solo

[solo]

Hi, my first time.

I want to build an ultimate PC purely for watching DVD's on my projector. I would appreciate any ideas as to what motherboard, processor and graphics card I should use?

Money being no object.

Thanks,

[Hobart Paving]

The PC spec isn't going to make that much difference because its going to the be projecter which is going to hold you back - dont expect vibrant pictures from it as you would from something like a widescreen TV.

Assuming that your projector connects via aD-SUB cable (most do), any graphics card will be okay in terms of signal quality. If you really want to be leftfield, consider something like a Matrox Parhelia. More realistically, a high end ATI Radeon card (eg. X800 Pro/XL etc) or All-in-Wonder will be perfect. The All-in-Wonder will give you 'Remote Bob' functionality as well. I'm not all happy with the Nvidia cards because of the problematic video processing units on them (see the other thread in the Graphics forum for details), so it may be best to avoid Nvidia cards at the moment.

As for CPU specs, anything over 1ghz will be fine. If you really are just using the PC for just watching DVDs, anything more than that is probably an overkill. I'd suggest going Intel all the way - CPU and motherboard. To give yourself some flexibility in future using HDTV output, you might want to consider going for the highest spec that you can. Unless you're particularly rich, or just like spending money, there's no need to go overboard for this purpose.

Finally, use Nero DriveSpeed to adjust your DVD-ROM speeds to say x2 so that you don't any noticeable drive noise during DVD playback.

[muddyfox470]

for dvd playback, a word of warning, do not buy any 6800 series (NVidia) as there is a problem atm which may or may not be able to be fixed regarding poor playback of dvds, so yeah

any decent vid card will do, and just to play back dvds on big screen you dont need a decent gfx card anyway,

so anything above a Radeon 8500 or Nvidia 4400/4600/4800 Should do the job sweetly, is that what you need? or do you need it for more?

[Jonny M]

If it's purely for watching DVDs on a projector, just get a good progressive scan DVD player.