I need advice deciding between two schemes for deinterlacing and scaling 480 content to achieve the best results affordable on a late model 1080p 50" plasma TV.
My collection of movies and TV series is sizable but only 30-odd movies and one TV series are on 1080p BD. The rest are on DVD, though pressed from Warners, Sony, Universal, Fox, CBS/Paramount, Studio Canal, et al.
Rather than my Oppo 95 or Pioneer LX500 players, I'd rather use the BD drive in the HTPC that I want to build-outputting the video via HDMI and the audio via USB to a DAC. The good news is I do no gaming, so I may not need a super powerful video card. But how much horsepower will I still need to make my DVDs look their best on a plasma?
I only know of two ways to do this. The first way is this expensive box, not that I have any experience using it.
http://www.lumagen.com/testindex.php?module=radianceMini_detailsThe second way is certainly far most popular: Use an HTPC with a suitably powerful graphics card and madVR software, or the Jinc utility which I believe is built into JRiver player. But while Jinc's learning curve might not be very steep most users say madVR can take you days or weeks to produce decent results. I don't mind putting in reasonable time to learn as much as I can so long as my efforts bear good looking fruit.
However, the big concern here is fan noise, power draw and/or heat emission. My HTPC build is way overdue but it also needs to be virtually (~ 80%) silent-and in a
case no bigger than this.
https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=233&area=en But a madVR user said this silent card's too weak.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/gt-1030/specifications/and to scale DVDs for a 1080p plasma-even when viewed 10 to 12 feet away-
I'd at least need a card idling at 82 watts like this one.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/gtx-1650/And the card's idling fan noise levels really aren't rated too well.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14270/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1650-review-feat-zotac/15 Same with this card.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15010/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-super-review-feat-evga/15 There is a fanless version of the 1650.
https://www.a2kmedia.net/post/is-silent-gpu-any-good-palit-gtx-1650-kalmxBut that's assuming I wouldn't actually need some stronger and even noisier card for great looking DVDs on a 50" plasma @ 10 feet, using madVR or Jinc.
So is asking for low fan noise and stellar DVD to 1080p scaling from a video card pretty much asking for the impossible?
If so, then unless this less costly model would give exceptionally good results on my screen and viewing distance
https://www.kramerav.com/us/product/vp-424c , would this processor produce indispensably better images?
http://www.lumagen.com/testindex.php?module=radianceMini_detailsBUT I'll be sending the audio to an external DAC via USB, so any problems syncing the video with the audio while the pc's playing the DVD via JRiver?