What is the best type of connection for PC to home theater system

daverader1

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May 11, 2012
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What is the best possible multimedia/video/audio connection from a PC to a home theater system? The computer is a new Dell XPS 8500 with a Radeon HD 6850 250 bit graphics card and Integrated 7.1 with WAVE MAXXAudio 4. The home theater system has a brand new Directv HD DVR receiver, Sony Blu Ray player (model BDP-S570), and a relatively new Yamaha stereo receiver (model RX-V467). I plan to play home movies and other downloaded video files on my home theater through my new Dell XPS 8500.

Thanks!

 
what connections are on your video card?

the reason i ask is that many use DVI and most new cards offer sound out via dvi.

i use a dvi to hdmi cable (carefull which type you buy as some apparently dont carry sound) and i run both my video and audio feed to my receiver and then run a hdmi cable out to my screen (tv). this works well if you have dvi outputs and a hdmi input on the screen.

the other option is to use the s/pdif optical output on your soundcard and select this as default in your sound settings. this might work out better if you have a pc monitor with dvi input and dvi output on your video card or if you dont want video passthrough on the receiver.
 

jRAVhelp

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May 25, 2012
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Hi Daverader1. I am in a similar situation to what you describe: Considering buying a Dell XPS 8500 with the same graphics and audio cards you list. My original desire was just to be able to stream audio to my Yamaha RX-V663 AV Receiver (my radio reception is practically nil even with an antenna.) Now that I've read your question I realize I should be aiming to stream both audio and video to my home theatre system. I have a Samsung BD-P2500 Blu Ray player and a Motorola HD receiver for cable, but no DVR (yet.) My TV is a Sony Bravia 46in.
1. Are you happy with the Dell XPS 8500? I'm upgrading from a 5 year old Dell Dimension 4600 - quite a big leap.
2. Have you been able to figure out that you will be able to do what you want based on these threads?
I'm new to all of this and even had my home theatre system professionally installed, so I don't even have a good understanding of all of that. And I'm an accountant, not a techy!
I'd appreciate your comments.
Thanks ... jR
 

ceh4702

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Jan 1, 2011
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I would prefer HDMI if it is available as an option.

I have tried DVI to HDMI converter. I have one computer that is older with integrated video on the motherboard and when I used the HDMI converter plug it did not come out too well because the video was not full HD. I got it to work by adjusting the resolution on the TV to slow it down to about 720p. Otherwise the video on the TV tends to overdrive the video on a lower-end 720p-800p video card or integrated video. I used a stereo mini jack that is common on all PC sound jacks for sound with the DVI-HDMI converter.

When I built a new computer with the Sandy Bridge Z68 motherboard and an i-5 2500k, the HDMI worked quite well with sound and video at full 1020p with just one HDMI Cable.

I dont know how this affects a sound receiver.
 

daverader1

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May 11, 2012
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Yes, I am happy with the XPS 8500. I have no complaints, and it has worked great for me. I don't care for Windows 7....then again, I don't care for any version of Windows. I am dual booting Linux Ubuntu via WUBI. I strongly recommend trying this out. It's easy.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-ubuntu-with-windows
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/windows-installer

To answer your second question, sure, I think it will do everything I desire. The graphics card that comes with the system isn't bad, but it won't play any of the newer demanding games very well. For simple home videos and such, it will work fine. I plan to play Diablo 3, so I will probably upgrade the card to a HD 7850. Remember, the power supply in the XPS 8500 is only fair, so it won't be able to handle video cards that draw a lot of juice. The XPS 8500 will run the Radeon HD 7850, which is a terrific card.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/354302-33-asus-sapphire-radeon-7850