Why does NVidia charge for PureVideo?

[VirtualLarry]

Just curious about this. It sure affects teh comparison, say, if you were thinking of buying a "cheap" 6200 card for watching video content. You'd have to factor in the purchase price of PureVideo, which drives the price up and makes the NV solution look less appealing.

 

[Zenoth]

For money, duh !

 

[postmortemIA]

doesn't PowerDVD 7.0 have support for nvidia stuff?

 

[Wreckage]

NVIDIA only charges for the DVD decoder (because they have to pay for it).

H.264 is not free on ATI. You have to buy 3rd party software.

I'm sure both ATI and NVIDIA would give this out freely if they did not have to pay per license.

 

[ViRGE]

Wreckage has nailed it. You're confusing PureVideo the video hardware with PureVideo the MPEG2 decoder. The former is the equivalent of AVIVO, the later is a whole different thing.

 

[Acanthus]

Why do people need hardware encoding when all new PCs have at least dual core? 😵

 

[superbooga]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Why do people need hardware encoding when all new PCs have at least dual core? 😵

You mean hardware decoding?

There are things like deinterlacing, inverse telecine, and noise reduction that should be done in hardware.

Processors are powerful enough to do them in software, but the problem is that most software solutions simply aren't as good as whatever algorithms Nvidia and ATI are using.

 

[AmdInside]

The Purevideo Decoder only handles MPEG2 video formats so I would not recommend buying it. A few years ago, yes for sure. But now, you can buy PowerDVD or WinDVD and get the same Purevideo hardware decoding capabilities and support for other video formats. Of course these programs cost a lot more than the Purevideo Decoder.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: AmdInside
The Purevideo Decoder only handles MPEG2 video formats so I would not recommend buying it. A few years ago, yes for sure. But now, you can buy PowerDVD or WinDVD and get the same Purevideo hardware decoding capabilities and support for other video formats. Of course these programs cost a lot more than the Purevideo Decoder.

PureVideo is a scooch more than just MPEG2 video formats.

PV Information

PureVideo Product Comparison PDF

PVideo Decoder Purchase

AVIVO download package

I'm not here to praise or condemn either product. I did buy the "Bronze" PureVideo Decoder a while back and thought the money well spent when I watched that first DVD.

So, it's up to the user which way they want to go. I would recommend researching various PureVideo/AVIVO reviews to see which is superior for your needs and make an informed decision after that.

 

[TheNewbie]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
For money, duh !

:evil:

 

[bigsnyder]

I got a great deal on TheaterTek a couple of months back. This also comes with the nvidia PureVideo decoder.

 

[tommy2q]

what software do you need to use purevideo decoder and how do you access the options?

 

[BFG10K]

what software do you need to use purevideo decoder and how do you access the options?

I think you can use WMP and a little tray icon appears that you can click on when you're playing something that uses PureVideo.