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Can I salvage my old HTPC to record HDTV?

T

tk149

Diamond Member
EDIT 8/6/08: The TV arrived today! 😀 I didn't have much time to play with it. 🙁

I was mistaken, I actually have a Radeon 9800 video card with VGA and DVI out. The TV has VGA and HDMI inputs, but no DVI. Right now, I have it hooked up via S-Video, and the picture looks horrible.

The TV is a Samsung LN52A550.

What's the best way to hook this up?

The highest resolution I could set through ATI's Catalyst Control Center was 1600 x 1200 through the S-Video cable. The TV Manual says the best setting is 1920x1080. Now what do I do?

===============================
I don't know which forum to post this in, as it seems to fit into a bunch of them.

I've finally bought an HDTV. It's due to arrive soon.

Initially, I'll just have input coming straight from a coax OTA antenna. (1080i or 720p?)
Maybe later I'll subscribe to DirecTV HD. (is this also 1080i?)

My current HTPC is an Athlon 1800+, 512MB RAM, P-ATA hard drives, WinXP, a Leadtek Capture card (I think it's a Winfast TV2000 XP) and whatever software came with it, and an ATI TNT video card (I know, it's old). Is there a way to salvage this system for HD use?

If not, what are the minimum specifications for building a PC to record and play HDTV.

What is the minimum processor speed required?

How much RAM?

Hard drive speed?

Hard drive interface speed? Is P-ATA fast enough?

Any recommendations for a video capture card?

Any recommendations for a video (output) card?

What format should I capture in (e.g. MPEG2)?

What software do you use?

As I understand it, the HD TV itself does the upscaling of lower detail signals (i.e. 480i upscaled to 1080p). Is this correct?
 
About recording HDTV: That is actually not very intensive. To record HDTV barely uses my CPU or RAM. It is only intensive on the storage. As I understand it, the HDTV is coming in as an mpeg and can be stored as is on the hard drive then played back later.

About playing HDTV: I run an Athlon XP 2500+ clocked to 3200+ and I think it is barely able to playback HDTV. I found the biggest limiting factor was the graphics card. Once I got a better graphics card in there, I was able to play HDTV in a better setup. I have about 2.5GB of RAM in there because otherwise it would be sitting on a shelf. I don't think that much is needed. I have been using standard PATA 7200 RPM hard drives for the system. Nothing fancy about the hard drives. The capture card I have now is pcHDTV 5500 but I am waiting on a shipment of an HDHomeRun which I think for the tiny increase in cost will blow me away if it does what I read it does. For video output, I am using an nvidia 6200 AGP. That seems to be the bare minimum and with Linux, it is preferably so it can use XvMC. I use MythTV which is a bit of a struggle to get running the first time sometimes but once you have it started is fantastic. I could never make use of something else because of the amazing set of features that MythTV has built in, especially the commercial cutting and web interface. They recently released a new version (0.21 I think) and it had a whole lot more features. The formats for capture are not significant to me since MythTV handles both my recording and playback. If I needed to share it with someone, there is a transcoding program I can use but I haven't even thought about doing that in years.
 
Recording HDTV is trivial if you buy the right equipment. Something that doesn't utilize the CPU for tuning, a la winmodem. Something along the lines of a Silcon Dust HDhomerun.

Playback is not overly taxing either, I get good results (although it is so taxing on the system that menus are delayed) using a 2GHz Celeron, 512MB RAM, and no hardware-assisted playback (i865g integrated graphics).

FWIW, if you do go the HDhomerun route, you'll want a dedicated 10/100 card for it to input to. If it's capturing two streams simultaneously, peak bandwidth can be as high as 80Mb/sec, and it has no internal buffering, so if you drop a packet its gone forever. The device has internal MDIX support, so you don't even need a crossover cable.

The software has an internal DHCP server, but it's kind of flakey, so I use a program I installed as a service, I can look up the name of it some other time if needed. The HDhomerun has no internal flash, and cannot be set to a static IP address. It reboots every time it detects no carrier on the LAN port (think computer reboots/shuts down) and it always looks for a DHCP server.
 
Originally posted by: frankierx
What can I use on my htpc to my hdtv lcd? I want to use a hdmi cable.
Click to expand...

I have a DVI to HDMI cable going to mine. It does not do audio but it does video well. I purchased it at monoprice.
 
Originally posted by: frankierx
What can I use on my htpc to my hdtv lcd? I want to use a hdmi cable.
Click to expand...

Depending on what your HDTV's native resolution is, you might not get the best picture quality with HDMI. For example, if your TV is 720p, it's native resolution is (probably) 1366x768, and you'll get the best quality over VGA or DVI if your TV has it. HDMI is limited to the more standard HD resolutions of 720x480, 1280x720, and 1920x1080.
 
Originally posted by: TerryMathews
Originally posted by: frankierx
What can I use on my htpc to my hdtv lcd? I want to use a hdmi cable.
Click to expand...

Depending on what your HDTV's native resolution is, you might not get the best picture quality with HDMI. For example, if your TV is 720p, it's native resolution is (probably) 1366x768, and you'll get the best quality over VGA or DVI if your TV has it. HDMI is limited to the more standard HD resolutions of 720x480, 1280x720, and 1920x1080.
Click to expand...

I actually have no problem putting 768p into my TV using the DVI-HDMI cable in Linux.
 
Originally posted by: Reel
Originally posted by: TerryMathews
Originally posted by: frankierx
What can I use on my htpc to my hdtv lcd? I want to use a hdmi cable.
Click to expand...

Depending on what your HDTV's native resolution is, you might not get the best picture quality with HDMI. For example, if your TV is 720p, it's native resolution is (probably) 1366x768, and you'll get the best quality over VGA or DVI if your TV has it. HDMI is limited to the more standard HD resolutions of 720x480, 1280x720, and 1920x1080.
Click to expand...

I actually have no problem putting 768p into my TV using the DVI-HDMI cable in Linux.
Click to expand...

The last time I tried it, it was on Windows. nVidia GeForce FX5200, DVI->HDMI cable. I never tried forcing the output resolution, I am assuming the card got the supported resolutions through the cable via DCC.

At any rate, from Googling, 768p over HDMI is certainly not a common feature, most sets do not support it. Just like 1080p over component.
 
Originally posted by: TerryMathews
Originally posted by: Reel
Originally posted by: TerryMathews
Originally posted by: frankierx
What can I use on my htpc to my hdtv lcd? I want to use a hdmi cable.
Click to expand...

Depending on what your HDTV's native resolution is, you might not get the best picture quality with HDMI. For example, if your TV is 720p, it's native resolution is (probably) 1366x768, and you'll get the best quality over VGA or DVI if your TV has it. HDMI is limited to the more standard HD resolutions of 720x480, 1280x720, and 1920x1080.
Click to expand...

I actually have no problem putting 768p into my TV using the DVI-HDMI cable in Linux.
Click to expand...

The last time I tried it, it was on Windows. nVidia GeForce FX5200, DVI->HDMI cable. I never tried forcing the output resolution, I am assuming the card got the supported resolutions through the cable via DCC.

At any rate, from Googling, 768p over HDMI is certainly not a common feature, most sets do not support it. Just like 1080p over component.
Click to expand...

I agree about it not being common. I have a Westinghouse 32" panel. It has a VGA input that I was able to set to 1366x768 (and it labeled it as that resolution). When I decided to buy the DVI-HDMI cable, I was surprised to find that it called it 768p though it is technically accurate. I believe my configuration for Xorg is ignoring the supported resolutions or perhaps not even polling for them because I am going through my receiver which might be off when X starts.

Isn't there some Windows app called Powerstrip that might allow tinkering with resolutions by hand to give this a test?
 
Really, you don't even need PowerStrip anymore, at least for nVidia: you can add custom resolutions and refresh rates through the nVidia Control Panel.

I just never messed around with it to see if my panel would accept it or not.
 
EDIT 8/6/08: The TV arrived today! 😀 I didn't have much time to play with it. 🙁

I was mistaken, I actually have a Radeon 9800 video card with VGA and DVI out. The TV has VGA and HDMI inputs, but no DVI. Right now, I have it hooked up via S-Video, and the picture looks horrible.

The TV is a Samsung LN52A550.

What's the best way to hook this up?

The highest resolution I could set through ATI's Catalyst Control Center was 1600 x 1200 through the S-Video cable. The TV Manual says the best setting is 1920x1080. Now what do I do?
 
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