Standalone vs. video card with tv out card

[razmalaidogg]

Hello,

My Lite-On LVD-2001 isnt working and I was considering replacing it so I can watch XVID / DiVX movies on TV.

Can anyone recommend the best player out now with the best chipset?

Also do you think that it's a better solution to use a video card and play the movies from my computer with a video out cord? If so can anyone recommend a good card? Thanks for your time.

Raz

[jkwarras]

Originally posted by razmalaidogg
If so can anyone recommend a good card? Thanks for your time.

A cheap ATI Radeon is far enough here for DivX/Xvid/DVD via TV-out.

[zag2me]

In my experience I would say that tv-out is 50% worse than using a hardware player for divx stuff. I have an HTPC and a standalone and the quality difference is huge.

I think this will change with HDTV's but thats still a long way off for alot of us.

[FlimsyFeet]

(Assuming you're in Europe) bear in mind that an s-video connection from a video card does not give as good an image as RGB SCART on a standalone player. But there are ways to hack ATI cards to give RGB, or you could buy a more expensive Matrox card.

I imagine a PC would be more flexible, i.e. more compatible with less-common formats, can decode AC3 or output digitally to an external decoder, can speed up 23.976 fps to 25 fps with reclock. But I've not had chance to play with any standalone players yet, so I don't know what they can or can't do.

[saeed]

Buy an XBOX. Get XBMC and enjoy xvid, divx, realmedia, and quicktime.

Oh! and you can play some games as well.

[wim]

i've had some experience with both, used to use tv-out for a few years before the right standalone came along and i recently bought that (2 actually). the standalone is better picture quality, and it's much nicer not to have to plug up and boot a computer. one caveat: if you need .idx/.rar subtitles you can't have 'em yet.

what player to buy - you'd have to tell what country you live in. but basically most players with MT1389 chipsets will be similar/good (perhaps try to avoid the MT1389GE chip if possible).

i would not recommend an xbox (a lot of people here do). this is cause it's basically a computer with fans and a harddrive in there, so it's a lot noisier than a half decent standalone. also more expensive! the problem i have with both HTPC and xbox is that noise of the fans and/or harddrive. i like the moments of silence in a movie to be quiet, without a horrible droning noise appearing. (it could be a personal thing and doesn't seem to bother most people)

[SeeMoreDigital]

How did I miss this thread?

Nahh to all the above suggestions...

Buy yourself an Sigma Xcard (give TVedia a test drive), load up either an file, DVD, CD or VCD. Then sit back and watch some great quality looking images, via either: composite, S-video, component RGB, component YUV or VGA output.


Cheers

[zag2me]

You are right the Sigma X-card is a notable expception to the poor tv-out quality issue, but of course the x-card needs special software to use it which is a major problem if you use other software like Meedio or sagetv. I even saw a scart adapter for the xcard, very cool I must say.

I hope they bring out an updated x-card with the new sigma WMV chip and driver software that works on all htpc packages. Now that would be interesting.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by zag2me
...but of course the x-card needs special software to use it which is a major problem if you use other software like Meedio or sagetv.

Well I would hardly call it 'special software'. I can't think of any graphics style card that does not benefit by running their own recommended drivers.

That said, I'm interested in understanding more about the Meedio/SageTV conflicts. And whether this occurs after installing Sigma's 'drivers' or after installing Sigma's 'application' software?

I run the Xcard on a dual boot system. On one boot I have both Sigma's 'drivers' and 'application' software installed. On the other boot I have just Sigma's 'drivers' and TVedia's 'application' software.

Originally posted by zag2me
...I hope they bring out an updated x-card with the new sigma WMV chip and driver software that works on all htpc packages. Now that would be interesting.

This would be the 'holy grail' high-def video solution. Especially if the card was fitted with an DVI output.


Cheers

[wata]

xbox solution is the best
play almost everything

current standalone can't do alots of thing i want, (some eg. can't play realmedia/quicktime/vp6, vobsub, double-byte filename files/subs)
xbox is close since it is a computer


it is about the same price as a standalone if you know how to modify yourself and got more features

spend 2hrs reading up at xbox-scene
then use harddisk hot-swap method to softmod it and finally TSOP

btw, i both my computer have tv-out, radeon and a matrox g400 both quality not good enough compare to xbox
matrox is quite good but have overscan problems

[scharfis_brain]

TV-Out sucks quality-wise.
It always scales the video so it is not interlaced-compatible , also a DVD-SAP is much easier to use and more reliable than a PC...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by wata
current standalone can't do alots of thing i want, (some eg. can't play realmedia/quicktime/vp6, vobsub, double-byte filename files/subs)

This is where the Xcard scores again!

Ordinarily it's a 'hardware only' decoding card but with when TVedia is installed, the Xcard can be configured to 'software decode' just about every type of media stream. And pass the output to a TV via either: composite, S-video, component RGB, component YUV or VGA output.

I'm also able to watch, record and time-shift DVB-S and DVB-T broadcasts via 'hardware decode'


Cheers