DVD Hardware Decoding

[opeleg]

What do you need to have hardware decoding and is it much better than software. Would my upcoming Geforce 3 have it? Thanks

 

[Duvie]

Yes I believe the GF3 has some sort of motion compensation stuff onboard...

However any comparable processor really above a 500mhz p3 does not need hardware decoding to playback smooth dvd movie...the faster the proc the less cpu utilization it ties up so you can do multitasking...

I have a 1.1 Tbird and cpu utilization is under 20 percent for DVDs and around 22-24 percent for DIVX movies I have encoded with a bitrate around 2000kbits...

 

[Viper GTS]

With today's processors & video cards, the only real advantage of a dedicated hardware decoder is the high-quality TV out & digital out.

For reference, DVD's look beautiful with my GF2, whether I use hardware decoding or not.

Viper GTS

 

[samgau]

I use the hollywood plus... the quality is pretty good... the machine is a cel333 with onboard video provided by the i810 chipset... so the decoder card was really needed.. 🙂

 

[John]

opeleg, you basically have a hardware decoder. Now all you need is a nice software dvd player. and of course a DVDROM drive.

 

[opeleg]

Actually you are mistaken 🙁

I just got the following
AMD 1.33 Ghz Processer (266Mhz FSB)
MSI K7t266 Pro Raid DDR Motherboard (266 Mhz FSB)
512 MB Crucial DDR Ram
2 IBM 75gxp's in RAID
Pioneer 16x Slot Loading DVD-ROM
Klipsch Promedia 4.1's

I have a great 19" and an sblive already
Can you guess what i'm missing? Yeah its the geforce 3 i'm so frustrated because its on back order so for now i'm stuck with an ATI 8MB piece of crap lol. If only i didnt get that Elsa 920 for 310 bucks....