Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by AstroCreep

Need upgrade recommendation

AstroCreep — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 23:13:25 +0800

Currently playing Skyrim V: Elder Scroll, but keeps crashing (!!).

I thought it was the GPU, so upgraded to GTX750Ti, but still crashing....

Current rig:
CPU - Intel Core2 Duo E8400@3.00GHz
RAM - Corsair 4 GB PC2-6400 (400MHz) 2GB x 2
MoBo - Gigabyte P35-DS3L
GPU - ASUS GTX750Ti 2Gb DDR5 PCIE STRIX OC Edition (RM630-8/11/2014)
HD - WD Blue 1TB
Monitor - LG IPS 234 23” 1920x1080 5ms D-sub/DVI-D/HDMI
PSU - Enermax Tomahawk 500w
OS - Vista Home Premium 32bit

I think CPU needs an upgrade to 4 cores, but that also means new MoBo and RAM, and probably throw in Win7 for 64-bit.

Thinking of i5-4460 3.2 GHz. What do you guys think? Which minimum MoBo and RAM should I get? HD WD Blue ok for gaming?
Any other recommendation for minimal wallet impact?

Thank you in advance.

Best DVD Ripping, for backup in mkv or xvid

AstroCreep — Sat, 08 May 2010 02:22:39 +0800

What is the best SW for DVD and BD ripping, for backup, in mkv or xvid?

Walmart Vs Amazon for BD

AstroCreep — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:45:33 +0800

Walmart seems to sell slightly cheaper than Amazon.
Anybody did a comparison, in terms of delivery charges and delivery service?

AstroCreep

Blu-ray is dead - heckuva job, Sony!

AstroCreep — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:14:25 +0800

All,

I came across this article in ZDnet... what do you think?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=365&tag=nl.e540

Here's the copied article....
*******************************************************
Blu-ray is in a death spiral. 12 months from now Blu-ray will be a videophile niche, not a mass market product.

With only a 4% share of US movie disc sales and HD download capability arriving, the Blu-ray disc Association (BDA) is still smoking dope. Even $150 Blu-ray players won’t save it.

16 months ago I called the HD war for Blu-ray. My bad. Who dreamed they could both lose?

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
Delusional Sony exec Rick Clancy needs to put the crack pipe down and really look at the market dynamics.

In a nutshell: consumers drive the market and they don’t care about Blu-ray’s theoretical advantages. Especially during a world-wide recession.

Remember Betamax? SACD? Minidisk? Laser Disk? DVD-Audio? There are more losers than winners in consumer storage formats.

It’s all about volume. 8 months after Toshiba threw in the towel, Blu-ray still doesn’t have it.

The Blu-ray Disc Association doesn’t get it
$150 Blu-ray disc players are a good start, but it won’t take Blu-ray over the finish line. The BDA is stuck in the past with a flawed five-year-old strategy.

The original game plan
Two things killed the original strategy. First the fight with HD DVD stalled the industry for two years. Initial enthusiasm for high definition video on disk was squandered.

Second, the advent of low cost up-sampling DVD players dramatically cut the video quality advantage of Blu-ray DVDs. Suddenly, for $100, your average consumer can put good video on their HDTV using standard DVDs. When Blu-ray got started no one dreamed this would happen.

Piggies at the trough
The Blu-ray Disc Association hoped for a massive cash bonanza as millions of consumers discovered that standard DVDs looked awful on HDTV. To cash in they loaded Blu-ray licenses with costly fees. Blu-ray doesn’t just suck for consumers: small producers can’t afford it either.

According to Digital Content Producer Blu-ray doesn’t cut it for business:
- Recordable discs don’t play reliably across the range of Blu-ray players - so you can’t do low-volume runs yourself.
- Service bureau reproduction runs $20 per single layer disc in quantities of 300 or less.
- Hollywood style printed/replicated Blu-ray discs are considerably cheaper once you reach the thousand unit quantity: just $3.50 per disc.
- High-quality authoring programs like Sony Blu-print or Sonic Solutions Scenarist cost $40,000.
- The Advanced Access Content System - the already hacked DRM - has a one-time fee of $3000 plus a per project cost of almost $1600 plus $.04 per disk. And who defines “project?”
- Then the Blu-ray disc Association charges another $3000 annually to use their very exclusive - on 4% of all video disks! - logo.
- That’s why you don’t see quirky indie flicks on Blu-ray. Small producers can’t afford it - even though they shoot in HDV and HD.

The Storage Bits take
Don’t expect Steve Jobs to budge from his “bag of hurt” understatement. Or Final Cut Studio support for Blu-ray. I suspect that Jobs is using his Hollywood clout from his board seat on Disney and his control of iTunes to try to talk sense to the BDA.

But the BDA won’t budge. They, like so much of Hollywood, are stuck in the past.

A forward looking strategy would include:
- Recognition that consumers don’t need Blu-ray. It is a nice-to-have and must be priced accordingly.
- Accept the money spent on Blu-ray is gone and will never earn back the investment. Then you can begin thinking clearly about how to maximize Blu-ray penetration.
- The average consumer will probably pay $50 more for a Blu-ray player that is competitive with the average up-sampling DVD player. Most of the current Blu-ray players are junk: slow, feature-poor and way over-priced.
- Disk price margins can’t be higher than DVDs and probably should be less. The question the studios need to ask is: “do we want to be selling disks in 5 years?” No? Then keep it up. Turn distribution over to your very good friends at Comcast, Apple and Time Warner. You’ll be like Procter & Gamble paying Safeway to stock your products.
- Fire all the market research firms telling you how great it is going to be. They are playing you. Your #1 goal: market share. High volume is your only chance to earn your way out of this mess and keep some control of your distribution.

Time is short. Timid incrementalism will kill you.

Like Agent Smith delivering the bad news to a complacent cop: “No, Lieutenant, your men are already dead.”

HTPC/Soundcard and AVR

AstroCreep — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:33:44 +0800

Sorry if wrong place to post, but need your feedback as some of you do have HTPC + AVR, so here goes...

Connection/setup:
HTPC using onboard MoBo chipset, digital out to SR-875.

By right, HTPC feeds digital signal to AVR, which only then gets converted to analog.
Technically, the sound should be clean from source (FLAC, foobar2k, Mobo, 'digital' cable) to AVR, as it's all digital.
However, my FLAC sounds 'strained', like speaker gonna pecah.... ??

1. Do I need a good soundcard like SoundBlaster X-fi Xtreme Audio? But shouldn't the result be the same as I will still tap the signal from digital out of the soundcard to my AVR? (I know the sound will be better if you connect speakers directly to the soundcard, compared to Mobo)
2. I'm using RCA cable instead of proper Digital Coax, which will have to wait for now (ok, being el cheapo here...). Again, shouldn't result be the same as it's Digital signal being transmitted? (similar principal in other thread comparing CapAyam HDMI against super expensive HDMI).

Anyone experienced this? Suggestion?
Thanks.

Uncompressed PCM? DTS HD? Dolby HD?

AstroCreep — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:14:55 +0800

Life's getting complicated.....

Before my new Blu-Ray and AV Receiver, life were simpler with my HTIB... always choose DTS.

Now?
Got Uncompressed PCM la, DTS MA la, DTS HD, Dolby HD, PLII Movie, Neo ,THX, etc..etc..

Due to old habit, I still look for DTS where possible, Dolby being the next. But what about this "Uncompressed 5.1 PCM"? Any noticeable performance? Am I missing anything?

What's your preference?

Best FLAC Player?

AstroCreep — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 23:33:02 +0800

All,

Since my HT is almost complete, I'm in the middle of 'upgrading' my sources from 320kbps MP3 to FLAC.
FLAC and not Microsoft or Apple lossless formats - because I don't want to get tied down to proprietary formats....

Setup would be ...
HTPC <-Digital Coax through Motherboard, Realtek chipset-> Onkyo SR-875.

Which is the best FLAC player to do the job?

Currently using WMP, but ID3 tags are missing

Anybody selling sub-woofer?

AstroCreep — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:34:53 +0800

All,

Anyone selling off used sub-woofer?
Looking for black colour and small size for my small HT.
Budget around RM500.
Thanks to PM.

Very long speaker cables.

AstroCreep — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:35:16 +0800

Dear Sifus,

In order to satisfy HM's building 'aesthetic' regulation, I would need to run approx 15m of speaker cables for my Right surround, and 11m for Left surround.
I'm a noob in HomeTheatre, but do you think this is ok?
What about delay or attenuation issues?

What are the DO's and DON'Ts in running speaker cable for long distance?
Am thinking of getting the Monster speaker cables from HN, the one that you can paint over. Ok ka?
Haven't checked the price, but saw during KLIAV'08.

Thanks in advance.

Onkyo 606 vs any Yamaha AVR

AstroCreep — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:10:47 +0800

Hello all,

Been window shopping and checking out prices but now completely confused - info overload!!
I donno whether to trust the shops or not - what they carry are the best, condemn items they don't sell... very 'professional' one...
Need all your advice, as I'm sure you've gone through this already..

My Current Setup:
Display: Samsung Bordeaux R8 40" (HD Ready only).
Source 1: Panasonic BD30, obviously using HDMI out.
Source 2: PC/MediaCentre (tonnes of movies and high bps MP3s), HDMI out for video+audio.
Source 3: Astro (...sigh!, the weakest link).
HTIB: Pioneer DV424 (4 years old)

HT Environment:
Typical TV/family room of a double-storey link house, open space in the middle of 1st floor, high ceiling for ventilation - Not perfect for HT location but no choice.
Width 8.5', viewing 9' from display, but with open back (staircase lor..).
(I wish I could upload my HT photo, but donno how le...)

Current HTIB ok also la, but many reasons to make it not ok - dialogue not clear la, bass too boomy la (this I know due to the HT location la...), sometimes sound and picture not in-synch la (sound goes to HTIB, picture direct TV), need to maximise BD30 Hd audio la, not enough digital input for MediaCentre la... and so many other reasons la...

Thinking of Jamo 102 to match Onkyo 606. Speakers choice is due to limited size of area.
What do you think of this combo? Can match ka?
WhatHiFi? said Jamo 102 speakers are bright, need to match with Yamaha or Denon. Denon range too expensive la, Yamaha still affordable, but everybody seems to talk about the Onky!!

So, between Onkyo and Yamaha, which is better to match the small Jamo?
Thanks for your advice.

AstroCreep