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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Weezul" data-source="post: 154326" data-attributes="member: 46626">Hardware would be greatReading some earlier posts regarding the Creative DXR cards, I am reminded of the Cinemaster and Creative (Luxsonor) dvd decoder cards in my pc spare parts drawers that are sitting because drivers for the 2k/XP environment were never finished or even made... They had full dvd decoding on board and could play full dolby surround on a pentium 200 box without breaking a sweat!I've been yearning for someone to put out a full-on fully programmable decoder board that would at least be usable as a "hardware filter" that simply offloads the entire decoding process and feeds that back across the bus to the Overlay ready for display, like the old DXR, Cinemaster, Luxsonor and Hollywood cards did in the old days. What this means is you could have a future-proof solution that could be simply upgraded by a firmware and/or driver/codec update when new technology comes along.Why someone hasn't already done this is beyond me. It's sheer laziness to rely on the graphics cards out there when we obviously have *not* been delivered the technology we've been promised (yeah, like I trust hardware decoding on ati/nvidia cards, it's hardware *assisted* in most cases for most people, not full hardware decoding). Plus the programmers have to write for the interfaces for *every* different card out there to implement their hardware decoding, when someone could have a card that provides a standard api that every codec writer could look for and simply offshoot their data to for processing.Where I see this as a plus is more for the Client side playback using small, energy efficient, and *quiet* boxes for connection to a decent display, leaving the big noisy server to be placed in a closet or basement where it can be hidden away. I for one would like to know the specifics on this solution, namely the path the video takes (is it a board that requires a "pass-thru" of some sort like the old Hollywood cards?), does it decode and then hand off to the overlay, allowing you to use your existing (and possibly sub par) video card, like those onboard a mini-itx (chrome graphics sux... ugh)? Or would you "loop" your current video through this which provides some sort of HDMI output (using a hdmi to dvi adapter would be easy, as well as a "breakout" for component video) that would scale your desktop to a standard HD resolution or possibly even upconvert and make it Progressive scan in the case of interlaced content??I think the greatest strength of a board like I mention is that it would have to have a direct directshow decoder (and maybe even encoder?) driver(s) available that hooks directly to the hardware, so that the main function of the computer itself is simply ferrying the data to the card, letting the card do the grunt work, and then the card *outputs* the data in some manner that goes to the existing overlay, and *not* use a jumper cable like the afore mentioned legacy cards.  What would be nice is for someone to implement that solution in a chip that could be directly integrated to a motherboard. Hell, I'm surprised that someone like TI hasn't put out something like this already, they're one of the best at providing chips that are fully programmable for things like what we're discussing. Remember the old modem/sound cards that had that kind of equivalent, where upgrading to a faster modem speed or sound card feature improvements was nothing more than a flash/driver/software update?</blockquote>

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