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[haggis999]

My Dell Precision Workstation T7500 is fitted with an NVidia FX 1800 graphics card. JRiver MC 18 is running on this machine and I can view ripped Blu-rays and DVDs without any problem on the computer monitor attached to the DVI output of the FX 1800.

I am now considering the possibility of using this machine as an HTPC, as it is normally left running all day and all evening in our living room and the fans are very quiet. The first step would be to connect it to my Panasonic plasma TV using HDMI but the Dell Workstation has no HDMI output. Is there a way to use one of the two Displayport outputs on the FX 1800, perhaps by using a Displayport to HDMI cable? If so, would it provide audio as well as video?

I'm a newbie in the world of HTPCs and would be grateful for any guidance.

David

[haggis999]

This question was finally answered yesterday. I have spent the last two weeks in communication with four different people at Dell technical support, none of whom fully understood the audio capabilities of the NVidia Quadro FX 1800 graphics card that Dell used to fit as standard in many of their workstations. They all eventually told me that a DisplayPort to HDMI adaptor plus an HDMI cable would transport an audio signal from the FX 1800 to my television. When I bought the required cables and found that it didn't work, I was told I should have bought an active DisplayPort to HDMI adaptor instead of a passive adaptor.

This first part of this advice was seriously incomplete. The advice to use an active adaptor was incorrect (as was obvious as soon as I checked the intended purpose of an active adaptor).

The Quadro cards are actually made by PNY for NVidia. In parallel with my discussions with Dell I had an email conversation with a very helpful lady in PNY's tech support dept in France. She too was initially of the same opinion as the people at Dell but her reaction on being told that it didn't work was very different. She tested an FX 1800 card herself and proved that I was correct. She then checked further and found that I needed a small cable to take an S/PDIF signal from the motherboard to a connector on the side of the FX 1800. She also immediately sent me the required cable at no charge. However, before this cable arrived I found that my Dell machine had no S/PDIF output on the motherboard.

This then left me with the choice of buying a discrete sound card to obtain an S/PDIF output or buying a more up to date graphics card (the PNY person had told me that the later 'Fermi Series' of Quadro cards came with full digital audio support built in as standard, with more audio formats than available via S/PDIF). I went for the latter option. My FX 1800 has now been replaced by a Quadro 2000 and I now have sound via HDMI, using a passive DisplayPort to HDMI adaptor .

I hope this explanation helps anyone else with a similar problem in this very poorly documented area.

David