Upgrade to support HDTV, HDDVD & Blu-Ray

[bakra]

This might also be a solutiuon to build an powerfull mini-ITX MediaPortal system (or client) at low cost, because you can use a cheaper (slower) mini-ITX board.

[deebo]

there are some mini-itx boards that support core2duo and have a pciex 16x slot

its not a sacrifice for speed, its a sacrifice for pci slots mostly

[egandt]

HD Homerun, is my personal choice.

ERIC

[pegisys]

I'm all for a pci add on, it would sure beat having to upgrade the CPU and motherboard

but right now my HTPC can decode all OTA HD no problem and only has problems with 1080p h.264 video

[Somperson]

Obivously everyone would love these ATI/Nvidia cards to do 95% of the decoding. But everyone should know that these companies have bad track records with offloading the cpu.

Some notes.. please correct me if I am wrong:

Purevideo nvidia drivers require Vista at the moment and will not accelerate under XP.

I hear getting x.264 to decode properly with mkv files are an issue right now. I think its the splitter??

Quality is generally subpar to software decoding. The current best is FFDshow which is single-core only. Cyberlinke H/W decoder is buggy and CoreAVC S/W based will introduce artifacts.

I am anxiously awating the ATI cards. But all of my files are generally mkv and I refuse to upgrade to Vista when XP is better for Mediaportal.


If anyone has questions or comments let me know... this is a warning for those buying the new Nvidia cards. Check avsforum under HTPC.

JPK

[xemumanic]

Originally Posted by Somperson

Obivously everyone would love these ATI/Nvidia cards to do 95% of the decoding. But everyone should know that these companies have bad track records with offloading the cpu.

Some notes.. please correct me if I am wrong:

Purevideo nvidia drivers require Vista at the moment and will not accelerate under XP.

I hear getting x.264 to decode properly with mkv files are an issue right now. I think its the splitter??

PowerDVD v7.3 takes advantage of the PureVideo HD H.264 decoding in _both_ XP and Vista, even in .mkv, or whatever else uses x.264/H.264/AVC encoding, with no artifacting or anything. No matter what you hear, CoreAVC looks just fine, and FFDshow works fine, but is slow. I used to use CoreAVC until I got PowerDVD v7.3, and now I just use the Cyberlink decoders.

The big thing about the newer Nvidia 8500/8600 cards is that their newer Video Processors (often referred to as VP2), decode so well, that they do most of the work of decoding, and don't require a high end CPU. Only the midrange 85/86 GeForce 8 cards have this new VP2, not the 8800. It has the older VP, which isn't as effective.

[WayneDB123]

I have been wanting a PCI based HD capable decoder cardfor a long time now, I had a Sigma Designs X-card for SD but now a want a HD version.

[Mew]

I have an Asus EN8500GT Silent.

However I currently have a problem when the HTPC runs after resuming from hibernate any video in MediaPortal (recorded or live TV) stutters badly. Turning off hardware acceleration in the PowerDVD codec settings in MediaPortal seems to have resolved this, but this is not ideal as the main idea of the card is to use hardware acceleration. I am hoping when Nvidia release the drivers with PureVideo™ HD support for Windows XP (I believe these are due sometime in June) it will also fix this problem.

I don't recall the Gigabyte GeForce 6200 I briefly used before having this problem.

[RoyH]

Dman, i dont get the reason for the poll, if you want to watch HDDVD of BLURAY you need to meet the minimal hardware requirement, be it a dualcore CPU or an CPU offloading GPU. Anyone that does not own this already must upgrade, not?

Also, to get things straight, do i understand correctly that you are developing an internal player for mediaportal that can take advantage of the hardware decoding capabilities of the Nvidia 8500/8600 gpu or the coming ATI gpu AND is capable of handling HDCP and AACS?

If so im very excited cause right now im using PDVD7.3 Ultra as an external player for DVD HDDVD and BLURAY, and i dont like the fact that i cant use Mediaportal as the only GUI.

[dman_lfc]

Originally Posted by RoyH

Dman, i dont get the reason for the poll, if you want to watch HDDVD of BLURAY you need to meet the minimal hardware requirement, be it a dualcore CPU or an CPU offloading GPU. Anyone that does not own this already must upgrade, not?

Not if you have a hardware decoder pretty much any CPU & DirectX 9 capable card should be fine.

Originally Posted by RoyH

Also, to get things straight, do i understand correctly that you are developing an internal player for mediaportal that can take advantage of the hardware decoding capabilities of the Nvidia 8500/8600 gpu or the coming ATI gpu AND is capable of handling HDCP and AACS?

No it's got nothing to do with writing for Nvidia or ATI (AMD) graphics cards - currently this is handled by a supported software codec (using graphics card acceleration) and the HDCP rom on the graphics board. AACS is handled by the DVD or Blu-ray navigator which is something we'll have to look at though. Instead of using Cyberlink or Intervideo decoders you'll use the hardware decoders decoder which is 100% DirectShow capable thus allowing any DirectShow app to work.

Originally Posted by RoyH

If so im very excited cause right now im using PDVD7.3 Ultra as an external player for DVD HDDVD and BLURAY, and i dont like the fact that i cant use Mediaportal as the only GUI.

Yes we want to avoid this also. Once a navigator is sorted for MediaPortal this should be more possible. It's early days yet. An option is also that the cards will output video using a HDMI port (HDCP capable).

Thanks everyone for you feedback - it's appreciated.

DMAN