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OCC Guide to Building an Home Theater PC


Nemo

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most early board with Nvidia and ATI chipset with onboard video and HDMI allow ONLY 2 channel audio over HDMI...there is a BIOS option for HD-Audio which is basically the HDMI audio...

 

the newest generation 780G and 790G board allow more than 2 channel audio only on certain brand of boards...

 

Some boards allow 5.1 and some allow 7.1 audio over HDMI...you might want to check the boards specs before getting one...

 

My Biostar 7050 HDMI and my Asus P5E-VM HDMI are both only 2 channel audio over HDMI...

 

But both are crappy onboard video also so the addition of even a cheap video card like a HD4830 will be a better choice...the PowerColor HD4830 I have has full 7.1 audio over HDMI...

 

My Biostar 780G board has 5.1 audio over HDMI...

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I was pretty hardcore into HTPC a few years ago, before Blu-ray and HD DVD. I have a 2.35:1 constant image height projection setup, and used the HTPC for scaling and DVD playback. When HD DVD came out, and later Blu-ray, none of the software solutions supported the stretch required. I bit the bullet and bought a scaler, and haven't thought about an HTPC since. In years of tinkering with various video cards, FFDshow, Powerstrip, Zoom Player and Theatertek software, I was never able to get a perfectly judder free image.

 

My HTPC required constant tweaking, which was kind of fun in itself....but you can't beat dedicated devices for ease. I kept the HTPC in my audio stack for a while for gaming, but trying to game on an eleven foot wide screen with seating nine feet back is really tiring. It's impressive, but it's tiring.

 

The scaler makes everything so much easier. 1080p24 comes into the box from the BD player (on a BD, 480i on a DVD), is streched into shape in the scaler, and 1080p24 goes out to the projector. There's no place for judder to be introduced.

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I used a Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H which uses one of amd's first graphics chipsets to support HDMI....the 690g. I know it has at least 2 channel digital out over HDMI which I already use (I never planned for multichannel in my bedroom) but I can't figure out if it supports more or not. The specs are vague at best......they state the HDMI spec (which supports 8 channels) but don't necessarily say that this particular board supports multichannel. Specs Here :huh:

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