of smallville from last week. It will only be playable on my computer. Is this correct? If so, what possible advantage would I have in having HDCP. I don't really see any.
 

bluslice

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Jan 3, 2005
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Originally posted by: Peter
DVR capability is best done by a separate PCI or PCIE TV-input card.

If you want quiet operation above all, a Radeon 9550SE or Sapphire's plain 9600 will be good fanless AGP cards. Their DVI output is way good enough even for HDTV LCDs. If you want H.264 replay assist, you'll have to aim much higher, to Radeon X1 series - but these are power hungry, and loud.

I was reading up on h.264 on the ati website and started reading the white papers. They don't explicitly say which cards support this new decoding technology but from what I gather from this quote is that all radeon products support it.

"ATI is already demonstrating the ability to accelerate the H.264 decoding process
with its highly flexible VPUs. ATI is well poised to lead another PC video revolution,
assisted by expertise in video decode and video processing, and the video
processing flexibility built into every single Radeon®-based product."

It seems that's what they imply but it seems like it can be interpreted differently. Can anyone verify which cards support h.264? This is definitely a technology I want.
 

natto fire

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Jan 4, 2000
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Is HDCP a Windows Vista issue? Or a codec issue? If it is a Vista issue then any Linux distro will easily circumvent that crapware problem. As for the video card, as mentioned above, you don't need a super-powerful card even for HD. Video cards only have to be powerful to do rendering operations (mostly in games). So you can get by with a passively cooled solution for noise/reliabilty. Look for a standalone tuner card, and avoid the AIW cards, although I hear ATI does make good stand alone cards with the release of their Theater 550 chip...
 

bluslice

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Jan 3, 2005
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YES. someone else knows about the 550 chip. From what the 550 looks like, it's an addon. So would I have to get an ati video card along with the 550?
 

Traire

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Feb 4, 2005
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Originally posted by: JeReMY
All you need is the ATI X800XT AIW which has the theater 550 chip on it.

Incorrect. The AIW cards all still use the Theater 200. Only the stand alone cards have the 550.
 

ND40oz

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Jul 31, 2004
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I wouldn't choose an AIW card if you plan on going with Media Center Edition. You used to have to pay for the drivers that allowed AIW cards to work with MCE, I don't know if you still do but there have always been problems. Your much better going off with standalone tuner card. There are a few HD cards available but none that support cable cards yet, which means, you still can't get HD cable on your MCE pc. I have two MCE 2k5 machines but don't really use them for recording tv because of the lack of HD support. Lets hope vista mce gives us better options...
 

MDE

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Jul 17, 2003
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I have a Radeon 8500 in my MCE machine and it's doing just fine. Of course I don't have a slouch of a CPU behind it (P4 3.2C @ 3.6).
 

bluslice

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Jan 3, 2005
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Originally posted by: Traire
Originally posted by: JeReMY
All you need is the ATI X800XT AIW which has the theater 550 chip on it.

Incorrect. The AIW cards all still use the Theater 200. Only the stand alone cards have the 550.

What do you mean by stand alone cards? isn't the 550 the tv tuner card?

link
 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
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Originally posted by: bluslice
Originally posted by: Traire
Originally posted by: JeReMY
All you need is the ATI X800XT AIW which has the theater 550 chip on it.

Incorrect. The AIW cards all still use the Theater 200. Only the stand alone cards have the 550.

What do you mean by stand alone cards? isn't the 550 the tv tuner card?

link

He means that if you want a capture card equipped with the Theater 550 chip, you need to buy a standalone PCI card like that, as opposed to one of the "All-In-Wonder" model video cards that also double as a video capture board.

I *think* (but I am not 100% sure) that the X1600/X1800 AIW cards use the Theater 550, but the X600/X800 ones do not.

I would recommend getting a relatively cheap, passively cooled videocard (like a RADEON 9550/9600, or an X300/X600 if you need PCIe), and then add in a PCI capture board like one of the Theater 550-based models or a Hauppauge PVR-150. This way the capture capability is not tied to the (relatively expensive) video card, and can be moved to another system if desired.
 

Traire

Senior member
Feb 4, 2005
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Originally posted by: bluslice
Originally posted by: Traire
Originally posted by: JeReMY
All you need is the ATI X800XT AIW which has the theater 550 chip on it.

Incorrect. The AIW cards all still use the Theater 200. Only the stand alone cards have the 550.

What do you mean by stand alone cards? isn't the 550 the tv tuner card?

link

ATi makes two types of TV tuner cards, Ones called "All in Wonder" and onces called "Tv Wonder".

The All in Wonder cards are just that, they coimbine all sorts of video components into a single card, including the graphics display GPU, TV tuner, analog video in video out, hardware encoding decoding support, etc. Basically it means you can get one card that does it all. Where as...

A TV Wonder card only has the TV tuner device and hardware encoder. You still need a graphics card to run you monitor.

When reffering to the "Theater 550" chip, this is the chip that does the hardware encoding of video input. As of right now, you can only get the 550 chip (which is the best of its type) on a TV Wonder device. The All in Wonder cards still use the much older Theater 200 chip.

Overall, I would reccomend something allong the lines of what Matthias reccomended if your making a SFF HTPC.

In my HTPC, I have a Radeon 9550SE graphics card and a Hauppauge PVR150 TV tuner, though if I were buying today, I would get the something with the 550.

 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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The 550 doesn't contain an encoder either. It's just that digital TV - aerial or satellite - already IS an MPEG stream, no encoding required.

The 200 differs from the 550 in that the latter has a PCI(E) bus interface so you can build cards with it, while the former is made to be a companion to ATI's graphics chips to go onto the graphics card for video-in or TV tuner purposes on VIVO or AllInWonder cards.