Sunday, August 8, 2004
HTPC is complete (for now)!
OK, it has taken about 6 months or more; however, I finally have my HTPC configured and working to my satisfaction.
The final tweaks, which took the longest, involved getting the highest quality playback of DVD video. I used a combination of ATI Catalyst 4.7 drivers and Powerstrip to get my display running at 1728x1000i (to eliminate any overscan) with the desktop centered.
I then configured FFDShow, ReClock 1.4 and Zoom Player Professional to present DVD video at 1440x960 (double DVD resolution) using Lancoz 4. I also added the denoise3d filter (0,0,5) in FFDShow for further noise reduction. After setting my video card latency to 64, I am able to achieve all of the above with only about 60% CPU usage (as opposed to 100% prior to ReClock and latency tweak).
The resulting picture quality beats the hell out of my standalong DVD player.
In addition to the DVD playback, I am able to listen to Rhapsody through my AV receiver (via a digital audio output), watch and record TV (via SageTV 2), burn shows to DVD (from either Sage recordings or from my TiVo), rip DVDs to the HDD and surf the web.
Learn more about my HTPC setup here.
OK, it has taken about 6 months or more; however, I finally have my HTPC configured and working to my satisfaction.
The final tweaks, which took the longest, involved getting the highest quality playback of DVD video. I used a combination of ATI Catalyst 4.7 drivers and Powerstrip to get my display running at 1728x1000i (to eliminate any overscan) with the desktop centered.
I then configured FFDShow, ReClock 1.4 and Zoom Player Professional to present DVD video at 1440x960 (double DVD resolution) using Lancoz 4. I also added the denoise3d filter (0,0,5) in FFDShow for further noise reduction. After setting my video card latency to 64, I am able to achieve all of the above with only about 60% CPU usage (as opposed to 100% prior to ReClock and latency tweak).
The resulting picture quality beats the hell out of my standalong DVD player.
In addition to the DVD playback, I am able to listen to Rhapsody through my AV receiver (via a digital audio output), watch and record TV (via SageTV 2), burn shows to DVD (from either Sage recordings or from my TiVo), rip DVDs to the HDD and surf the web.
Learn more about my HTPC setup here.
¶ 2:10 PM 
About Shawn Morton
Married father of 4, social media strategist at Nationwide, consumer electronics enthusiast, hair metal aficionado.
View complete bio.
View complete bio.
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