Graphic cards with DVD support

[odyn]

Can someone list me Graphic adaptors with DVD support? (TV-out feature is also quite important to me). What is the difference between "support" and "acceleration" (as in stand-alone DVD accellerators). Any suggestions which card to choose?

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With k6-2/300, G200 searchin for truth
Odyn

[Jammrock]

Support = There are software DVD encoders that work with our video card. Some of the players may be specifically written for the card (i.e. software that comes with it) and may be a bit better, but no real advantages. SOme of these video cards will have a TV out option.

Acceleration = The card has a built-in hardware MPEG-2 decoder. The stand-alone cards use a video pass-through cable to send the signal to the monitor and has a SVHS and/or RCA plug to go out to a TV.

Hardware accelerator take up a PCI slot and IRQ and have a comparable video quality to the others. Software decoders sometimes look a bit better, but will consume up to 50-90% of your CPU time, depending on the program, movie and CPU/RAM/DVD-ROM.

Jammrock

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Athlon 650, Biostar board, 128 MB PC133 (Crucial), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, 10/100 NIC, lots of case fans, etc...

[odyn]

And which cards/chips do have either DVD support or acceleration (I'm just a few% too slow, really).
thx

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With k6-2/300, G200 searchin for truth
Odyn

[Rags]

Hi odyn,

I had my G400 playing DVD's fine on my K62-300 with the Matrox DVD player, and I had 128MB Ram on that system.

Rags

[Thundrchez]

For best results, I would recommend a Matrox G400 32MB dual head. If I am not mistaken, it is the only single card solution that allows tv output. I'm talking about real DVD-Max TV output, guys; I know that there are several video cards that have an NTSC svideo output on them, but they all do a VGA on top of NTSC kludge which really really hurts to look at.

Other than that, you could get a regular video card and a DVD decoder add in card such as the Creative DXR2 or DXR3 or Hollywood Magic somthing-or-another. I've never played around with those, though.

Some of the video cards have a dvd hardware assist feature called "motion compensation". If you are only concerned about tv output, you do not need to worry about motion compensation as it only helps out with higher resolution dvd playback. In the very rare ballpark, some video cards have dvd decoder chip on them; I've seen an old Intel 740 with a Zoran dvd decoder daughterboard.

Nearly every current video card out there has DVD overlay support for software based dvd decoding: Matrox G200; Matrox G400; Nvidia TNT2; Nvidia GeForce 256; ATI (well, I don't know their product line but I'm sure that it does dvd); S3 Savage 2000; Intel 740 (egads!); Trident Blade 3D; and I'm sure that I'm leaving out several others.

[Caprice]

Yes you are mistaken....my old ATI Rage Fury
had TV out and the best DVD playback you've
probably ever seen....My G400 just cant come
close to the quality and imagery that the
hardware-assisted ATI card had...but alas the
old grey mare just wasnt fast enough for my
type of gaming and it was set out to pasture.
My suggestion is to pick out a fast video card that fills your needs for gaming and buy
a decoder card...namely the Hollywood Magic
Plus...TV out and SP-DIF connections and a
beautiful picture...I'm even thinking of one
myself! (the ATI spoiled me I guess)

[Thundrchez]

Thanks for the correction, Caprice. As it is very obvious, I have not kept up with the ATI line of cards and their features. I just had major headaches with my ATI Mach64 Graphics Pro Turbo about 5 years ago, and I swore off ATI from that day forward. Yeah, it is a silly reason, but I am a silly kind of guy.

[Rags]

I have had two ATI cards, an All in wonder pro, and a rage fury with TVO, and the G400's quality and speed is better IMO. Especially when outputing to TV. The TVO using DVD on the G400 is unmatched by anything I have seen thus far, not using a dedicated decoder.

Rags