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AGP and HDMI and Blue-Ray

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dgk

Member
Joined
Feb 2, 2001
Location
Delray Beach FL
I have an old machine (AMD 1600+) that I hooked up to a new 32" LCD in the bedroom. It looks really good through the RGB (VGA) out on the AIW 9600 card, but it seems a shame not to use an HDMI input. The cheapest card I see on Newegg is $50. For another $70 I can get a Blueray drive.

Will an HTMI card make normal movies look any better? Would a 1600+ machine be able to deal with Blue-Ray? It has XP Pro on it, but I can install Win7.
 
all you need is a card that supports H264/vc1 decoding. you dont have to spend alot of money on a computer to get BD playback... no using HDMI will not improve image quality of DVD movies or other movies. the resolution of the movie it is recorded in will effect quality but so will the compression rate used for the movie.

if you want a card that just does BD playback
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187057

otherwise you need to upgrade to a pc with PCIE. if you want a new pc with just BD playback then get the AMD 785 based board. which has onboard video that supports BD playback and costs a touch more then the video card i linked to. well looks like i spoke to soon
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138156
but i would suggest one with Sideport memory (side port is memory on the motherboard for the onboard video to use.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157168
 
Ok, so this HIS card will provide HDMI but not work for Blue-Ray. Alright, I'll save some money and just use the RGB output from the AIW for basic surfing from bed and regular DVD watching.
 
H264/VC1 started getting support in the ATI HD2000, you would be good to go.
 
Thanks. Probably not worth doing; I just figured that the TV takes HDMI so why not provide it. I really am pretty happy with the VGA output though.

I have a quad core monster (hasn't even made my sig yet!) in the living room connected to a 42" TV and haven't bothered to set it up for BlueRay. I guess if I ever get a BlueRay disk I can worry about it.
 
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