Computer / TV Integration - I Have A Dream

[jakar]

Greets All,

Thanks first for all the great advice out there - it led me to the 10x Pioneer DVD-ROM drive: performs beautifully on my G400 Max (I knew I'd find a use for that dual head).

So, now my mission is to fully integrate my TV / Computer / Stereo.

* Problems -
Video - Looks like there's some RF interference (very slight grey vertical banding) coming out of the RCA jack on the Dual-Head adapter. Anybody else experience that? I've got an S-Video cable to see if that may clear up this problem, but haven't had time to monkey with that yet.

Audio - Splitting the signal from my Turtle Beach Montego to the stereo or to the TV without the video RCA connected works great. When I connect the video RCA, I get sound + "huuummmmmmmmmmmmmm". Grrr. Some kind of grounding problem or feedback loop I guess. Anyone know? Hoping the S-Video will fix this too...

* Questions -

5.1 surround sound - Can any sound card generate this? I've played with WinDVD 2000 and cannot seem to get that box to ungray. Also, any advice on receivers would be greatly appreciated.

Remote control - Possible?

Thanks!
Jason

System specs since that seems the thing to do:

P2-400 / Asus P2B / 128MB / WD 18GB Expert
G400 Max
Turtle Beach Montego A3D
Pioneer (HiVal) 10x DVD
A bunch of other crap which probably doesn't help the RF interference situation (NIC, CD-R (olde-tyme SCSI), etc...)

[propropro]

hi there,
sorry, i can't help you with your problem, but i am working on something similar.

my pc is the jukebox for audio and video. i have scanned all my cds to mp3files, using the marvel g400 with "mp3 anywhere" (video sender from x10.com) to send the audio and video-signal to the tv. with a rf-remote from x10 i will be able to control the jukebox using the tv as screen.

as this works wirelessly, the pc doesn't have to be where i enjoy the videos or music
:-)

propropro

[jakar]

very cool jukebox idea... I think I solved the remote problem too, with a wireless keyboard from Logitech

Looking into sound cards with S/PDIF now...

[xortam]

jakar, I had started implementing a convergence platform myself a couple months ago. I'm currently at a stand-still trying to select an AC-3 decoder and HDTV RPTV. Decoders go from anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to $10K depending on what functionality (preamp, DTS, multi-room, etc.) and quality you desire. I just passed on getting a $6K Lexicon MC-1 for $3500. Sony makes some nice preamp/decoder boxes for reasonable prices. The TV out is fairly unusable for computer use unless you use the zoom feature to enlarge the text: It is adequate for DVD but nowhere near what's possible using the VGA connector (especially to an HDTV display). I bought the MX25 daughter card for the Diamond MX300 to provide the S/PDIF connection, but again no decoder yet. There are a few vendors out there that provide this connection (Diamond, Aureal, Creative). I have the Antec IR keyboard and I find the pickup not to be sensitive enough (certainly can't use it through my IR repeater system). My friend had the same trouble with this keyboard as well as the Logitech RF keyboard (too little range). A universal remote makes a good DVD remote except you're still limited by the insensitive IR receiver. (Note--just on the phone to him right now and he say's several other HT remote keyboards are discussed at Digital Connection). I'm also interested in a video capture card but I'll wait for an HDTV capable card and use it for PC-VCR.
You're banding does sound like a ground problem (backed up by you're audio hum). You can test this out by swapping cables and placing all of the equipment (PC and HT) on common ground. Once you clean that up you can try better video connections. What is the distance between your PC and HT video connection? I previously discussed (try search on "RG6") various ways of hooking up video using quad-shielded coax (RG6-QS). We can discuss this further after you fix your noise problem. You'll probably want to upgrade you're CPU for smooth DVD playback as well.

[jakar]

Hey Xortam,

Sounds like your're doing it up right... thanks for that Digital Connection hyperlink - I should have known that there would be a community supporting "convergence", damn there's even a name for it!

I'll try out that grounding isolation technique. The HT is only about 8 feet from the PC, something like this, but the wires do run past my subwoofer (NHT SW2). The PC is what I really suspect is the culprit though.

Yah, the TV-Out is REALLY blurry (so much for those dreams of Homeworld on the Big Screen). How do you pass VGA to TV without TV-Out though? Is there a cable that translates VGA directly to the standard RCA or S-Video in, or do you need a TV that accepts VGA connections?

I've been looking through these groups regarding sound, and I was leaning towards the Aureal card. Sounds like you have to get a daughter card for the SBLive in order to get true 5.1 output. What made you choose the Diamond over the others? What do you think about the Hollywood +?

I think I might wait for the annual Stereophile Home Theatre buyer's guide in April to get the receiver/decoder. I used last years issue to steer me towards NHT SuperZeros and the subwoofer and I've been really happy with those, esp. coming from my eight y/o Kenwood Circut City Special. Plus they're relatively cheap Probably won't shell out more than $600 - 700 for a receiver / decoder if I can avoid it. As far as other upgrades go, I would like to go with a faster proccessor, but the 400 is surpisingly adequate. Doing anything else while a DVD is playing will cause some stutter, but as long as I leave it alone, it's happy.


[This message has been edited by jakar (edited 06 January 2000).]

[This message has been edited by jakar (edited 06 January 2000).]

[xortam]

Glad I could be of help jakar.
You won't need to use RG-6 for an 8 foot run. A composite (RCA) or preferably a SVHS cable will be fine. The problem is that those connections use the NTSC or PAL signaling standards which have limited bandwidth that isn't very usable for computer output. To get higher resolution, you need to use the VGA (D-SUB) connector on one of the heads of the G400. This means that you need a TV/monitor that can accept that signaling. High res TVs will have one of several possible connections to support this: RGB (D-SUB VGA or RGBHV), component, or soon FireWire. There are various (expensive) signal converters which can mate incompatible connections. Typically, one would simply connect a long VGA cable. If you're TV doesn't support these connections, it probably isn't capable of resolving these higher resolutions anyway (designed for NTSC/PAL input only).
I don't know what the current state of Creative's sound cards are but my buddy bought an inexpensive add-on for his SBLive card and plays beautiful DVDs (on his data-grade projector) in DD (AC-3) through his ATI Rage Fury card. I hear good things about Aureal's own cards that they are now building. I bought my MX300 last May based on gaming reviews of audio cards at that time. I don't have any experience with the Hollywood+ card. Glad to hear the P2-400 is up to the task. Many of the HT folks are now touting that a PIII/500 is needed but I don't agree.
One last thing .. according to you're diagram, the cables "run under soda". I'm unaware of this soft-drink application as applied to A/V, but maybe this is your noise problem . Seriously though, I assume your sub has an integrated amp and you should avoid running A/V lines by it.

[agallag]

I'm using a P2-350 for my DVD setup, and it's more than adequate. I'm using S-video to connect to my 27" Proscan, and I've got my sblive connected to my JVC AC-3 amp (relatively low end, but it does the job for now). Using WinDVD 2000, I get a very clear picture with practically no dropped frames, and the AC-3 works flawlessly.

[agallag]

Forgot my sig...

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Andrew Gallagher - andrew@agallagher.com
Asus P2B-S (1011), PII-350@350), 64MB PC100, 12.7GB Quantum Fireball EX ATA-33, 2x2.1GB Quantum Atlas I UWSCSI, Toshiba 6201 SCSI CD, Yamaha CRW4416S SCSI CD-RW, WangDAT SCSI, Pioneer DVD-104S 10x Slot Load IDE, MillG400 32MB DH w/ 5ns RAM(5.41 Divers/1.5 Bios/Fo=300MHz), SBLive! Retail (LiveWare3), JVC RX884V Dolby Digital Receiver@500W, Dell D1728D-LS 17" Monitor (first head), ProScan 27" NTSC TV (second head), Win98SE, BeOS 4.5.2, RedHat 6.1, NT4SP6a

[Stewart]

I have a PIII 500 128 Meg RAM and Win98 SE w/ a G400 dualhead hooked to my 61" Toshiba RPTV via s-video in my ever expanding home theater/family room. The PC is kept behind the wall where my TV is. I am using a 4 port USB hub with a 5 Meter conection to the computer run under the carpet. I have a USB keyboard (with two additional USB ports built in) and mouse (Microsoft Explorer optical thingy- kick's butt! - no roller to clog and I use it on the surface of the couch) I keep the hub, keyboard and mouse stored inside my table at the couch. The couch is about 14' from the TV. I have a Soundblaster Live x-gamer connected via rca cables to the L/R speaker inputs on my RPTV (soon to be connected to my Denon AC3 surround sound system (when I get the $ for the receiver & speakers!). I set the G400 to dualhead clone mode and Quake 3 Arena totally kicks ASS! - It actually makes one dizzy with the lights off in the room - 45 fps at 800x600 32bit and 34 fps at 1024x768 32bit no overclocking - good enough for my novice fragging. I also have Homeworld/Tiberium Sun running and the graphics look awesome - the text fonts on the menu screens are again, a bit small/fuzzy but readable. I also use the RPTV to surf the web/check email. I have found that most games/apps look awesome - only have problems reading some small text fonts (I set the desktop and Internet Explorer to display larger fonts). For a while I didn't even have a primary monitor hooked to the G-400 (only need it for bios/dos/ etc.) - just the RPTV via the secondary S-video. My RPTV is a high end analog unit with a built in line doubler (about $3000 two years ago) I am planning on adding a USB joystick and USB Wheel to the system soon. I also have a USB web cam. I am very happy with the performance of the G400 and the dualhead. I checked out some scan converters for converting VGA to NTSC but the higher end ones were $750 and up. I sure with a fully HDTV monitor (1080i) the picture would probably be even better. I would recommend the G400 Dualhead for anybodies home theater.

[xortam]

Well "adequate" certainly is a relative term. The HT folks I speak of use the best video equipment and have a keen eye towards visual quality. No frame drop or stutter is an absolute minimum. They are comparing the image on video projectors (FPTV and RPTV) and CRT or LCD TV/monitors to that of film. These people are perfectionists and they will criticize the best of equipment. I've seen progressive scan DVD (PC-DVD) on a data-grade projector shown on a 10 foot screen and there's a noticeable difference to even a line-quadrupled stand-alone DVD. Also, the application is important in defining "adequate". Games (sans menus) may play fine and video playback (DVD, media player) may look all right, but using the desktop or textual apps is troublesome on a standard definition set (SDTV) (Though I do like the G400 zoom feature for presenting clear enlarged text.) Stewart, what resolution are you running your desktop/apps in for TV out? Are you enhancing the text with other than the font size? I suppose the line-doubler would enhance the readability of the text by reducing the gap between scan lines but it doesn't increase the resolution. Do you see much of a difference in the readability with and without the line-doubler?
I'll have to agree with Stewart that a wired keyboard is probably needed for a convergence system. USB helps minimize your cabling but you're limited as to what O/S to run. I punched a hole in the wall between my office and HT room and run all connections through TechWire modular frames for a clean appearance (drilled through side of blanks to make my own inserts for passing PS/2 cables). I believe you won't find any wireless keyboard that is adequate for gaming. I use both wired and wireless in the HT room. The Philips Pronto is a great touch-screen remote to integrate all of your HT needs (HT equipment, PD-DVD hot keys, X.10 devices including lighting controls etc.) and you can download its programming from the internet.

Say agallag. I see we have similar PC components. I have a Wangtek 6200 DAT from my old system that I couldn't get to work on this new system. Which model do you have? How are you connecting it? Any tricks to get it to work?


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• ASUS P2B-S, PIII 450MHz, Award ACPI BIOS v1010, 128 MB RAM
• MYLEX FlashPoint RAID+ (BIOS v2.02N) running RAID 0 on two 9 GB IBM DDRS 39130D Disks
• Diamond MX300 sound card, now with MX25 S/PDIF output
• Matrox Millennium G400 Max Dual Head - English
• NEC 5FG monitor
• YAMAHA CRW4416S and NEC Multispin 3x CDs
• 3Com Fast EtherLink XL 10/100Mb TX NIC
• US Robotics 56K Voice FaxModem Pro
• Pioneer DVD-303S SCSI
• Note--All SCSI devices (except disk drives on RAID) are connected to onboard AIC7890 U2W SCSI
• Mainly running Win98 v4.10.1998

[xortam]

News from CES ... HDTV on your PC. Ravisent is supercharging Cinemaster to decode HDTV. This is where I've been aiming.

[Stewart]

Xortam,

I normally run my desktop at 800x600 for my RPTV. I figure NTSC only handles about 525 horizontal scan lines anyway. I cannot turn off my internal line doubler so I cannot compare (my Line doubler essentially turns an NTSC interlaced signal (which only scans half the lines each cycle to the full 525+/- each scan. This makes a huge difference in the quality of my DVD's, and DirecTV pictues (No scan lines are visible on Video) as well as text displayed on the TV (many RPTV's with no doubler or 3D Y/C comb filter built in show obvious scan lines and text is almost unreadable . My RPTV set retailed for about 4K in 1998 and I paid a little over 3K. To respond to your question, I use no other font option other than large fonts for my display. That is interesting info on the Pure Diva setup - I'm gonna keep an eye on it. I'll try to post some pictures of my display when I can

[Bond]

Hi.

For those of You interested in using your PC as a part of Your home theater system, i strongly recomend You to visit the AV Science Forums at http://www.avsforum.com.
All the information and knowledge avaliabel in the searchable database will keep You busy for weeks...
Most participants deals with systems from 2-10k $ and counting, so if Your main interest is "Hollywood+ TV-out quality" there will probably be better forums for You.
The discussions concerning HomeTheaterPC's is focused on VGA/RGB to any kind of big screen high resolution display's, may it be CTR projectors, DLP/LCD projectors or HDTV's.
Very few uses any HW support at all for DVD playback since it is a well known fact that currently avaliable SW decoders offers superior DVD image quality as long as you have a fast enough PC, (>450 Mhz P3).
Remember, good DVD playback performance does NOT equal good DVD image quality.
This type of display's requires a graphic board capable of custom resolutions and custom refresh rates. Today only the G400 and GeForce will provide that. Besides, these two offers DVD image quality superior to any other graphic board avaliable today.

The moderator of the forum "Home Theater Computers" is Mark Rejhon. He is very helpful and knowledged and has writen a number of articles deeply discussing various areas of HTPC.

Enjoy your stay.

Thank you // Bond

[cswan]

jakar:

I have the slight grey vertical banding on my TV/out image as well. I tried using short RCA cables, long RCA cables, long shielded RCA cables, SVideo cables--nothing seemed to help. I simply chalked it up to a defect in the TV/Out on my G200.

Got a G400 not too long ago, and thought that would fix the problems--nope, still there. I'm now sending its output via x10.com's video transmitter, and the banding is still there--which rules out any kind of grounding issues.

So, I don't know what to tell you. Um, the video is going through my Samsung VCR via RCA, and then into the TV via coax--perhaps that's the issue? Some poor conversion in the VCR?? My TV only has a coax connector on the back, so I have no other way to test it.

If you figure something out with it, please let me know. At one point I thought setting 'anti-flicker' to '0' in the TV/out settings of Powerdesk helped, but I could be mistaken.

[xortam]

Looks like the post in the other thread must have brought this aging thread back to life. I hope jakar had already fixed his problems.

Bond, Great reference to the AVS forums. I've pointed out that forum before. Mark Rejhon is da man and is a fountainhead of knowledge. I was just over there posting for the first time trying to help out a fellow Matrox G400 owner. My buddy (handle "cpete") posts there frequently and is the one I've mentioned before that has that nice Barco data-grade projector setup. I peruse through there on occasion but not nearly enough; I spend most of my life right here. Gotta change that now that the HDD200 HDTV decoder is about to ship and I need to select an HDTV RPTV (Panasonic maybe?). Bond is right. If you want to get serious about HTPC or HT in general, you've got to scour the AVS forums.

[This message has been edited by xortam (edited 25 February 2000).]