HTPC Upgrades

[Karl The Gimp]

I've just order a Panasonic TH42PZ70B 42" plasma tv, and gonna hook it up to my HTPC, and with a new tv like this i'm gonna wanna watch HD stuff so i was thinking of getting these..

LG GGW-H20L Super Multi Blu-Ray Writer & HD-ROM Reader - SATA Retail kit

256MB Gigabyte HD 2600 XT PCI-E

so then i can watch blue-ray and hd films.

What do you think, any better ideas??
OH media pc spec so far is..

Antec Fusion V2 MATX MediaCenter Case with 430W PSU
ASUS M2A-VM
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+
Corsair Value 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 667MHz
Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII

[staffsMike]

The 2600XT should take all the decoding away from the CPU so it shouldn't struggle in that respect so I would say thats perfect.

How does the M2A-VM integrated graphics handle HD? I never got a chance to test mine.

[Skinleech]

Yeah, you should be fine with that lot. I've got an X2 4400, 2gb ram, and an 8600 GTS, with the Pioneer 202 & The 360 HD-DVD drive, and it all runs smoothly. The only issue you'll have at present, is that you'll need to use PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra to play all your content. It's buggy, with inferior picture quality and it downsamples HD audio.

Arcsoft has a prgram called Digital Theatre which, on paper, looks way better than PDVD, but I've had no opportunity to try it out ans a trial is not available - well a Japanese one is.

[Hawklan]

Hi

Powerdvd is very buggy
With more than a few titles not working - I rec'd my cut down version (only 2 channel sound) with a combo Blu Ray / HD DVD drive.

I'll wait to see how the Arcsoft program pans out before I spend $100

RON

[Hawklan]

P.S

You will probably want to get a copy of Any HD DVD from Slysoft which will remove region coding and the need to have a HDCP compliant system throughout

RON