wow lots and lots of opinions. this is good, that is no good. that one have this advantage, this one have that advantage. sure gonna make possible adopters turn away from the whole htpc idea.

1. if you want an absolutely fuss free playback platform, GET A DUNE. a htpc ain't for everyone.

2. if you're concerned about 23.976Hz playback and jitter on a htpc, GET A DUNE. no matter what type of graphics card you use, THERE WILL BE JITTER. yes ATi 5XXX card included (not only i3 IGP). and quite possibly any nVidia GC too. a PC uses multiple clock reference unlike a media player that could lock all its clock to a single clock generator. a PC have different clock reference for audio, video, cpu, northbrigde, southbridge and all that crap. and the OS manage everything, usually trying to sync everything to the CPU clock. an impossible feat at best for a software to sync a hardware clock to one another. YOU NEED TO USE RECLOCK.

3. some people won't notice motion jitter. a lot won't. i never noticed it when i was running on my LCD. because LCD just don't have that fast of a response rate. jitter is a dead giveaway after i installed my 50" full hd plasma. and mind you, ATi have a perfect 24p (23.976Hz) refresh rate. even then motion jitter is hugely noticeable on the new screen. refer above for reason.

4. AMD CPU generally have lots more heat dissipation compared to Intel CPU.

5. multicore CPU have even more heat.

6. most decoder can't properly make use of multiple core to decode video. ffdshow used to be one of it. no idea whether it has trickled down to the stable releases. only nightly builds used to have such capability. want low CPU usage (and make use of multiple core to decode) ? use CoreAVC.

7. if core i3 internal graphics processor sucks for you, you could always plug in another GC into it. why yes it's possible. the internal GPU will be disabled.

8. there's no non-IGP equipped core i3 because the IGP is integrated inside the CPU. so there's no i3 mainboard that don't have internal graphics because it's inside the CPU. wait i already said that.

9. DXVA hardware acceleration is implemented in most new GPU architecture. intel IGP, ATI, nVidia all have them. if hardware acc is hugely important for you, it'd be good to know that your choice aren't only limited to nvidia ion.

10. do forget the atom platform if you could pay the electric bill. because not all movies are encoded to allow for DXVA acceleration. you still need pure CPU processing power for some rare occasion. atom don't have that.

can't remember other questions.
but for someone that wants an absolute fuss free playback, i would seriously suggest the DUNE.

and echohesian, the motion deblocking problem with core i3 during DXVA acceleration could be cured by simply using the Microsoft DTD decoder that came with Windows 7. or maybe you could try CoreAVC. not free though. ffdshow still have this deblocking problem on i3. probably have to wait till either ffdshow new version or intel fix it with a new driver. try the ffdshow nightly builds just in case.

p/s: just drove for 6 hours so do forgive the crankiness

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Added on November 18, 2010, 4:14 pmshi* i just messed up jitter with judder. not motion jitter, motion judder.

This post has been edited by paskal: Nov 18 2010, 04:14 PM

i reckon he said he don't even have speakers for it. probably no HT setup yet.

noticed any motion judder?

that's what i thought. initially.
plug the 5450 to a large screen tv, a plasma tv (which generally have higher motion resolution than an LCD/LED LCD) or a projector (preferably DLP) and you'll notice plenty of motion juddering.

i first notice it at A&L Audio (IINM they're running either Optoma HD20 or HD67 can't remember) and straight away i can notice the motion judder on my setup (playback at A&L is a lot smoother). nothing that i do will make it go away. running 3:2 pulldown to 60Hz will reduce it, but won't totally remove the judder (but it also made the motion be too smooth for my preference, like soap opera effect).

thanks to echohesian, i ran ReClock and it goes away. never noticed it before when i was running on an LCD TV.
motion judder are largely more noticeable on bigger screen. more area for the unresolved lines to appear.

good for you. my eyes seem to notice the judder even at 23.976
or maybe it's just my system hehe

the link he put is for the sapphire card. SAPPHIRE HD 5570 1GB DDR3 DP
AFAIK, there's usually 2 models of the card, one with VGA, DVI and HDMI and the other model comes with VGA, DVI and Display Port.

the one that you put the link to is the latter. notice the DP in the model name. should point to Display Port.
get one with HDMI and you should be bitstreaming in no time

media adaptation should be left at auto. that's what the manual (and other people are suggesting).
i'm personally using auto.

increase the font size or font DPI (or issit lowering the DPI can't remember)

i used to run 32" LCD (720p) and sitting 3 meters away. by increasing the font size, it's viewably comfortable. and got a friend running 40" full hd and sits 3.5 meters away. just a simple increase in font size to make bigger.

1. try updating the audio drivers (or the GC drivers if you're bitstreaming from GC).
2. try updating TMT3 to the latest update (version 3.0.1.1.85)
3. if you're running an ATI card with catalyst >10.6 then patch the TMT3 after update for ATI card.

make sure to get an ATI compatible or from ATI (or something like that). i bought the normal off the shelf DVI to HDMI adapter and it doesn't work on my ATI 5 series

i reckon he said clarkdale could beat the dedicated ati 5450.
he must've compared it side by side to have said that.

upsampled hd audio?
i can't seem to diffentiate bitstreaming mode (avr does the decoding) to decoded mode (tmt3 decodes to lpcm and sent to avr). theoritically it should sound the same as tmt3 does the same thing otherwise the avr would be doing.

but upsampled to 96kHz using reclock (tmt3 decodes to LPCM, then passed to ReClock for upsampling), everything sounds much better with much better integration and seemless transition between speakers.

for music i never do any resampling. everything are played at its native 16bit 44.1kHz

try and upsample the lossless to 24/96. set tmt3 to decode to lpcm then reclock to upsample to 96khz.

you do know that ffdshow can't decode dts-ma/truhd right? if you let ffdshow decode the track, it'll only decode the ac3/dts track. explains the loss of quality compared to bitstreaming.
and if reclock just handle the clock sync and still passes the bitstream without decoding, then it shouldn't sound any different with or without reclock.

are you sure it's a single core?
because the intel product page specifically said that it has 2 cores and are capable of handling 4 threads.

use ember media manager. i use it to manage all my media info. xbmc just read the file information pulled by ember

if i were you, i'd get a cheap used mainboard with CPU. and power supply. things that nobody wants, an older generation architecture. and slap in an ATi HD5450. and waste all the rest of the budget on storage and HT and display.

i bought my Core 2 + mainboard for RM325, Silverstone ST56 (considered as mid high if not high end) for RM150 and ATI HD5450 for RM165.

then by all means do it. just utilize anything that you have unused. get a dual core CPU from either intel or amd and it'll be powerful enough to decode just about any HD movies. that is if you can't get hardware acceleration to perform correctly.

yes it is

does your HT accepts HDMI? any partcular reason that you want a soundcard?
because you could get away with a new graphics card with soundchip integrated in it.

htpc -> ht -> tv
all connections are done using hdmi.

have to create a script to mount and lauch tmt3. i reckon there's a few on the net.
or you could extract the content of the iso to a bdmv folder fashion and play from that.

other wireless keyboard and mouse are not that cheap also. i'm using logitech mk250 for mine and it costs something like RM90 i think. back then, the cool wireless keyboard and mouse combo like this are not yet available.

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Added on January 2, 2011, 11:53 pmspeaking of cool keyboards, you guys might wanna check into this:

this belkin media pilot integrates a programmable IR remote and a rechargeable wireless keyboard. with mouse buttons integrated into it.

selling for under RM200 in lelong. never used nor researched the effectiveness of it though. but the programmable IR functions does sound interesting.

This post has been edited by paskal: Jan 2 2011, 11:53 PM

xbmc plays dvd iso by clicking on it. and as i've said before, there's script available to automate mounting and play for bd.iso