ATI and nVidia Crush High-End DVD Players

An anonymous reader writes "Hardware.Info compared the video quality of ATI and nVidia video cards containing Avivo / PureVideo technology with 12 stand alone DVD players, varying in price from $200 to over $2000. The conclusion? 'There is no need to invest $2000 or more in a high-end DVD player. A PC with a recent graphics card will produce a much better result for a lot less money. When looking at the final scores of the HQV test, both ATI and nVidia graphics cards perform a lot better than any DVD player we have tested. We would go as far as to say to get rid of your DVD player and connect a media centre PC to your LCD television!'"

Uhm

[ranton]

We would go as far as to say to get rid of your DVD player and connect a media centre PC to your LCD television!'"

Well, not all of us would buy a $2000 DVD player. I still cannot see the reason to buy anything more expensive than the $250 one I have at home. What do these multi-thousand dollar DVD players do anyway?

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Why stand alone DVDs are preferable:

[Anonymous Coward]

- no patch tuesday
- no boot time waiting

Isn't it enough?

How loud are they?

[rishistar]

The fan on that ATI card looks loud.... I think the DVD player would be quieter.

$2000 DVD Players

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who buy the $2000 DVD players are the same people that buy gold plated connectors and cut their speaker wires to identical lengths so the "electrons travel the same distance which improves the sound quality". That means: these people are morons. Morons cannot be stopped.

Except for all the fan noise

[GodWasAnAlien]

If you are really looking for a multimedia experience, and audio/video quality is important, the first step is getting rid of all the fans.

All that is needed is a "blank multimedia" box for $200, that has DVI/HDMI and S/PDIF, with no moving parts except for the DVD drive.

Then you plop in the Open???Player (vlc based?) CD/DVD/USB and it updates the internal flash to create/update your player to the latest codecs. Or perhaps internal flash is not needed, and the root disc is USB flash.

Practicality

[COMON$]

Why buy expensive when you can build for cheaper? Wow, never heard that question before.

Seriously people, if you have the cash for a 2K 1K or even a $500 player you probably dont feel like building one. There are an enourmous amound of benefits to getting a pre-built expensive DVD player, reliability being just one factor.

Before I get a lot of posts telling my of the uptime and reliability of their MythTV box, dont forget that you have to build the thing or hire someone to build it for you if your are not a Linux Geek. Even with Media Center Edition you are still dumping 1300 into hardware and inviting a ton of issues into your multimedia system. Unless of course you love hearing that windows error Dong in full Dolby surround sound.

Not a valid comparison for a typical family

[ClosedSource]

"We would go as far as to say to get rid of your DVD player and connect a media centre PC to your LCD television!'"

If you're single and live studio apartment, this might make good economic sense if you really need high end graphics. You can just connect the PC to the TV and continue to use the PC for other purposes.

But in a typical family environment that media centre PC will have to be dedicated to entertainment purposes, so the real price comparison is the cost of the media PC + the graphics card vs. the high end DVD player. Then the comparison doesn't turn out to be that one-sided.

Re:How loud are they?

[mongre26]

The stock fans on video cards are no more impressive than the stock fans that come with CPUs from AMD and Intel. If you want quiet then you get an after market fan like those from Zalman. Not only are they a lot quieter they are often a lot better at cooling. I retrofitted several machines at work and at home with the Zalman VF900-Cu LED and fan noise was nearly eliminated while at the same time overall the GPU temps drop. The stock fan at home on my ATI X850 XTPE could not keep my GPU from overheating and I would occasionally hear a beep as it clocked itself down because of temperature. With the Zalman even though ambient temperatures in my computer room have exceeded what they had been in the past I have not heard one beep from my card. It was the best upgrade I have purchased this year. That and the zalman fan is a lot smaller than most stock GPU coolers which is also a plus for sometimes cramped Media PC cases. Which reminds me, I have a Media PC setup to start building. A recent upgrade from a CRT to a Plasma is requiring a rebuild to accomodate the higher resolution of the display device.

Re:$2000 DVD Players

[masklinn]

Yes they can, but the universe will fire back by creating bigger morons next generation.

The issue here is that humanity has separated itself from the good ol' natural selection, thus morons don't get booted out of the gene pool anymore.

Worse, so few morons die that we actually have to give them awards [darwinawards.com] to try and get other morons to follow suit!

Re:Not a valid comparison for a typical family

[Chazmyrr]

If you're cheap like I am, the comparison is extremely one-sided the other way. $50 DVD player vs. $500 media PC.

It is amazing...

[RafaelGCPP]

It is amazing how someone can lose time doing such research!

Hindsight is 20/20! There is no research on well-known facts!!

Facts:

1) Video processors in PCs are usually much more powerful, even when compared to the high-end video equipments
2) The CPU is also much more powerful, as a typical consumer product uses a simpler one, typically an ARM processor
3) Most VGA monitors and panels in the market today have higher resolution and finer pitch than most consumer TV sets, even high-end...

Of course there are some exceptions (probably the most expensive ones), but it is much more likely to have a better image quality to price ratio on the PC than using consumer equipment.

Seriously...

[Gruneun]

I don't know why everyone buys these fancy toasters! Especially, those people who already have a radiator on the back of their fridge that gets plenty hot. For less than $20, you can make a plywood platform that allows your fridge to swivel and then attach a wire bracket to hold the bread against it. If you're the least bit technical, you could rig a digital thermometer to the serial port on an old 486 motherboard (who doesn't have twelve of these sitting in a closet?) to email or page you when the toast is ready. Can those fancy toasters do that?

At some point, everyone draws a line between what's a good homebrew project and what's worth buying. For each person, the line is different. Most people who want to watch a movie are still going to go with the easy, reliable, warrantied, and polished product for that specific purpose.

I have RTFA

[nkrgovic]

and what it never mentions is how did they connect those DVD players to the TV. The simple chinese junk costing under 100$ are usually connected via a composite, or an S-Video cable at best. Now the difference in the quality of signal you can get through a composite cable and a higher-end component or HDMI connection is rather large. If they connected the PC's using VGA or DVI and the players using a cheap composite cable - well, no wonder the players sucked. You just can't transfer that kind of information through a single wire.

  On a side note, the other reason most people use component players is their sound. A good Hi-Fi player has a much higher quality sound than any PC. You can probably get close to the quality of the sound of a under-1K$ player wtih a great sound for a PC, but let's face it: latest generation video card + high end sound + the PC... There is no much price difference. And that PC still doesn't play SACD.

Re:Practicality

[eddy]

Seriously people, if you have the cash for a 2K 1K or even a $500 player you probably dont feel like building one.

If you pay $2000 for a standalone DVD-player you probably DO expect it to be competitive in image quality though.

Went that way, switched back

[dindi]

I figured, that my nvidia made a lot cleaner and higher resolution image than my $200 DVD player, even on my old 800x600 epson projector, but then I met the disturbing truth:

-my wife hated to mess around with my pc just to watch a disc
-i did not find a decent remote control
-playback software was a lot more complicated than the one the DVD player has
- problems started after a driver upgrade (spdif sound disappeared on my ASUS A8n SLI after installing recent NFORCE drivers) ...

I mean these are mostly problems for my family, I am ok, watching with a wireless keyboard, and enjoying the better quality, but for everyone else it is just awkward ...

Yes, i watched my high bit DVDs, and my matrix collection (at least eyecandy parts) on it and was happy, but for everyday use, it was just a pain ....
especially, bc that is my gaming rig as well, so if my wife wanted to watch a chick-flick, while I wanted to shoot at people online, a clash happened :(

Boneheaded article...

[Splendid Turd]

The article essentially says "our $2000 PC can play DVD video as good as some $2000 DVD players"...

Please.

Here is a $200 DVD player that will perform better than most $2000 PCs:
http://oppodigital.com/opdv971h.html [oppodigital.com]

I'm not saying you cant do great things with video using the right PC setup, but that article failed to point out the respective costs of the hardware they used for making this comparison. I won't even get into usability comparisons...

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