So I bought the PureVideo Decoder a month ago..

[Modular]

Anyone think that nVidia will give me my money back? I don't see how they could still be selling the decoder when they offer it for free in their driver package.

What do you think I should do? I've emailed customer support before and never gotten a response.

 

[xtknight]

They offer an MPEG-2 decoder in the drivers? I don't think so. The only thing I've seen is support for video acceleration for use by other decoders and programs.

 

[schneiderguy]

AFAIK you still have to pay for it

 

[Auric]

Ja, methinks (or wethinks) you are confoozing a PV decoder package with the PV branded hardware functions. Nvidia is unlikely to offer those A/V decoders for free because they must at least pay royalties to various companies and organizations for them (Dolby, DTS, MPEG-LA) and unlike arch-nemesis AMD, they don't sell cards to end-users so cannot even include or otherwise account for an overall license being tied to each part -unless they did something wacky like paid per GPU sold which would lead to financial ruin.

As an aside, the PV decoder is not worth it. PowerDVD Super Duper Ultra Mondo Edition can be had for $30 or so with an upgrade from the OEM included with many burners (or available seperately for a pittance). With that you get the same olde timey MPEG-2, plus MPEG-4 AVC and even more audio decoders all useable from any DirectShow player.

 

[BFG10K]

Yes, I think there's confusion between the decoder itself and drivers that accelerate the decoder using hardware. The latter is included with the drivers (obviously) but the former is not.

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Yes, I think there's confusion between the decoder itself and drivers that accelerate the decoder using hardware. The latter is included with the drivers (obviously) but the former is not.

Yup.
Ya know, you could've just ditched Purevideo

 

[Auric]

Ja, but libavcodec et alli don't sport DxVA which is the main reason to get a commercial decoder -particularly for HD content on older systems and especially to maintain multi-tasking performance.