AT HDCP Article: Confused!

[GTaudiophile]

On the front page there is a new article...

NVIDIA and ATI HDCP Compatible Graphics Cards Roundup

Am I the only one scratching his head here? You would think that such an article would CONCENTRATE on H.264 decoding and quality of HD playback as well as noise, heat, and power consumption. But instead it goes on to discuss gaming ability and FPS just like any other review! WTF?

If I buy an HDCP-capable videocard and install it into my HTPC (HD-player/TiVo/File Server) with a BR/HD-DVD drive, I only want to know the following:

1) Is it FULLY HDCP compliant? (Hardware and Drivers)
2) Does it have both DVI and HDMI ports?
3) How well does it decode H.264/HD content with as little CPU utilization as possible? (BTW, ATI creamed nVidia in this respect but of course this wasn't stressed because of the AT bias against ATI!)
4) How good is the 2D quality? A 2D quality comparison while playing BR or HD content would be nice.
5) How noisy is the card?
5) How much heat does it produce?
6) How much power does it consume?
7) How good are the drivers?
8) Does it get along well with the latest versions of PowerDVD and WinDVD with BR/HD support?
9) How much does it cost?

The very last thing I care about is gaming performance, especially with "HDCP" in the article title!

In addition to my HTPC, I'll have a dedicated gaming machine thank you very much!

I guess I wouldn't have even bothered with the article until HD/H.264 content is available for testing. And I would upload screen caps or at least subjective reviews of the 2D playback quality.

 

[JAG87]

1 yes
2 no most likely only DVI, some have HDMI
3 pretty damn well
4 very good
5 depends which card
6 depends which card
7 nvidia = good | ati = bad (no flames please)
8 gets along well
9 depends which card


yea that was a pretty off topic article...

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: JAG87
1 yes
2 no most likely only DVI, some have HDMI
3 pretty damn well
4 very good
5 depends which card
6 depends which card
7 nvidia = good | ati = bad (no flames please)
8 gets along well
9 depends which card


yea that was a pretty off topic article...

Dude, you can't answer #3 because they only tested MPEG2 content, not H.264. And they didn't bother with #4.

 

[JAG87]

Im not basing it on article, im basing on my own experience with H.264 and video accelleration.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
3) How well does it decode H.264/HD content with as little CPU utilization as possible? (BTW, ATI creamed nVidia in this respect but of course this wasn't stressed because of the AT bias against ATI!)
4) How good is the 2D quality? A 2D quality comparison while playing BR or HD content would be nice.

3) You can't get Blu-Ray titles in H.264, so you can't test H.264 decoding as far as commercial movies goes. Today, with MPEG2, the results are listed.
4) AT has already done some great comparisons of MPEG2 quality, that should tell you everything you need.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
3) How well does it decode H.264/HD content with as little CPU utilization as possible? (BTW, ATI creamed nVidia in this respect but of course this wasn't stressed because of the AT bias against ATI!)
4) How good is the 2D quality? A 2D quality comparison while playing BR or HD content would be nice.

3) You can't get Blu-Ray titles in H.264, so you can't test H.264 decoding as far as commercial movies goes.

There's a ton of Quicktime H.264 online HD content which I suspect is what he meant. Testing that would be just as meaningful as it uses the same codec and same high resolution.

 

[tuteja1986]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile

Originally posted by: JAG87
1 yes
2 no most likely only DVI, some have HDMI
3 pretty damn well
4 very good
5 depends which card
6 depends which card
7 nvidia = good | ati = bad (no flames please)
8 gets along well
9 depends which card


yea that was a pretty off topic article...

Dude, you can't answer #3 because they only tested MPEG2 content, not H.264. And they didn't bother with #4.

ATI AVIVO is better

Anyways ;( ...

Blu-ray = Mepg 2 , Java GUI , 50GB dual layer = only advantage has extra space
HD-DVD = VLC , XML GUI , 25GB dual layer = VLC is much better compression than Mepg2 and hell more efficient.

Non Gaming GPU:
Nvidia : 7600GS HDMI
ATI : X1600 PRO HDMI


My hopes both format die ;( ...

 

[Auric]

There are MPEG-2, VC-1, and AVC (H.264) -all of which are integral to both disc formats (i.e. mandatory hardware support). The use of olde tymey MPEG-2 can be seen as transitional because it is common, cheap, familiar, &c. but otherwise cannot compare to the modern codecs as said for efficiency and thus quality at the same bitrate.

Anyhoo, thanks for the heads-up to avoid reading a useless article. I stumbled across a really dumb one recently on another pop site which I do not recall but where a question was posed to an interviewee: "What's the difference between HDCP and HDMI?", which is nothing short of retarded. I mean, simply expanding the abbreviation pretty much spells out what each is and if further clarification is needed then fine but it's still not about a "difference" since they are not even remotely similar things.