[mythtv-users] HDHomeRun like device for analog?

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Fri May 14 14:38:31 UTC 2010


On Friday 14 May 2010 08:20:40 am James Pifer wrote:
> > Yes.
> >
> > The potential problem is that older machines often have AGP slots for
> > graphics cards, and no VDPAU-capable cards are available with an AGP
> > interface (if I'm wrong, I'd love to know about it).
> >
> > You can get standard PCI video cards that will do VDPAU, and of course
> > PCI- Express, but not AGP.
> >
> > A complete VDPAU-capable frontend can be had for $200 (the Acer Revo
> > 1600), not much more than we used to spend on a high-end video card.
> > _______________________________________________
> 
> Good news is on my frontends PCI slots are not a problem. Dumb question,
> what should you look for in a video card description to know it supports
> vdpau? If you search something like newegg.com for vdpau it doesn't
> return anything.

If you use a standard PCI card, be aware that the PCI bus may become a 
bottleneck under some circumstances. If you are playing back something that 
VDPAU can't help with (feature set "B" only helps with MPEG2 and h264, feature 
set "C" can do more, like VC-1, I think), you may have to move more data than 
the bus can cope with, especially if you are using multiple PCI capture 
devices at the same time.

So the PCI VDPAU cards work fine, as long as you are using VDPAU, but if you're 
not, it's just a slow old video card. VC-1 HD with a feature set "B" card, for 
example, might be problematical.

I see someone pointed you to the WiKi for info on VDPAU-capable cards.

"VDPAU" is a term you're likely to hear only from Linux users, not the 
Windows-centric gamers who run and write reviews for N/E.


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