[mythtv-users] HD DVD

Steven Adeff adeffs.mythtv at gmail.com
Thu Dec 7 18:06:40 UTC 2006


On 12/6/06, mythusers at freakzilla.com <mythusers at freakzilla.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Dec 2006, Steven Adeff wrote:
> > I wouldn't trust a computer sound card with SACD or DVD-A thats cheap
> > enough to not warrant purchasing a stand alone player.
>
> I'd love to reply telling you that the mboard/soundcard I have in here has
> optical and coaxial digital spdif output as well as 7.1 channel analog
> output and that I believe sound quality would be just fine, but sadly it's
> an ATI chipset which means only a small tiny subset of it actually works!

the only sound cards I've seen that can handle the full frequency
requirements and have high quality DAC's suitable for SACD/DVD-A use
cost as much as some of the cheaper SACD/DVD-A players ($3-500). Since
SPDIF can't handle multiple channels that doesn't really matter. HDMI
1.2b (and 1.3) support uncompressed 7.1 audio transfer, but I think
there are only 1 or 2 receviers/preamps out that support it right now,
and no PC hardware (nvidia, where are you on this? didn't you just
release the 8xxx series?).


> Quite honestly, I'm very happy with the sound quality I get out of my
> ripped-into-FLAC CDs. I use MythTV pretty much as nothing /but/ a music
> player, and it'd be nice not to have any CD-like media cluttering up the
> place for music.

This really just comes down to the quality of your SPDIF output on
your PC (esp. with lossless compression like FLAC). I actually just
store my CD music as AAC with Nero's 0.8 quality level, which comes in
between 50-90% of the FLAC size, but since most of my listening is
casual its fine. I have my SACD/DVD-A for serious listening. Sadly, I
still use XBMC for music playback since MythMusic has many issues, not
the least of which is its handling of mp4 files.

> And yeah, I can rip some of the DVD-A or DTS-only discs,
> but until that sounds great and I can get SACD, I'll still use my
> standalone player for that. Same goes for DVD-Video, until diskspace is
> cheap enough to rip all of THOSE, too.

You can always use FLAC on DVD-A discs. DTS is already compressed, so
thats moot. I understand the audio jukebox idea, shuffle works great
for music. I'm not really concerned with video jukebox though, How
often do I really watch one of my 100's of DVD's or sit through
episodes of shows I've purchased on DVD? not that often, not enough to
warrant wasting HD space on them. Now, if you have kids, who
inevitably watch the same 20 DVD's over and over (and inevitably
break/scratch the discs), I can see it as more than worth buying that
500GB drive to rip their DVD's...

-- 
Steve
Before you ask, read the FAQ!
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions
then search the Wiki, and this list,
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/
Mailinglist etiquette -
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List_etiquette


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list