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RSS feedsIf you and your family have ever huddled around a 15in monitor to watch a DVD movie, then we share a common cause. Why have two DVD-capable devices in the house when one would suffice? Why, indeed, have two CD players, or two games consoles, or two video recorders?
It's almost criminally superfluous, not to mention expensive. The trouble is, there aren't many people who want to watch a film or relax with music in a study.
The good news is you don't have to. PCs are only tucked away in studies and back bedrooms because that's where people put them. With a bit of extra equipment, there's no reason why you can't bring your PC into your living room and use it to rationalise your home entertainment centre. If you're still not convinced, read on. We've just done it.
Our starting point was an Evesham PC with an Athlon XP 1800+ processor and 521Mb of memory, a 100Gb hard disk, nVidia GeForce 4 Ti500 graphics card and a DVD-Rom drive. We abandoned the original monitor as we knew just where to find an unsuspecting widescreen TV.
Ready to rumble
There is no minimum specification as such for playing DVD movies on a PC but, to avoid a bad case of the stutters, it helps to have at least a fast Pentium II processor (preferably a Pentium III) and a minimum of 64Mb of memory.
Next up is the question of how to feed pictures to your TV screen (remember, we're working without a monitor here). It's a big help if your graphics card has an S-Video output - sometimes called TV-out - and your television has an S-Video input, as this means they can be linked together with a simple cable.
Sound output is less of an issue because all sound cards have a 3.5mm socket for hooking up speakers. If your TV has built-in stereo speakers, it probably has audio inputs on the back, in which case you could simply connect the sound card to the telly.
However, we would strongly recommend investing in an external set of powered speakers, ideally with a separate subwoofer. This will dramatically improve music playback and surround sound movie soundtracks.
As for DVD movie playback software, your DVD-Rom drive may well have come with bundled movie player software but, otherwise, we would recommend Cyberlink Power DVD. Similarly, Windows Media Player is fine for playing music but the free, downloadable Winamp is more flexible and, in our experience at least, more stable.
So with decent speakers and a spot of luck with S-Video connections, it's possible to use a basic PC to play audio CDs, MP3 files and DVD movies via other audio or video equipment. However, we need to up the ante if we're really going to justify setting up a computer in the living room.
Sounds like ...
DVD offers a significant boost in picture quality over VHS tape, sufficient to make standalone players the fastest growing area of consumer electronics, but the format also offers greatly enhanced sound.
Almost every new film has a digitally recorded surround sound soundtrack which is preserved when films are released on DVD. To appreciate the effect at home, however, you need multiple speakers and a sound card capable of decoding the digital soundtrack.
Most DVDs have a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, which means you need a Dolby Digital decoder and 5.1 speakers (three front speakers, two rear ones and the .1 refers to the subwoofer) to make the most of it.
New sound cards such as the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy family have Dolby Digital decoding built in and a high-quality digital connection for hooking up 5.1 speakers.
Failing that, software such as Power DVD can decode the soundtrack for more basic sound cards but you'll still need sufficient standard speaker connections.
We experimented first with a set of Inspire 5700 speakers from Creative. This six-speaker system (5.1, in other words) includes a separate decoder unit which in essence does the same job as a 5.1 sound card and handles the two common DVD movie surround sound standards: Dolby Digital and DTS. The result was crystal-clear audio, replete with head-turning, whizz-bang effects.
We then paired a cheaper set of VideoLogic 5.1 speakers with an Audigy sound card. Although we missed the Inspire's remote control unit which let us adjust the volume without grappling with speaker knobs, the sound quality was perfectly adequate for a home cinema experience.
Early warning
There are a couple of caveats. Because these speaker systems are primarily designed for use with a computer on a desk in a workspace, the rear speaker cables wouldn't stretch to the far corners of our living room (Creative gives you 5m of cable per rear speaker, VideoLogic 8m and the cable for both is wired inside the speaker cases).
This narrowed the 'sweet spot' - where surround sound can be appreciated to its full extent - to a single seat on the sofa. Nor does either system ship with rear speaker tripods, which is disappointing because you really want a soundtrack to play at ear rather than floor level.
On a similar note, the mouse and keyboard are designed for use in a workspace and we were soon weary of sprawling commando-style on the floor every time we had to launch or pause an application.
One solution is a Memorex cordless mouse and keyboard kit. It's far preferable to tripping over cables trailing across the carpet, although the wild mouse did tend to disappear into the dark bowels of the sofa.
Given that getting to this stage requires some serious hardware, we figured it made sense to introduce game playing to our home entertainment centre.
Just as we had disposed of the need for a separate DVD player, we asked ourselves who needs a PlayStation 2 when you've got a fast PC wired up to the TV? A mouse is a poor substitute for a proper games controller, so we turned to a cordless gamepad from Logitech.
Its 6m range was more than adequate for our purposes and the surround sound effects made widescreen games a delight. To be fair, we did have the advantage of a state-of-the-art graphics card under the hood and after all, a console is cheaper than a PC, but if you want to keep the number of boxes under the TV to a minimum, this is the way to go.
Surely this must be the ultimate home entertainment centre: 5.1 sound system, DVD player and games console in one? Not quite.
Not a bit of it, in fact. With all this digital technology on hand, why did we still have a clunky old VCR loitering under the TV? The short answer is that recordable DVD players are still staggeringly expensive, but the PC does have the potential to do the job.
We experimented with two internal TV tuner cards: the Studio PCTV Pro from Pinnacle and Hauppauge's WinTV PVR. Both work in broadly the same way: with a TV aerial connected to a card, you can watch TV programmes on your monitor. You can also record programmes to the PC's hard disk.
This is very much in the style of the TiVo personal video recorder, with the twin advantages that you don't need to introduce yet another box to the living room or pay a monthly subscription fee.
Although these cards are designed to bring TV pictures to a PC monitor, we took the odd step of relaying the signal back to the television set through the computer's S-Video output.
In fact, this was our only option because we lacked a monitor but wanted to see whether we could practicably replicate the functions of a standard VCR. With the Hauppauge model, the answer was a qualified yes.
Using minimal compression during video capture (at a cost of some 90Mb hard disk space per minute), the quality was just fine. WinTV also has nice touches such as one-touch recording, the ability to pause live television and time scheduling recording.
The PCTV Pro card has fewer recording features: there's no way to program the software to record a certain channel at a certain time, for instance, and its best capture quality is only about half that of the Hauppauge card. We also found its sound reception poor.
However, it does the job if you're prepared to hit the record button at the right moment. The bundled Studio software is also ideal for editing and producing captured video.
Both products have remote controls, both can introduce FM stereo radio to the PC's playback repertoire if you have a suitable aerial, and either could just about stand in for a VCR.
In principle, you could connect a TV to a card's S-Video input and record programmes directly but our test telly lacked any means to output a signal except to its own screen.
Many VCR and DVD players do have S-Video outputs, in which case the PC could digitally record pre-recorded material. Then again, many DVDs are copy-protected to stop this working.
The digital dimension
As a further and final twist, we introduced a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-t card to our system. This lets you receive free digital terrestrial broadcasts (that is, through a standard rooftop aerial) on a computer.
Reception is limited to non-encrypted free-to-air channels which, in effect, means you get the five standard channels plus all the BBC extras - News24, BBC4 and so on - and a couple of extras such as ITV2 and Shop!.
It's an interesting, if limited, alternative to a digital TV subscription or buying an integrated digital television. The software includes a limited video recorder - click to record, click again to stop - but lacks the flexibility of the WinTV card's software.
Of course, there's one aspect of everyday computer use that we haven't even touched on yet: internet access.
A TV's resolution just isn't high enough for pleasurable browsing, and squinting at web pages soon had us reaching for the painkillers, but add a broadband connection (or dial-up, at a pinch) and you can stream music and video to your living room. You might even indulge in a little online gaming.
The time may come when (some) television programs are beamed to our homes on the back of a broadband service as an alternative to terrestrial digital, cable or satellite broadcasting.
For now, though, options are rather more limited. We signed up to BTopenworld's online classical music service - a catalogue of 6,000 searchable tracks with options to compile your own playlists, download tracks as MP3 files and order custom-built CDs - and sat back in the sweet spot to savour the streaming strains of Mozart. All that work with the screwdriver suddenly seemed worthwhile.
It's customary to close a feature such as this with a conclusion but we must confess that we're somewhat undecided. Just to recap, we took the guts of a high-powered PC and turned it into something quite different: a single box that functions as a DVD player, a surround sound audio system, a games console, a digital TV receiver and a video recorder.
It wasn't cheap nor was it difficult. Most importantly, it worked. The question is, does it make sense?
The answer hinges on your response to a paradox, namely that a PC in the living room is no longer a PC. Short of spending thousands on a high-definition television set, you simply can't use a standard telly for run-of-the-mill tasks such as word processing.
So if you're only ever going to give house room to one computer, keep it in the study. But if you're about to upgrade your PC and don't already have a DVD player, CD player or games console in situ, then why not give your old hardware a new home in the living room?
Hacked off with DVD
One of the most contentious issues with DVD movies is regional protection, which means that discs produced in one region of the world can only be played on hardware marketed in the same region. This limits choice, makes it harder to find bargains and generally irritates the hell out of film fans.
With PC DVD-Rom drives, there are two possible protection measures. The software that plays movies may only allow a certain number of region changes before it automatically locks to the last one selected.
This can generally be overcome with the likes of DVD Genie or by changing your software. But if the DVD drive itself is physically locked to a particular region - and most are - this is no help at all. Stronger measures are required.
First, download a free software utility called Drive Info to check whether your drive is in fact region-locked. If not, all you have to worry about is your software; if so, the only solution is to download and install a firmware patch, or 'hack'.
This overrides the factory settings on the drive's internal programmable chip. The trouble is, there's always a chance it will ruin the drive in the process, so do consider carefully whether you really need a PC with a region-free DVD player. If you only hire films from your local rental shop or buy them locally, leave well alone.
DVD Genie Unlocks and resets region coding in software players.
www.inmatrix.com/genie
Drive Info Discover whether your DVD drive is region-locked.
www.digital-digest.com
The Firmware page Everything you need to know about firmware hacks and where to find them.
firmware.inmatrix.com
PC on your TV
As we have already mentioned, S-Video is the easiest way to display computer-generated images on a television screen. For purposes of home entertainment, we would strongly recommend upgrading the graphics card if it lacks a TV-out port. However, one possible alternative is a scan converter.
This connects a PC's VGA (monitor) output to a TV's S-Video (or composite) input, translating the computer's video signal into something more suitable for a telly in the process.
If your TV lacks the wherewithal to accept an S-Video signal directly, but does have at least a SCART socket, look for a scan converter with an S-Video-to-SCART adapter.
However, it's important to note that scan converters are really a business tool designed to make computer presentations look better on a big screen in a conference room environment. There's simply no magic way to increase a TV's resolution and that's what you'd need to use Word from the armchair.
The only real alternatives are a family-sized monitor (no fussing with S-Video cables); a high-definition plasma TV set (Windows looks fine but check plasma prices), or a projector that shines images onto a screen or wall (overkill for email but great for that true home cinema experience).
The downside to an all-in PC
Unfortunately, it's not all sweetness and light with PCs in the living room. Here are our top bugbears.
Noise: The constant hum of a PC's power unit and cooling fans is a real distraction, especially during quiet spells in music or whispered movie dialogue.
Resolution: Running applications on a low-resolution TV screen gave us a headache. We couldn't install new software without temporarily resorting to a proper monitor, and even selecting MP3 tracks for playback proved a problem.
Wiring: Cordless devices help no end but there's no escaping a mess of cabling for 5.1 speakers, PC-to-TV connections and internet access. Then again, our home entertainment PC replaced a separate sound system, DVD player, games console and VCR, so the end result was actually a net gain in tidiness.
Aesthetics: A PC is ugly. Really ugly. For now, try a little subtle sponging or perhaps hide it.
Eggs in baskets: This is the biggie. What happens when Windows has a meltdown? Instead of losing just one element of your entertainment system, you suddenly find yourself utterly devoid of sound and vision: no music, no movies, no games, no internet, no nothing.
If computers were always reliable, stable and easily fixed, we wouldn't worry a jot but just try diagnosing a software conflict using a television screen for a monitor. We did and a laugh it is not.
JARGONBUSTER
Broadband: Refers to high-bandwidth internet connections, such as ADSL.
Compression: Reducing the size of a file by encoding the data.
Dial-up networking: A component of Windows that allows PCs to connect to the internet using a modem and a telephone line.
Digital: Digital information consists of discrete parts. Computers only recognise digital information, so must convert analogue signals. A sound card, for example, converts the sound of a recording into a series of numbers the PC can process.
DVD: A type of disc able to store huge amounts of digital data, including full-length movies, with excellent quality sound and pictures.
Firmware: A small amount of read-only memory in an electronic device used for storing set-up information or small programs necessary for the device's operation. Firmware can usually be updated with new information.
Megabyte: A measurement of storage capacity, usually for computer memory. 1Mb is equal to 1,024Kb (kilobytes).
Gigabyte: A measurement of storage capacity, usually for hard disks. 1Gb is equal to 1,024Mb.
Graphics card: The part of a PC that displays the image you see on your monitor.
Memory: The computer's temporary storage area, measured in megabytes. For Windows 98 and beyond, 64Mb is a realistic minimum.
MP3: A standard for compressing digital audio. The sound quality of an MP3 file is close to that of CD audio but requires only a fraction of the storage space.
Resolution: The amount of detail shown in an image, whether on screen or printed. For a monitor, it is the number of pixels it can display. For printers and scanners, it is measured in dots per inch; the number of drops of ink or toner that can be printed in a square inch.
SCART: A standardised 21-pin connector for two-way traffic of video/audio signals.
Streaming: When data flows to your PC as needed. Broadcasts over the net are often streamed so you don't have to download a whole file to start listening or watching.
Subwoofer: A special type of speaker designed to reproduce deep bass sounds.
S-Video: A higher quality video connection that carries brightness and colour information separately.
See also:
All Peripheral Devices
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