For my 1080p PJ I bought a HTPC. It's not arrived yet. It gives me the change to do some research on the software to use.

I have two simple objectives with the HTPC:

1. Play all available HD content
2. Upscale DVD-format to 1080p

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My HTPC is using the GT8500 nvidia video-card which has build in H.264 decoding. To get all of this you have to use Nvidia's PureVideo. This combination will relieve the CPU. Also PureVideo should have some positive effects to the quality of the picture.
So to play off HD content the PureVideo feature is helpfull. But what is the best media player to use in combination with this program? Is Windows Media Player 11 under Vista Ultimate the best choice? Or is it winDVD, powerDVD, VLC, Media Player Classic...?

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To upscale DVD to 1080p I think is another story. Because the H.264 decoding is of no use here, right? Also I think PureVideo is no upscaler. For upscaling I read FFDShow is a good program. However using FFDShow in combination with PureVideo is not recommended. So do I have to deinstall PureVideo when using FFDShow?
Secondly I wonder which media player is recommended using in combination with FFDShow. Can that be the same as people use to play off HD content or are there other recommendations here...

So basicly what I'm asking is what you think is the best choice of programs to use to achieve the best performance/best picture quality for both goals.

Kick

I am testing/ GBPVR(a directshow player media center) / Purevideo / FFDSHOW & a radeon 9600 with the 15" LCD i'm planing on using for a projector.
I'm also using a 2.6ghz Celeron cpu so i can't do a whole lot of upscaling.
Basically I can pull off x2 scaling using bicubic if I tweak it.

I have not seen any compatibility problems.

When it comes to upscaling DVD you just need purevideo to provide the codec & a directshow compatible player to allow ffdshow filters work on the image.

Your graphics card will help out on HDTV material & will help with upscaling DVD's, but it will still take some serious cpu power to perform the software upscaling using say lancoze filtering.

A dualcore Opteron @ 2.8Ghz 2GB DDR & a GeForce 8800GTS should be enough power to upscale DVDs to 1080p? It should run WoW & contemporary games at 1080 res as well was my other plan...
I'm in a similar situation to nitro widget so any other input would be appreciated

any benchmarks available on how much CPU powah is needed? I can OC this opty a lil more with my watercooling setup. conroe (core duo) is not really an option right now...

I have been testing a radeon 9600 & a celeron 2.4 GHZ cpu.
going from 480 to 780 using denoise & scale with bicubic tanks the CPU with mpeg2 recordings on Media player classic.
But, the picture in the frozen video frame looks good.

I think I can keep bicubic, but just need to adjust how much scaling I do.
I always thought just doubling the size would provide for the least amonut of calculations, but now i'm thinking it's a matter of keeping the ratios for WxH the same.

I would not use FFDshow unless you have to for scalling. The GT8500 should scalle just fine and it will be in hardware so it won't load the CPU. I have a cheeper 6300A NIVDA card with PureVideo and it scales perfect.

The software player must be able to use NVIDA hardware aceleration; so far that has only been PowerDVD.

If you don't like the way the GT8500 looks then you might try ffdshow.

Well maybe you're right here. I will test it without FFDShow when the HTPC is in . Only I read a lot of positive things about FFDShow, also because it has some good filters. Look here for some comparison:

http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?a...=39&t=17427

And here for some more general info:

http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?a...=20&t=23915

I'd say it's a matter of preference.
I'm fairly certain a 9550 radeon & a 5200 gforce is where hardware scaling starts.
I can say that the pciture looks fine playing DVD's but using ffdshow to sharpen or deblock video makes it look just that much better to me.

Ok thanks all. I will try several things to see what works best for me. Ik will post the results when they are here.

I was talking about scaling. If the video card has HQ scaling hardware then use it ( NVDIA has it) I keep seeing vary high end computers to play DVD content. If the video card has it in hardware it will be vary good and most CPU's will work just fine.

NVDIA has a good explantion of there PureVideo.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo.html

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html