How much does DVD playback depend on the Video Card?

[2canSAM]

I just bought a book pc that has the intel i810 chipset. I would like to make this into a Homepc that can play DVD movies and be an MP3 jukebox type thing. I know the integrated video sucks on these things. Running a Celeron 400, 256mb, Toshiba DVD rom, will I be able to get good quality with this?

 

[2canSAM]

Anyone?

 

[jamesbond007]

Do you have a DVD to try it out? You have a good DVDROM there, a little slow in CPU speed, but it should be suffice. I know my friend's AMD K6-2 500Mhz didn't play a DVD without skips, even with a Voodoo3 3000 PCI. Doesn't hurt to try it out.

 

[SpeedTrap]

power dvd is the best

 

[Auric]

Rent a DVD or download a VOB and you'll have your answer.

It's a borderline call unless the Intel video has motion compensation in which case you should be okay with PowerDVD for schmoovness. The other issue is visual quality output by the chip and also TV out if you intend on using that. I would be suspect.

And of course, I couldn't pass on reiterating that Voodoo had no acceleration and had stank visual quality (particularly for video), so there should be no surprise that it did not help the K6-2. No offense, but jamesbond007 you say it like the chip was so bad that even the fabulous Vodooo couldn't help when the fact is it needed some help itself!

 

[tjll11a]

Means everything....

If you don't have a video card that has a GPU on it go spend 50 bucks and get a sigma desighns decoder otherwise you just won't experience the true dvd quality...


Thanks
Jason

 

[tjll11a]

GPU - General Processing Unit


It comes on most new video cards for example the Ati radeon,geforce,etc...

 

[RobsTV]

As for a Voodoo3, I usually complained loudly about my card, except when it came to DVD playback. No it does not have hardware accelleration, but that is not needed if you do it right and have at least a 400MHz machine.

With a properly set up system, (DMA enabled), and using an ATI DVD software player, the V3 in a K6-2 @392MHz, with 64megs ram, plays just as smoothly as any, including my TV top, stand alone DVD player. The ATI software with it's 3DNow! support, was the only one that would work, skip free. Playback is no different now with my 1GHz Duron and GF2 GTS. The V3 will work fine.

 

[jamesbond007]

Well, the strange thing is that DMA WAS enabled. He sold the system anyways and bought an AMD box I built for him. Loves it now.

I think the answer lies within one word...Compaq. <<<OEM of his K6-2 500Mhz.

ROTFLMAO! Hehe.

I didn't say that by having the Voodoo he should have expected no dropped frames, but still, it was a great card for $60. Isn't there something called iDCT support, found in the new SiS730 chipset, that has little CPU utilization? I think ATi has this in their ATi DVD Player/Video Card combo, which is maybe why DVDs could have ran without dropped frames on slower PCs.

Thanks.

 

[bluemax]

i810 actually has better hardware DVD assistance than the Geforce cards. Much better. Not quite ATI, but not bad at all. I noticed you don't have it yet.... try to get a little faster CPU if you can, but if not, you'll still get good DVD playback with this setup.
Believe it or not - you will.

 

[DeathKnightMaF]

<< GPU - General Processing Unit >>


Actually, GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit. It handles the entire graphics pipeline

 

[Hawk]

GPU doesn't mean DVD decoding. Your 600 should be able to do it quite nicely in software, I am not sure if the i810 has decoding (bluemax says it does), so you should be fine.

 

[StormRider]

If I remember correctly, the Intel 810 chipset has an integrated i752 graphics chip -- this is basically an i740 with motion compensation. It should be able to play DVDs smoothly. Does it have TV-Out?

 

[tjll11a]

sorry about that death..you are corect...

 

[2canSAM]

Thanks guys for all the help. Guess I'll rent a DVD this week and try it out. Have Fun.