Am I being to picky?, HTPC configuration

[maca5631]

Hi guys and gals.
First post, so apologies if this info is to be found elsewhere.

I’ve recently completed my latest HTPC, the specs as below:

Intel i5 3.2Ghz CPU
Asus P7H55D-M mobo – onboard HDMI disabled
16gb (4x4gb) DDR3 Corsair Vengeance Blue RAM
Zotac 1gb GTX 560 Ti GPU
8tb (4x2tb) WD hard drives
Samsung SH-B083 Blu Ray drive
Asus Xonar D2 soundcard

Windows 7 Home Premium with SP1 - OS
XBMC v11 (Eden) – media centre software
PowerDVD 10 Cinema - DVD and Blu Ray playback
AnyDVD – to adjust display refresh rate
Virtual Clone Drive – to mount ISO images and rip Blu Ray
CloneDVD2 – to rip DVD
MSI Afterburner - to control GPU fan speed
MPlay Zini fan control and remote control software - came with case

My rig is configured so that XBMC is my primary interface to all of my music and video collection, and is sub-divided into 2 libraries, Music and Video - natch.

All music (Apple Lossless) and video (ISO format) is stored locally on the WD hard drives, so as to not suffer any network lag.

Music audio is sent to my AV amp via the Xonar soundcard co-axial output using WASAPI via a DAC, and works perfectly well.
Video audio is sent to my AV amp via the onboard Realtek optical output and works fine.

Video output, on the other hand, is a problem.

As I believe PowerDVD’s playback performance to be superior to XBMC’s native video player, I have a batch script that mounts the required ISO image upon selection from within XBMC, and automatically starts PowerDVD Cinema on top.
I have configured AnyDVD to automatically adjust my TV’s refresh rate from the usual 50Mhz (I only play Region 2 iso’s) to 25Mhz upon ‘insertion’ of a Blu Ray ISO.
Video is sent directly to my TV via the GTX 560 using a high quality IXOS HDMI lead.

However, upon playback of both DVD and Blu Ray video there appears to be a very slight jerkiness to the picture, occurring sporadically but noticeably.

I have absolutely no additional codecs installed other than those installed by Windows, XBMC and PowerDVD.

As I believe there is enough grunt in this HTPC am I being too picky, or should I expect perfect performance?

Cheers, Ian

[dman77]

Hi Ian,

In my opinion 16gb of RAM is overkill. 8gb is more than ample if you going to rip on this machine.

The Xonar cards are epic but it might be worth investigating what AMD have in the way of the combined video and audio solutions. No doubt it might be a cheaper solution and just as good.

I'm using EDEN as well and I thought a new feature was BR playback. I could be mistaken.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't use the Xonar for the video as well as music??