Sigma Designs Real Magic Decoder Card? (1 Viewer)

[davlaw2000]

Hi all just a general question for the technical experts.
I have built an HTPC but it's not really high-spec (AMD Sempron 2400+, Ge Force FX 5600) and as a result it struggles to keep up. This results in lots of stutter and loss of sync when running MediaPortal.
I still have an old Sigma Designs Real Magic mpeg2/dvd decoder card from years ago and was wondering whether, if I found the right drivers, it might help to improve performance or not.
It's a PCI card and the main chip says EM8300.
It was quite expensive in its day but I guess it has no value these days.....
Any thoughts? Would it improve things? Any responses, good or bad would be appreciated.

davlaw2000

 

[Bascombe]

The xcard is still a great piece of hardware if you're hooking it up to a standard def set - even for hi-def, I've heard it gives great results over component. THe only problem is mediaportal doesnt fully support it. If you have a tv card, you can configure it to display the image on the tv via the xcard, and there appears to be a way to set it up to use the real magic remote, unfortunately there doesnt seem to be a way to get the osd on the screen at the moment. I still visit these forums regularly in the hope that some inspired individual will have developed a plugin that facilitates full xcard support, and come the day when I get a hi-def display (still quite a way off), I can see myself ditching the xcard and going the graphics card/mediaportal route. In the meantime, its TVedia 3.5 (still eminently functionaly, but looking very dated and with no bda driver support) or bust!

Cheers,

Bascombe