HP Customer Service: Wow! + Question for Bob

[George Tyndall]

I ordered directly from HP a customized version of model HPE-170t. The price included free FedEx Ground shipping. The emailed invoice stated HP would begin the build in about 7 days and that delivery would take an additional 5-7 days, so I was expecting that as many as 2 weeks would pass before I received the unit.

The unit arrived in only 3 days from the date I received the emailed invoice.

After using the unit for about 3 days, I noted that HP had posted on the web site a new promo. For about $100 more than I had paid for the 170t, HP was offering a 180t. While the former had an i7 860 CPU and a 1GB ATI GPU, the latter offered an i7 930 CPU and a 1.8GB NVIDIA GPU.

I posted on muvipix to request member Bob’s opinion regarding the relative merits of the 2 units. Bob replied with the reasons that he would recommend the 180t.

I called HP to inquire about an exchange.

“No problem, sir,” said the cheerful customer service rep in the Philippines.

“We’ll send FedEx to your location to pick up the 170t, and as soon as the unit has been scanned in by FedEx we’ll charge your card the difference in price and then immediately start the build of the 180t.”

The next day, a FedEx driver handed me a slip which stated that HP had paid to have the 170t returned to the HP warehouse in 1 day.

Then, only a few days later (yesterday), the 180t arrived at my location. In a matter of minutes, I was up and running with Win7’s fabulous Media Center software. Using the remote control, it took less than an hour for the software to link to the music, photos and videos that are contained on the 4 external 1TB HDDs that I had connected to the 4 USB 2.0 ports on the rear of the machine.

Two Questions for Bob

Bob, when you have time, I have two questions: 1. what is the function of the two ports labeled “eSata” on the rear of the machine? 2. there is also a port labeled Optical Audio Out on the rear of the machine. Is it preferable to connect this to the Optical Audio In port on my home theater system rather than connect via the green audio port that is part of the machine’s 7.1 sound card?*
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*As I said in a previous post, the home theater seems to be creating 7.1 audio from the output that I am getting from the machine’s green port.

[tiny]

Bob, when you have time, I have two questions: 1. what is the function of the two ports labeled “eSata” on the rear of the machine? 2. there is also a port labeled Optical Audio Out on the rear of the machine. Is it preferable to connect this to the Optical Audio In port on my home theater system rather than connect via the green audio port that is part of the machine’s 7.1 sound card?*

I can take a quick stab at these.

The esata ports are for external hard drives that support esata. If any of yours do, it would be preferable to connect them this way, for it will offer much faster transfer speeds.

YES! Optical audio is second only to audio that comes over HDMI. The difference I believe is in compression. You will get the best possible audio from your machine doing this, unless your machine happens to have HDMI out and your sound receiver happens to have an HDMI passthrough.

[Bob]

1. what is the function of the two ports labeled “eSata” on the rear of the machine?

Those are for connecting external drives that have an eSata interface connection. eSata performance is essentially the same as an internal drive. I don't think HP included an eSata power connection, so the external drives will need their own power supply.

2. there is also a port labeled Optical Audio Out on the rear of the machine. Is it preferable to connect this to the Optical Audio In port on my home theater system rather than connect via the green audio port that is part of the machine’s 7.1 sound card?*

In general, yes. But, results will vary depending on the audio source; the capabilities of the sound card and supporting drivers and software; and the capabilities of the home theater system.

...*As I said in a previous post, the home theater seems to be creating 7.1 audio from the output that I am getting from the machine’s green port.

The home theater system will take what you give it as input and attempt to play it through the speaker configuration you set. That's pretty standard. With only one input from the green port, you are supplying stereo to the home theater system and it's performing some very sophisticated processing to generate/synthesize outputs for the 7.1 speakers. The results can be pretty amazing on a good system.

[George Tyndall]

Tiny and Bob, thank you for the replies.

After realizing that I needed to go to the Realtek control panel and change the output from analog to digital, I am now getting some impressive audio via the optional optical ("fiber optic") cable -- but I must admit that it was very wise of Monster to place a tag on the cable that states it will not work without removing the plastic caps on each end.*


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*As my dad would repeatedly inform anyone who would listen, I'm the guy with the 4.0 average in college who actually thought that oil is added to the engine via the small hole for the dipstick.

[George Tyndall]

Optical audio is second only to audio that comes over HDMI. The difference I believe is in compression. You will get the best possible audio from your machine doing this, unless your machine happens to have HDMI out and your sound receiver happens to have an HDMI passthrough.

Tiny, my Onkyo home theater does indeed have an HDMI pass-through, in other words, it merely passes HDMI audio to the same place is passes the video, which is the HDTV. So the result would be the lesser-quality audio that results from using the TV's built-in speakers in comparison with the speakers of the home theater.

As I understand it, by utilizing the Optical Audio Out port instead of the green headphone/2-speaker Audio Out port, my 7.1 sound card is sending 8 channels of music, rather than two, to my 7.1 home theater. In terms of the listening experience, I noticed right away that the audio seems more balanced among the various speakers in comparison with audio coming from the green port. In particular there is much less "thumping" of the bass when playing electronic dance ("trance") music videos.

Thanks again for your input.

[tiny]

That's very strange that your receiver wouldn't capture the HDMI audio before passing it through to your TV - it, as far as I can imagine, would defeat the purpose of having an HDMI passthrough on your receiver. Either way, I don't think you would notice a difference anyway, because there are a number of hardware factors (and audio source factors) that would go into whether your receiver was getting an uncompressed signal or not - that statement coming from my very limited understanding of the topic.