Hello,

I am going to build a system with 5.1 speakers for playing DVD movies and I want to know if my system has the necesary requirements. My system specs are:

SB Live mp3+ 5.1 sound card
3D Prophet II MX video card
256 MB crucial RAM
Amd Athlon 600C

I want to add a video card that supports some form of hardware assist for DVD playback. I know that the Geforce II MX has some form of hardware DVD asist and I want to know if my current setup will be enough for it. I am also inclined to buy a video card with TV tuner capabilities and I want to know that if there are stand alone TV tuner cards and which one is recommended.

Any help appreciated.

The ATI Radeon has excellent DVD quality and very good gaming speed, the 32MB DDR is the one in my main system right now and I love it!

Most definitely, those are some great specs for a DVD-enabled system!

If you want TV Tuner Card capabilities, you may want to consider the Radeon All-In-Wonder, good video card, with their notorious tv tuner capabilities....

How hardcore are you into gaming?

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Hello,

I play computer games just occasionally, as most of my gaming I do it on the Sega Dreamcast. I play on my PC mostly playstation games and I am not into heavy games like quake or UT.

Thanks for the replies.

Then you're not really in NEED of the top of the line gaming card. I would go for the ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder card....

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BattleBoards.com - Co-Founder & Systems Administrator
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Provided you are not using the computer for anything other than watching the DVD, all you really need is a Processor faster than 500MHz for stutter-free viewing with a software DVD player- even my laptop with a 333MHz PII and a non accelerated 2.5Mb video card is usually adequate for DVD viewing on its own.

If you've already got a video card, you probably don't want to replace it, especially since you don't game on the PC as much as you do on the console. You could consider a 3dfx VoodooTV 200. Check out our review of it here. While 3dfx may not exist anymore (Read: No driver updates), the card works great out of the box, and it's apparently pretty much the best TV tuner out there, matching up against the All-in-Wonder series. Plus, it's only $99. The only real drawback is that there's no Win2K/NT support for the card, whereas there is on the Radeon AIW. If you don't get the AIW, though, be warned: Most other TV Tuner cards are rather clunky to set up, and operation in NT/2K isn't guaranteed there either. In fact, I believe most don't.

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