Built in dvd decoder in brands other than ATI?

[blackhawk]

I have a couple ATI video cards and like the built in dvd decoder and wonder if any other cards have it built in. Looking for a built in one for my sons college machine.

 

[BFG10K]

All GeForce based video cards have hardware accelerated DVD playback, as do the older S3 video cards.

 

[JSang]

i believe if you want real dvd decoding, not just hardware dvd acceleration (and yes you can see the difference) you have to buy ati...just get him an ati aiw 8500 or 7500

 

[Peter]

The beauty in the ATi solution is that it has hardware assistance for a second stage in DVD decoding, the floating-point intensive iDCT stage.

The only other ones to have that too are SiS. Their 6326 and 6326DVD chips had it (back in 1997 already!), and everything SiS that came after these (including their integrated-VGA chipsets) has it too.
regards, Peter

 

[richleader]

The beauty in the ATi solution is that it has hardware assistance for a second stage in DVD decoding, the floating-point intensive iDCT stage.

I remember seeing benchmarks of CPU utilization that proved that rather insignificant on today's cpus. Of course, "today" was a long time ago, I think it was an Athlon 1ghz

 

[Torghn]

1 Ghz CPU doesn't need any help decoding a DVD. Laptops are about the only thing that "need" DVD support (as it increases battery life). However DVDs do look better on an ATI card than any other.

 

[Peter]

iDCT takes load off the CPU. Sure that doesn't matter much on today's usual overkill hardware, but in a notebook or in an attempt to build a silent living room PC it does matter. Want to watch DVD on a fanless VIA C3 box? Better have iDCT capable graphics hardware then.

Or slap something together from Pentium leftovers, put a $19 SiS 6326DVD graphics card in, and enjoy.

regards, Peter

 

[Mavrick007]

Doesn't the ATI hardware decoding only work if you use the ATI player?

You could always use a Hollywood + decoder card too which works great, but is an add on card.

 

[richleader]

but in a notebook or in an attempt to build a silent living room PC it does matter. Want to watch DVD on a fanless VIA C3 box? Better have iDCT capable graphics hardware then.

While the GPU is more efficient than the CPU, it still takes juice--and the power required for the LCD, DVD drive, and speakers dwarves the amount saved by having iDCT. Not that it's a bad feature to have in a lap top, I'd certainly love a radeon mobility, just that I think it gets hyped as a make or break feature, and that certainly isn't the case. That C3 remark is an exaggeration as well. I have a Pentium 2 400 slot format that runs with a copper heatsink, no fan, and a Voodoo 3, and it doesn't have a problem playing back DVDs to any large extent (newer DIVX's can cause it fits sometimes, especially if run on windows XP, Win 98se, no problem though).

Hollywood decoders are great too--especially if you need TV out, as the signal is often much better than even the results from a AIW card, but YMMV.

 

[Torghn]

<<Doesn't the ATI hardware decoding only work if you use the ATI player?>>

No, works great with any DVD player.

 

[Peter]

Mavrick, in Windows, any card with hardware media de- or encoders installs them into Windows' media codec driver set. So any application going through standard Windows procedures will benefit from hardware assisted encoding or decoding.

regards, Peter

 

[blackhawk]

Very helpful info guys, got a line on a couple ati radeon 32mb ddr cards right now. I feel they should be good value and a decent all round card. If I add in the cost of an inexpensive ati tv tuner, they come close to the price of a used aiw radeon but should have a bit better performance.

I may try my sons computer with software decoding with my asus 6800 initially to see if there's any stutters. With an XP 1700 I wouldn't think so though and power dvd.