builing home theater compter. Which vid card?

[mcveigh]

A friend who does high end audio visual installs, asked me to build a pc for a client. the PC will be in 1 room, with a 15 inch LCD there. then he's having a 20 Ft special DVI cable made to goto a 32in plasma screen. (I know it's alittle longer than spec but he thinkis it will be ok)

Supposdly it will only be used for playing MP3's and dvd's no gaming as I understand. He wants the display to be the same on both screens. No extended desktop just a perfect copy on each.

So which vid card?
needs at least

1 DVI and 1 VGA (or DVI w/ adapter)
prefer some kind of hardware dvd decoding on chip.

I was thinking Matrox or ATI for their 2D quality.
Parhelia or perhaps radeon?

give me some input 🙂

 

[ScrapSilicon]

AIW Radeon 8500..20'..? hmmm...pusdhing that isn't he..can't get it a little closer..?what's the longest for VGA ..? might be easier to go that route ..I dunno on lengths but the vid card is a given 🙂

 

[ScrapSilicon]

heh..hi Seth! 🙂 ..also what are you building (system specs..?) ?

 

[mcveigh]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon
heh..hi Seth! 🙂 ..also what are you building (system specs..?) ?

the PC is going to be in the kitchen😕 don't ask me why I think the wife wants to play music while cooking??

I think they might want something small and out of the way so I was thinking of going with a shuttle SB51G or AMS GF-S868
If I build the whole thing i'll probably either do nforce2 or an intel 845PE chip set

 

[kgraeme]

All modern cards have hardware DVD decoding. A Radeon 7000 or 7500 is your cheapest solution and my Radeon has a much sharper picture than my new ti4200. Just do a search on Newegg's video card section for cards with the output types you want.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

wonder what became of those wireless DVD cards..? like this setup review

 

[RanDum72]

Radeon 8500 or the newer 9700. ATI cards usually have superb DVD playback and 2D quality.

 

[Goi]

For best results, the ATI Radeon 9700 can't be beat. Skip the Pro version and get the cheaper Radeon 9700(if you can find them) if you aren't doing any gaming. Its the best ATI card for signal quality, as it has 5 switching power supplies on the board. The Radeon 9000 is a close 2nd with 3 power supplies. If you wanna go even cheaper, the 7200, 7500 and 8500 series should be ok too, but only have 2 power supplies, and there's a noticable different in the image quality. ATI's DVD hardware assistance is the best, although the GF4MX series has caught up in terms of features and capabilities(better then the GF4Ti series), the nod still goes to ATI for signal quality.

Matrox has the best signal quality but AFAIK don't have much DVD hardware assistance, at least not as full featured as the Radeons.

 

[mcveigh]

Originally posted by: Goi
For best results, the ATI Radeon 9700 can't be beat. Skip the Pro version and get the cheaper Radeon 9700(if you can find them) if you aren't doing any gaming. Its the best ATI card for signal quality, as it has 5 switching power supplies on the board. The Radeon 9000 is a close 2nd with 3 power supplies. If you wanna go even cheaper, the 7200, 7500 and 8500 series should be ok too, but only have 2 power supplies, and there's a noticable different in the image quality. ATI's DVD hardware assistance is the best, although the GF4MX series has caught up in terms of features and capabilities(better then the GF4Ti series), the nod still goes to ATI for signal quality.

Matrox has the best signal quality but AFAIK don't have much DVD hardware assistance, at least not as full featured as the Radeons.

great info thanks!!🙂

 

[ScrapSilicon]

gonna be fun stuffing the 9700 Pro in a SFF box

 

[mcveigh]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon
gonna be fun stuffing the 9700 Pro in a SFF box

I'm wondering about heat 🙁

I'm looking at the 9500pro right now, I wonder if it puts out less heat?

 

[Goi]

The 9500 Pro should put out less heat since it has less transistors in the chip and is a simpler design. I'm not sure of its signal quality though, but it should at least be as good as a 9000 Pro.