Media Player Suggestions?

[dreamliner77]

Yeah, what Lord said.

 

[Vanquished]

Yeah, what Lord said.

Switched it to system managed. Not sure if the extra ram helped. I mean it is slow pc2700 ram lol.
I think I'll just settle for 6.5gb movie files over the 8-12gb files that I wanted to play. I still find it funny that VLC can handle the audio fine but the video craps out, and MPC can handle the video but not the DTS audio... Hmmm

 

[Vanquished]

Hey Everyone,
So I was searching ebay for some ram still (last night tried to play a 7.5gb version of Thor but had to settle for a 5.5gb version, so I got mad), I just bought 2x 1gb Ultra PC 3200 ram since I dont think the pc2700 was cutting it.
Anybody got some spare pc3200 sticks lying around?

Will this be enough to play "1080p" (10gb) DTS audio mkv files?
The other hardware is an AMD X2 4200 cpu, an NVidia 7900GT KO gpu, an ASUS a8n-e MOBO, and I spent 7 dollars on a diamond XS71 sound card.
Other than that, its just outputting to a 61inch DLP tv.

On another note, does anyone know how to replace the A8N-E Chipset fan without removing the board from the case? Its been slowly dying for a while now, and its making a terrible noise and I cant oil it or anything without getting the fan off the board. (would probably just replace it, they are like 6 bucks on ebay.)

Thanks!

 

[LordOfLA]

you need a quad core to play 1080p.

 

[Vanquished]

you need a quad core to play 1080p.

I shouldn't understand why that would be the case...
We used to play the 1080p files (11-12gb) which I know arent totally HD. just fine on the pc with only 1gb of ram when we had the sound in stereo. Its when we got surround sound and had to use 5.1 DTS that things started going badly.

Even if it is the case, Ill be fine if we can play 8gb files again.

 

[LordOfLA]

Stop trying to cut corners

Pickup an AMD Phenom II X4 plug in 4-8gb ram and get a radeon 6850 and you'll be golden. The investment will be worth it if you intend to make a full time HTPC out of it.

 

[Vanquished]

Stop trying to cut corners

Pickup an AMD Phenom II X4 plug in 4-8gb ram and get a radeon 6850 and you'll be golden. The investment will be worth it if you intend to make a full time HTPC out of it.

Um... no?
I've already got my good pc (not that it works with the graphics cards), its working fine with the onboard graphics mind you. The Media PC is fine, and with 2gb of real good pc3200 ram I think it will be fine. I know the cpu can handle 1080p video, and I know the gpu can as well. Before this was a media pc it was my pc, of course, I sold off my pc3200 ram when i built my real computer because you make a good amount of money for it on ebay, I didn't know I was gonna build a media pc at the time, because my dv9000z laptop was working fine (which is what we used).

 

[Not Bman]

A tip, never install MPCHC and then after install CCCP (was awhile after and forgot I installed it), gave me quite a headache lol

 

[LordOfLA]

Um... no?
I've already got my good pc (not that it works with the graphics cards), its working fine with the onboard graphics mind you. The Media PC is fine, and with 2gb of real good pc3200 ram I think it will be fine. I know the cpu can handle 1080p video, and I know the gpu can as well. Before this was a media pc it was my pc, of course, I sold off my pc3200 ram when i built my real computer because you make a good amount of money for it on ebay, I didn't know I was gonna build a media pc at the time, because my dv9000z laptop was working fine (which is what we used).

Then you'll just have to live with the fact you won't play 1080p with more than stereo audio.

If you are going to do something, do it properly or not at all. For the best possible playback of 1080p with all audio formats (including dolby truehd and dts master audio), you need at minimum a quad-core cpu.

I didn't say that for fits and giggles, I said it based on personal experiance with a dual core system much more powerful than the AMD you are trying to use now.

The question now is: do you want a decent media pc, or do you want a half-assed barely capable media pc because you were too cheap to do it properly?

Yes I am being harsh. Yes you are being silly enough for me to be so.

 

[Vanquished]

I'll take the half-assed money saving option.

I ask for advice here because it usually helps save money, since you all have great insight.
If I wanted to build a top-notch media PC then I would have done so, I don't need advice for that. I figured, since MPC can play the Video of a DTS audio 12gb file fine and because VLC can play the audio of a DTS audio 12gb file with no problems that there must have been some software that did both well.

 

[Xie]

I have a boxee box and it does all my media stuff fine. (much cheaper then building a crazy quad-core system to watch TV/Movies.

18. Which video formats can Boxee play?
Boxee supports Adobe Flash 10.1, FLV/On2 VP6 (FLV/FV4/M4V), H.264 AVC (TS/AVI/MKV/MOV/M2TS/MP4), VC-1 (TS/AVI/MKV/WMV), MPEG-1 (DAT/MPG/MPEG), MPEG-2 (MPG/MPEG/VOB/TS/TP/ISO/IFO), MPEG-4 (MP4/AVI/MOV), DivX 3/4/5/6 (AVI/MKV), Xvid (AVI/MKV), and WMV9 (WMV/ASF/DVR-MS).

19. Which audio formats can Boxee play?
Boxee supports MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AIF/AIFF, AC3/AAC, OGG, FLAC, DTS, and Dolby Digital/Dolby True HD

Source: FAQ

 

[Vanquished]

I have a boxee box and it does all my media stuff fine. (much cheaper then building a crazy quad-core system to watch TV/Movies.



Source: FAQ

Can it support an external HDD through those USB ports?
We run our stuff off a 640gb portable HDD

 

[Xie]

Can it support an external HDD through those USB ports?
We run our stuff off a 640gb portable HDD

It can.


Just a warning though that I haven't used anything other then the TV speakers for audio though. It does seem to play most every file I've thrown at it though.

 

[Johnny]

I just hook an external hd up to my tv. The tv itself plays practically all video formats; including .mkv.

 

[j4m3z]

I've used VLC player and its quite easy to install and use right off the bat.

 

[LordOfLA]

boxee boxes are dual core with hardware decode equivalent to radeon 4000 series. I'm under the impression the software is gpl'ed so you could just install it on your current machine and see what happens.

So you're either going the hardware decode route ($100+ on a video card with hardware mpeg2, h264, vc1 decode) or you're going quad-core and you'll want something equivalent to a core 2 quad, just don't expect smooth playback of 1080p, flac audio and animated sub titles.

I still don't see why you are resistant to my advice on what to get to build a media player pc that will play whatever you want, whenever you want without issue.

 

[Xie]

boxee boxes are dual core with hardware decode equivalent to radeon 4000 series. I'm under the impression the software is gpl'ed so you could just install it on your current machine and see what happens.

So you're either going the hardware decode route ($100+ on a video card with hardware mpeg2, h264, vc1 decode) or you're going quad-core and you'll want something equivalent to a core 2 quad, just don't expect smooth playback of 1080p, flac audio and animated sub titles.

I still don't see why you are resistant to my advice on what to get to build a media player pc that will play whatever you want, whenever you want without issue.

Yeah you could try boxee software here: Boxee - Make a Boxee

 

[Vanquished]

Yeah you could try boxee software here: Boxee - Make a Boxee

I'd want to use the Boxee Box, but its so friggin' expensive (not by comparison however)

Back to the PC though, would an AMD Athlon II X2 260 play 1080p HD Video (11gb mkv files) with DTS?
The setup would be.
MSI 890GXM G65 MOBO
EVGA 7900GT KO Card
4GB DDR3 1333mhz ram
Diamond XS7.1 Sound card

I ask this because I recently just bought a new motherboard for my pc, and new ram. So i currently have 4gigs of kingston ddr3 ram, and an MSI 890GXM-G65 Motherboard just sitting around. Of course I'm keeping my phenom in my real pc for now but for 60ish bucks I could get the AMD Athlon II X2 260 processor and put the MSI board and Ram to good use. I don't think the board will sell used for anywhere near where its worth (Still sells for 120 new so...).
Thoughts?
The board also has onboard graphics but they wouldn't even play 720p video with 8gigs of ram and a Phenom II X4 CPU backing them up....

 

[LordOfLA]

You could try it, though it'd probably struggle. You could transcode the video to mpeg 2 however and get hardware decode from the 7900gt.

Your best bet would be to find a phenom ii x4 that works in your mainboard

At which poing mpc-hc, madvr, slysoft reclock will give you near butter smooth playback of everything

 

[Vanquished]

You could try it, though it'd probably struggle. You could transcode the video to mpeg 2 however and get hardware decode from the 7900gt.

Your best bet would be to find a phenom ii x4 that works in your mainboard

At which poing mpc-hc, madvr, slysoft reclock will give you near butter smooth playback of everything

Dang. I was afraid of that. I don't really wanna spend a hundred+ bucks on a phenom II X4, the athlon II was such a sweet price. lol