Computer to HDTV help

[Purplepony]

I recently acquired an HP 2.0ghz,512ram tower and was thinking of adding it to my home theater system. (42" LG HDTV) for music, movies,ETC.

Question is, Is the onboard video sufficient for a DVD-like picture or should I just plan on upgrading the video card?
Will using the standard RGB inputs look decent enough?

Keep in mind I'm on a pretty tight budget.

[PapaZ]

Why not save some money, time, and space and get a Philips DVD Player Progressive Scan - DVP5140. Plays DVD, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, (S)VCD and DivX movies. Download your movie and copy it to a thumb drive. Plug the thumb drive into the player and off you go.
Mick turned me onto this and it's the best thing ever!. No more waiting to convert the file to DVD... and a great buy fo only $60 (or similar)

Then you'll have a back up PC and save a bunch of money on a fancy graphics card.

[TheLancinator]

Wow, that looks awesome Papa! How's the playback on movies from the thumbdrive? Pixelation problems or skipping/jerky playback?

[Purplepony]

Originally Posted by PapaZ

Why not save some money, time, and space and get a Philips DVD Player Progressive Scan - DVP5140. Plays DVD, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, (S)VCD and DivX movies. Download your movie and copy it to a thumb drive. Plug the thumb drive into the player and off you go.
Mick turned me onto this and it's the best thing ever!. No more waiting to convert the file to DVD... and a great buy fo only $60 (or similar)

Then you'll have a back up PC and save a bunch of money on a fancy graphics card.

I keep thinking about getting one of those, but in this case I got the tower for free, and also want to put DJ software on it and use it as a music hub.
So... all it would cost me is a mid-range video card to do dvd as well?

[PapaZ]

Originally Posted by TheLancinator

Wow, that looks awesome Papa! How's the playback on movies from the thumbdrive? Pixelation problems or skipping/jerky playback?

If you have a quality video file you get a quality playback. I've played some files on the PC that looked OK but didn't play very well in the thumb drive, but most of them run just fine.

Originally Posted by Purplepony

I keep thinking about getting one of those, but in this case I got the tower for free, and also want to put DJ software on it and use it as a music hub.
So... all it would cost me is a mid-range video card to do dvd as well?

I'm not sure about how an HDTV will act with a PC graphics card. The only experience I've had is with a standard TV. My Radeon 9600 has dual monitor / TV capability and I tried it once... with very poor results. Hopefully someone will answer who's tried the PC to HDTV experiment.

[Cavey]

I am curious now ...
I found this, but I have not read it...
http://www.digitalconnection.com/sup...ffnotes_17.asp

[softdreamer]

Originally Posted by PapaZ

I'm not sure about how an HDTV will act with a PC graphics card. The only experience I've had is with a standard TV. My Radeon 9600 has dual monitor / TV capability and I tried it once... with very poor results. Hopefully someone will answer who's tried the PC to HDTV experiment.

PC - HDTV works fantastic in my experience, its like having a huge monitor!

The poor results you had was because when you connected your PC signal to your TV you were probably going from an 800+ signal down to a less than 400 for PAL or NTSC, Cathode ray TVs have always been a much lower resolution than PC monitors or LCD/Plasma screens
I have an old PC of similar spec set up on an 40" LCD, and use it as a media hub. works fantastic, I even have a wireless network card in it for Internet TV (for free football, golf, racing) and even thats better quality than my old TV signal
Check out Ebay, a 7 series Nvidia card shouldnt set you back more than £25 ($40) and will more than handle HD signal, just make sure you use a good media player

[Elviswind]

This looks like a good intro . . . . http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/02/08...-to-your-hdtv/

[PapaZ]

Not quite "plug and play" is it?

[AnthemZ]

Does this player have a USB plug on it?