[mythtv-users] OT: hardware decoding of HD content

Marc Barrett mnealbarrett at cox.net
Sat Dec 15 18:53:24 UTC 2007


I just got a widescreen monitor from the wife for Christmas, and
am slowly making the transition to HD content.  My system is
still almost entirely SD, though, based on two Hauppauge cards
(350 and 150) and an nvidia geforce fx 5200.  But the monitor 
can almost do full 1080p (1680x1050).  I am already planning
to get an hdhomerun, probably in a few months, but it would
be silly to get that and discover that my system can't play HD
movies without chopping and stuttering. 

My system uses a P4 2.6Ghz CPU, so I am thinking of some
kind of hardware aid to help it decode h.264, AVC, or 
whatever HD movies.  Obviously my 5200 isn't enough, so I am
thinking of upgrading the graphics card first.  I don't know what
card to get, though.  I don't want to spend too much on a card
with all kinds of 3-D graphics stuff that I won't use much (I 
only play games very, very occasionally).  

The following link is very helpful:

http://www.nvidia.com/docs/CP/11036/PureVideo_Product_Comparison.pdf

My system uses AGP, so I can't use any of those expensive PCI-e
cards, anyway.  According to the chart, my best bet is a GeForce 
6200, since some of the the 'better' cards appear to actually be worse 
for HD support.

However, this chart all about nvidia's "purevideo" support for Windows.  
I don't know how exactly this applies to linux, XVMC, and such.  Also,
I really don't know anything at all about ATI.  Maybe there is a cheap
ATI card available, similar in price to the 6200, that might be better 
for HD decoding on linux.  I really don't know.  Any tips would be really
appreciated.


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