Friday, September 03, 2004
Progress Is Being Made & The WOW Factor is Huge
I've been so distracted watching the thing that I've neglected to report on progress. We got the Samsung display installed and running off the old antenna in time to watch the last week of the Olympics in HD --- WOW is it ever awesome.
Last week, Friday I think, we got the new dish and the new antenna installed and everything connected. Called DirecTV to activate HD and found out that they were running a special and my first six months of HD are FREE -- Wow, that's very cool. Discovery HD just blows me away. Haven't watched a lot of HDNet or HDMovies yet, but what I've seen is great, oh yeah, and did I mention WOW.
The XBox is connected and all of the games I have run at 480P resolution and it is excellent. The wide screen itself is a major improvement. There are a few games out at 720P and 1 or 2 at 1080i - Hopefully I'll get to try one of those before too long. For the benefit of those who don't know, standard definition television is broadcast in 480i (interlaced), 480P is a step up and non-interlaced. True High Definition is 720P and 1080i currently and eventually 1080P.
Well, this whole thing started as my HTPC project, and finally now I can get back to it. This is where the tweaking and the fun stuff really starts. The HTPC is in the cabinet as you can see below and is connected to the display. The video signal connection is from the DVI port on the ATI 9600XT to the HDMI port on the Samsung display via an DVI/HDMI adapter. The native resolution of the Samsung DLP display is 1280x720 and I want to have the HTPC output at that resolution so no scaling is required. I struggled for several days to get that to happen, and as of this morning, thanks to a new set of ATI Catlyst drivers we have success. The HTPC is sending a 1280x720 signal to the Samsung and full integration of the HTPC can now proceed. This is where all the tweaking comes in and I'm raring to go.
Just a quick sidenote, the audio amps are still out for upgrade and due to some schedule conflicts, mostly mine, we will not re-install them until next Wednesday. So audio is currently fed from the Sony STB directly to the Display. The sound is actually not at all bad.
So here's the promised picture. The Sony STB has been moved from above the center channel speaker to the inside of the cabinet. It's on the top right. The XBox is in the cabinet - lower right. The HTPC (looking quite large) is on the center shelf on the right of the cabinet. It's also pretty junky in there - I'll have to clean that up one day.
W O W
Last week, Friday I think, we got the new dish and the new antenna installed and everything connected. Called DirecTV to activate HD and found out that they were running a special and my first six months of HD are FREE -- Wow, that's very cool. Discovery HD just blows me away. Haven't watched a lot of HDNet or HDMovies yet, but what I've seen is great, oh yeah, and did I mention WOW.
The XBox is connected and all of the games I have run at 480P resolution and it is excellent. The wide screen itself is a major improvement. There are a few games out at 720P and 1 or 2 at 1080i - Hopefully I'll get to try one of those before too long. For the benefit of those who don't know, standard definition television is broadcast in 480i (interlaced), 480P is a step up and non-interlaced. True High Definition is 720P and 1080i currently and eventually 1080P.
Well, this whole thing started as my HTPC project, and finally now I can get back to it. This is where the tweaking and the fun stuff really starts. The HTPC is in the cabinet as you can see below and is connected to the display. The video signal connection is from the DVI port on the ATI 9600XT to the HDMI port on the Samsung display via an DVI/HDMI adapter. The native resolution of the Samsung DLP display is 1280x720 and I want to have the HTPC output at that resolution so no scaling is required. I struggled for several days to get that to happen, and as of this morning, thanks to a new set of ATI Catlyst drivers we have success. The HTPC is sending a 1280x720 signal to the Samsung and full integration of the HTPC can now proceed. This is where all the tweaking comes in and I'm raring to go.
Just a quick sidenote, the audio amps are still out for upgrade and due to some schedule conflicts, mostly mine, we will not re-install them until next Wednesday. So audio is currently fed from the Sony STB directly to the Display. The sound is actually not at all bad.
So here's the promised picture. The Sony STB has been moved from above the center channel speaker to the inside of the cabinet. It's on the top right. The XBox is in the cabinet - lower right. The HTPC (looking quite large) is on the center shelf on the right of the cabinet. It's also pretty junky in there - I'll have to clean that up one day.
W O W
