Is the onboard video on all of these boards HDCP compliant?

Is the onboard video on all of these boards HDCP compliant?

That is a good question and I will not just blindly say yes. I do know that the Asus, Gigabyte, Sapphire and MSI boards are HDCP compliant so I cannot see anyone else not matching this. (Oddly, ABit does not have a 690G solution.)

To further qualify that statement, the 690G has a little brother, the 690V that is for value setups and does not show up with HDMI, DVI or HDCP support. So it looks as though there are two specific solutions out there for the system builders.

I have a ThermalTake Bach and am quite happy with it. I wanted an ATX sized case that would take 2 or more Optical drives.

I have 6 HTPC/PCs so I am a little bit tight on the budget.

I am quite happy with the Cooler Master Cavalier 2, cheap price but nice built quality especially the front panel, decent air flow...cons: proprietary psu and the back 6cm dual exhaust fans are noisy.

I also have a black Sliverstone LC11...beautiful case with super innovation (whole thing is inverted), good cooling, quiet. cons:those specific riser configuration is a major PITA, severely limits the mono choices...I have to stick with a mobo that fits the configuration which I am not too happy with (Asus M2A-VM HDMI)...I am not using the HDMI module either because I would need to buy the PCI-E riser (>$50!!), also proprietary psu as well and it is a little noisier than i like when it is warm.

The third HTPC/Desktop case is an AOpen H340, actually pretty good quality, suitable for a cool running system like a Sempron or Athlon64, very portable and light. It uses proprietary psu (only 200w) and low profile cards though. If this one dies, I would immediately replace it with the Antec Minuet becaue I love low profile cases.

All the rest are just boring towers :~)

After extensive research I went for an Antec Fusion V2. Although the front panel is brushed aluminium, the rest of the case is black, so it sits equally well between black and silver components. The V2 has an IR reciever for the MCE remote incorporated into the VFD on the front, so you can chuck Microsofts bundled receiver away. The VFD can also be configured to display weather updates, news feeds, mailbox status etc etc. The Origen cases are nice, but I've seen a few reviews that score them low on case noise and thermals. The reason I went for the Fusion is that you'll be hard pressed to find a bad review for it. It even includes a very quiet PSU as standard. The only issue you may have is that for some reason Antec decided to make it about half an inch wider than standard AV kit, so you'll need to check you have room for it if you plan to site it in a standard Hifi stand.

Just so you know, today I saw the Antec Fusion in black. I saw it in person, not on the web, so I can verify that it does exist.

today I saw the Antec Fusion in black.

The fusion is the "big brother" of the Antec NSK2400. I am using the 2400 in my bedroom HTPC setup and it is excellent. The fusion would make an excellent case for a main home theater setup as it is even better looking than the 2400.

If $$$ is not as big an issue or if you look at cases as a long term investment (As one should), then a couple of other good cases that have been coming down in price are:


LC16m in silver can be had for less than $250 - VERY nice case with front media buttons(play, pause, etc...)
LC20m in either silver or black can be found for about $200 - Nice but lacks the media buttons of the 16m. On the upside, the 20m is a bit prettier.
LC17 in either color can be found as low as $120 and is a good option if media keys and fancy VFDs are not a necessity (This is the case I am considering for the main HTPC)

Hi All,

Very simple straight forward question I think. I want build a pc that will connect to my TV through dvi and play DVD's that are stored on my hard drive. I have a hefty PC with ample storage, some stored dvd's and the geforce 6800 gt oc with dvi. The PC is running MCE2005.

What is the recommended software from people here to run on mce2005 to play these dvd's stored on the hard drive. What software can I use to rip dvd's to hard drive. What quality setting should i use with those programs so I can compress them slightly to say half or 3/4 of their original size to consume as less disk space as possible but still have a great quality image.

Im new to all this.

Thanks

My personal favourite player is Zoom Player along with the Nvidia PureVideo decoder pack, rendering to VMR9. I like Zoom Player because of the deep level of customization options, and the abiliy to quickly and easily enlarge or shrink the image while playing (allowing you to adjust how much overscan there is).

For ripping DVD's I think DVD Shrink is popular. It allows you to re-encode the video (to shrink it) but I would recommend leaving it as is and then saving space by ripping out the extra footage and any unneeded audio tracks.

Thanks. what is a recommended package then if someone chose to rip a dvd without compression and be able to remove the other languagesm subtuitles, warnings, previews and stuff like that? will dvd shrink also do that?

if i wanted to play 5.1 through an htpc i am guessing i would need a sound card with 5.1 and let it simply pass through to my 5.1 receiver? would an rca cable allow this? i have an asus a7n8x deluxe in the system i am building as the htpc which has an older nforce2 5.1 on-board sound driver, its analog though...not sure if this makes a difference or whether i need to step up to something better like a sound blaster audigy 2, turtle beah montego or chaintech or something else.

I suggest getting MyMovies to make your library easily accessible. Be careful when you look for MyMovies on the web. There are several software packages that use that name. The one you want is shareware and is at:

http://www.mymovies.name/

I use that in combination with TheaterTek software, although I don't use Theatertek to anywhere near its capacity. It is trialware. I believe the trial period is 30 days. MM and TT interface well.

I used ShrinkDVD for a while but moved away from it. I suggest the combination of AnyDVD and CloneDVD. Both are trialware and are available at:

http://www.slysoft.com/en/

Both are well supported and frequently updated.

There are lots of commercial programs out there. VLC (videolan.org) is free and does a great job of playback. Ripit4me is free and can handle most DVDs. I don't recommend compressing video files. They are already compressed and further compression affects quality. The most that can be achieved without introducing video artifacts is an extra 10%.

so these programs such as zoom player and videolan replace the media player as part of mce?

Yes those would be replacements for Windows Media Player. You could technically just use WMP. I just personally find it bloated and it lacks the level of customization I need to setup my video playback the way i want it.

Another free option is Media Player Classic. Basically it's an open-source recreation of the old media player from win 95/98 days (unbloated), but much more advanced. It would probably be my second choice if I couldn't use ZP.

I'll throw in a recommendation for TheaterTek as a DVD (and media player) S/W.

VLC is a fantastic playing tool that will handle pretty much any file you throw at it and allow a pretty good level of tweaking to get what you want out of the video.

www.videolan.org/vlc/

i've been reviewing the supplied links. I tried out VLC and liked it. I am also intrigued with My Movies 2 that was supplied. It looks to me like my movies only integrates with the vista media centre or mce interface which is kind of a bummer since who wants to run multiple playback softwares for a movie.

I am looking for something that can basically handle everything. Another concern I have though with using a program other then MCE is interfacing through a remote. I know there are media centre specific remotes as well as others like logitech's harmony that can control mce out of the box. Using something like these other mentioned packages...a regular keyboard and mouse would be required to control the presentation. ANyway around this? Is this how others are doing this?

Thanks

Remote support in VLC is very weak. (Its biggest shortcoming IMHO. :()

You might want to try MediaPortal (team-mediaportal.com). It is a free PVR/media player interface with good remote support. It also supports VLC and Winamp as external players. Again, there are commercial programs available that do the same job but MediaPortal will let you try out the concept. The main purpose of these programs is for PVR TV recording but they also have multimedia capabilities. The commercial programs often have 30 day trials. The most popular appear to be SnapStream Beyond TV and SageTV. You might want to read this review (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1869552,00.asp). Note that these interfaces essentially replace Windows MCE. Some people are happy using the MCE interface.

Well, If I have ever taken an abrupt left turn with computing at home, this is it.

Last week I found myself researching the full capabilities of the current version SageTV and in short, I am now running SageTV on the server HTPC and SageTV client in the bedroom.

My short answer on how it is? LOVE IT!!!

The biggest thing for me was the fact that it is capable of handling multiple Firewire STBs and is able to show the firewire stream LIVE and also stream it to the client PCs.

The full paid for setup (Not the demo software) has now been running for 12 hours and has been falwless and VERY cool. There I am in the bedroom watching LIVE TV and there is not a STB or connected piece of co-ax to be seen. Very odd and cool feeling.

The nicest thing is that there is a skin for SageTV that makes it look and work nearly identical to MCE 2005. This is great for wife type issues.

IMHO MyMovies is the best playback option. It integrates beautifully into MCE - sure there are other players but most of them aren't that easy to integrate into the whole MCE experience. It also is very nice in downloading the DVD cover artwork, and lots of metadata about the movie. It integrates well with TheaterTek.

As far as ripping I use DVDShrink to rip to hard drive and AutoGK to convert to DivX or XviD.