RADEON LE and DVD

dvda420

Member
Mar 9, 2001
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Does anyone know if there is a way to use a DVD decoder card with the Radeon LE. The problem as I see it is that the Radeon LE has no VESA video connector and every DVD decoder that I have seen relies on this connector to connect to the video card. Any ideas on a way to get this to work?

-Phill
 

RobsTV

Platinum Member
Feb 11, 2000
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Vesa connector???
Most decoder cards do NOT use a vesa connector, but instead have an external pass through cable like the old 3dfx Voodoo2's had.

Why use a DVD hardware decoder anyway, especially with an ATI card??? For DVD output to TV??

Any video card made within the past 2 years is more than powerfull enough for playing DVD's smoothly, as long as you have at least a P350Mhz CPU, but with a Radeon, I sure would hope you would enough CPU to power that card..
 

dvda420

Member
Mar 9, 2001
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A hardware DVD decoder provides better visual quality. The CineMaster card I used with my old system had noticeably better quality than the ATI card produces. Also a decoder card can handle DTS surround sound while my sound card cannot.
 

Duvie

Elite Member
Feb 5, 2001
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I never hooked up my cinemaster to my vid card with a vesa connector...I had a v3 and the picture rocked...Software decoding was crap as my cpu was a K6-2 400.

Were you supposed to?...No directions in book ever showed that...What do you suspect is the reason to do so?

I totally understand still using the card for sound considerations. (ie DD5.1 or DTS outs to stereo)
 

dvda420

Member
Mar 9, 2001
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The card I have (the cinemaster 1.2) has a 25 pin VESA connector to pass the decoded mpeg-2 video to the video card. I believe that it is necessary to connect this in order to get the card to talk to the video card and pass on the video stream.
 

bigbootydaddy

Banned
Sep 14, 2000
5,820
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hes right, im holding my pc dvd inlay creative card, not the dx2 or 3, but the plain inlay card and it had a ribbon cbale to video card, and my radeon le doesnt have one, yet for tv output.

creative doesnt support inlay cards under win2k, which sucks
 

Hawk

Platinum Member
Feb 3, 2000
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The DVD quality is at least comparable to a decoder card, I would have to say, especially if you use WinDVD with the Radeon. I guess there's no way to use the decoder card with the LE (I thought most "recent" cards don't have that connector), but the only you can do is get a new decoder card that uses the pass through cable.
 

dvda420

Member
Mar 9, 2001
57
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How does the DXR3 connect to the video card? is there a pass-through cable like with old voodoo1 and voodoo2 cards? or is there an internal cable? Also how does the hollywood work?
 

EvilDonnyboy

Banned
Jul 28, 2000
1,103
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The Radeon will look better than any h/w decoder out there. There's no pass through to kill image quality. Even wihtout taking that into consideration, the Radeon is just as good, if not waaaaaaaaaaay better than any h/w decoder.
 

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
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it looks just as good as any hardware decoded, with windvd anyways. the ati decoder is 1. a piece of crap in win2k and 2. doesnt looks as nice. but windvd uses the hardware motion compensation of the radeon. If you need the tv out of a hardware decoder, you can always get a scan converter or buy the LE with tv out at newegg.