H/W decoding project update & price point (2 Viewers)

[dman_lfc]

All I have a price update for you and progress report...

Firstly I have now a sample PCIe board from which I'm testing at the moment.
There are alot of teething problems on the software side which i'm looking to get ironed out before goin ahead with a production run - I won't go into detail but it's still alot of work.
So far the results are impressive. As an example BBC HD here is the UK uses 1080i H.264 High Profile Level 4 pumping ~20Mb/s. Without the board my CPU just struggled to play it at about 13fps at 100% cpu utilisation. With the sample card I watched TV smoothly with 10-13% cpu - so I good result.

My system specs are below for people interested.

As for price I'm estimating (sorry I can't be specific here yet) that the lite version (no HDMI with HDCP output) of the boards will retail at 350-400 euro's
The current thought process is to donate 50 euro's back to the project for each board sold to MP users. Note: margins will be slim i'm doing this out of love not profit.
Let me know what you think of this price point I'm interested in your feedback as always.

DMAN

 

[Inker]

Thats way too much for me, I was thinking in the range of 50 to possibly 100 €. For the suggested price I'd frankly rather get a new GFX (8500/8600) which does the same, excepts its a graphics card too.

The problem I think is that 8500/600er are so cheap and they too offload almost everything to the GPU. If you don't game with it you can go for a 8500 GT which you can get for way under 100 already.

Sorry, but a no from me :-(

 

[mrmojo666]

Thats way too much for me, I was thinking in the range of 50 to possibly 100 €. For the suggested price I'd frankly rather get a new GFX (8500/8600) which does the same, excepts its a graphics card too.

The problem I think is that 8500/600er are so cheap and they too offload almost everything to the GPU. If you don't game with it you can go for a 8500 GT which you can get for way under 100 already.

Sorry, but a no from me :-(

i quote all inker said about price of that card..... too expensive for an specialized add on card....my 8800 GTS is more cheaper then it.
Right price i think is 150€ for a complete card (hdmi and hdcp), over is better a VGA card. We have to think about we need other hw to get HD from sat, dvb-s2 card + Ci module and cam about 130+40 +50 bucks.....

sorry but i don't think to get an acceleration card

 

[CHli]

I must agree ! Way too expensive.

Did you get some information about this chip :

http://www.broadcom.com/products/Consumer-Electronics/Media-PC-Solutions/BCM70012

It decodes all the Blueray and HDDVD video formats and are way cheaper : ~40USD for the whole board.

More information : http://www.eetimes.eu/france/199901251

 

[Bascombe]

Have to agree with the previous posters - for that amount of money, my preference would be to look into a decent graphics card - not that I would spend that amount of money on a graphics card in the first place...somewhere under 100 would have been good, though how practical a price point that is I've no idea.

Cheers,

Bascombe

 

[Goose]

Its a shame the card costs so much, however im not really all that surprised.
You guys must realise what this card does. It can apparently decode a full h.264 stream, which on bluray disks can be up to 1080p 40Mb/s. That by itself is quite a job; but then i remember DMAN mentioned that it could decode and ENCODE a stream at the same time.

So right there we have a custom asic, capable of two HD streams at once. Not to mention the holy grail, a hardware directshow filter, so it can be used in virtually any app.

Then you must understand that its a small market, basically its for HTPC videophiles.

What mind f***s me is how much the deluxe/full card would cost with HDMI and a crypto rom and such.

 

[Schrauber]

I would maybe pay that much.
The main benefit of such a solution for me is smoother playback. Graphicscards have a problem: They have an internal time source, which can noch be synchronized with des videos timebase. These two timebases are slightly drifting. If the difference in timebase is great enough, there is no more smooth playback.

Dedicated decoder cards with extre video outputs dont have this problem. They can synchronize to the video clock. So absolutely smooth playback can be garanted.

So for me, I see it not only as a solution to reduce CPU load.

@dman: what is with that broadcom card? Wouldnt it do the job?

 

[tourettes]

I would maybe pay that much.
The main benefit of such a solution for me is smoother playback. Graphicscards have a problem: They have an internal time source, which can noch be synchronized with des videos timebase. These two timebases are slightly drifting. If the difference in timebase is great enough, there is no more smooth playback.

Dedicated decoder cards with extre video outputs dont have this problem. They can synchronize to the video clock. So absolutely smooth playback can be garanted.

To me it looks like the video card would do the actual drawing, so the HW decoder wouldn't be able to help with the smoother playback. Remember that todays HW is using VMR9 and no hardware overlay is possible.

 

[Gamester17]

GPU assisted video decoding would be much cheaper

350-400 Euro and no HDMI with HDCP output is way to much (I would even pay that much for a decoding card with HDMI and HDCP).

The GeForce 8400 from NVIDIA will be out soon and will cost much less that that and still feature PureVideo HD (a.k.a. PureVideo 2), it will have DVI with HDCP (but no HDMI port), all than and fan-less (heatsink only) perfect for HTPC computers. Then there is GeForce 8500 and GeForce 8600 from NVIDIA which all have HDCP and some can have HDMI (depends on the manufacturer), and even those are cheaper than 100 Euro. There is also AMD/ATI which features AVIVO hardware video acceleration, they even have card even features a built-in surround sound-chip.

Just read this article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/06/08/avivo_vs_purevideo_hd/

Then think about the direction of this hardware project again...

PS! All NVIDIA GeForce 8-series chips features the CUDA API support as well which means you could run other intensive processes on that GPU chip as well, (like post-processing filters, audio-decoding, etc.).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPGPU

 

[Gamester17]

Broadcom BCM70010/BCM70012 chips support 1080i/1080p H.264 and VC-1 at 40Mbps as well
http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=1010620

http://www.broadcom.com/products/Consumer-Electronics/Media-PC-Solutions/BCM70012
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Consumer-Electronics/Media-PC-Solutions/BCM70010

BCM70010/BCM70012 chipset is priced at under $40 each in high volumes
....so I wonder how much a single PCIe-adapter will then retail for?

Broadcom, Irvine, CA
Sales +1 949-926-5000
http://www.broadcom.com