Will the G450 run with no PC monitor, just TV out

[Sciascia]

I have a dream.... to build a DVD/SVCD/whatever player for my home entertainmnet center. My standalone is allright, but it is having problems with the new movies (multibranching and just starting to suck in general). I want to build another computer, nothing to fancy, get a desktop case, paint it black and be able to use it without having a PC Monitor in my A/V rack (actually big-a$$ shrunk). I would want to use a G450 (price and availability with dualhead). All I need is a wireless mouse and I can stash the keyboard somewhere or go wireless as well. If I set up Auto-insert notification and tell it to scale to full screen it should work. I even saw some sight s that showed you how to make IR Remote sensors for serial ports and the software for it. Then I could playback DVD/DVCD/miniDVD/anything I want. Just get a decent AC3 capable soundcard and go at it. Pipedream??? Anyone try something similar yet?

[Mance]

You should probably check out the Home Theater Computers section on the AVS Forums. There are tons of people there doing exactly what you're trying to do, and they have a lot of experience and expertise. I've been scanning them for a while since I do this a little bit too, and they seem to favor using Radeon cards with some custom tweaks for doing this.

http://www.avsforum.com/ubbcgi/Ultimate.cgi

[Rob100]

I did something similar for a friend and use a G450, but when comparing the image quality against my Pioneer stand alone (same TV, same DVD/SVCD, kept flicking back and forth) DVD the computers output sucked. I tried WinDVD, PowerDVD and Cinemaster but either they or the G450's TV out couldn't compare to my DVD player. I was using s-vhs for both.

[Sciascia]

I agree that the SW decoded output probably won't caompare to HW, but just for added flexibility and to have it actually work with all formats would be a big plus. Also at the rate that SW decoders are improving, having something that is upgradeable is desirable to me. My standalone (2nd one now) is just too limiting. When it does work right I love it, but about 3/4 through a movie it freaks out sometimes. I could also put my whole music library (been backing up to MP3) and have everything right there. It may not be the absolute highest quality, but the output of my G400 Marvel looks pretty good with WinDVD on my little 20" in the office. Maybe on a larger set it may look a little worse, but atleast I can watch the whole movie.

I did look at that foruma and it was interesting, but they seem to be more worried about the cases than the HW. I will dig a little further into the archives later.


I looked at the Book PC. Has the right idea, but it doesn't look like I can upgrade it (everything is integrated) and I want to to avoid that. For the price I would take a chance, but I need 5 channel audio outptut and that doesn't have it.

Atleast I have some more ideas, Thanks.

[wkulecz]

Look for a "builder's system" called "Book PC" It has DVD options, builtin TVout and a wireless keyboard/mouse. It comes in black so you don't have to paint it. These have no slots but are very popular with college students as homework computers and DVD players in the limited space of a dorm room.
Size is about right ot fit in a componet audio rack.

I've never tried using my G450 as you suggest, but I can't see how it wouldn't work if you set it up with a monitor atached and enabled the second head as "clone" in 800x600 mode. Then everything should be displayed on the TV out as well and you could remove the monitor.

--wally

[Sciascia]

Just to leat anyone who is reading this know that apparently the G450 needs a PC Monitor to boot according to Matrox. This is what i was afraid of. I was wondering if there was a device like a terminator to simulate a PC Monitor that could be bought or fabricated though. Anyone heard of such a thing?