S3 UniChrome Pro hardware mpeg decoder

[something fishy]

Has anyone any experience of a mainboard with the UniChrome Pro IGP. The specs promise hardware MPEG2 decoding (and MPEG4 acceleration) with motion compensation. It is in motherboards with the VIA PM800 and PM880 IGP chipsets (http://www.pcstats.com/releaseview.cfm?releaseID=1095) and, maybe more interesting for a sage client, the VIA epia SP mini-itx board.

I assume that this would take as much of the load of decoding MPEG2 off the CPU as a PVR350/xcard and I would hope that its motion compensation would give a better result than a software decoder. A thread on one of the mythTV boards suggested that playing a 1080i HDTV transport stream caused about 30% CPU load on a 1Gig C3 processor (which seems very low to me).

Unfortunately I can't get hold of one to play with.

[ck-]

I have an Epia SP13000 mobo which has the CN400 chipset - mpeg2 decoding and mpeg4 acceleration. Running Sage takes about 20-30% CPU for TV playback and DVD playback. This compares very favourably to the 70-90% that I get on my Epia M6000 with CLE266 chipset.
Although CPU usage is lower, I find the picture quality is not quite as good as the M6000, though I think that is because I haven't quite found the "sweetspot" yet. I have spent 6 months getting the M6000 right compared to a few weeks for the SP13000.
Just yesterday, I found that I appeared not to have the HWMC and DXVA settings set to 1 everywhere they occurred in the registry. Since changing that, things have been better.
Best decoder is one that comes with Hauppauge PVR-350, followed closely by the standard Intervideo decoder and the Cyberlink decoder
Hope this helps.

Originally Posted by something fishy

Has anyone any experience of a mainboard with the UniChrome Pro IGP. The specs promise hardware MPEG2 decoding (and MPEG4 acceleration) with motion compensation. It is in motherboards with the VIA PM800 and PM880 IGP chipsets (http://www.pcstats.com/releaseview.cfm?releaseID=1095) and, maybe more interesting for a sage client, the VIA epia SP mini-itx board.

[something fishy]

Thanks that is very helpful
You are in Derby UK?
Am I right in thinking that this board has a header that will output RGB composite sync for use with Scart?
I'm wondering if this will allow the "pixel adaptive" interlacing option in PowerDVD6 to light up (the only thing that does in my collection is a nVidia 6800GT).

[ck-]

Yes, Derby UK.

This board has two outputs for TV: RCA composite and S-Video. I only use the S-Video out. Were you thinking of a header on the board? Checking the manual, I can't see any6 reference to that.

Sorry, but I have not got powerdvd 6 so I can't check whether the pixel adaptive interlacing option is available.

Originally Posted by something fishy

Thanks that is very helpful
You are in Derby UK?
Am I right in thinking that this board has a header that will output RGB composite sync for use with Scart?
I'm wondering if this will allow the "pixel adaptive" interlacing option in PowerDVD6 to light up (the only thing that does in my collection is a nVidia 6800GT).

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by something fishy

I assume that this would take as much of the load of decoding MPEG2 off the CPU as a PVR350/xcard and I would hope that its motion compensation would give a better result than a software decoder.

Almost certainly not, all modern video cards claim the same thing, if you look at ATI/nVidia they also claim hardware MPEG decoding, but it's just hardware accelleration, and AFIAK, both offer motion compensation. But I'm aware of nobody but nVidia that offers Pixel Adaptive deinterlacing and Film mode detection.

And (asside from possibly the EPIA for a client) you couldn't pay me to put a VIA chipset in a PC.

[something fishy]

@stanger89
I know what you mean about via chipsets - I also avoid them from instinct.

I was indeed more interested in the epia sp implementation - I am still trying to get hold of one. I am agnostic on the Unichrome Pro IGP (I agree many things offer HW decoding and don't) but the board also has a VIP port which would enable me to use an xcard (there's one in the draw) and pipe the video back to the overlay as discussed here

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=11199

With a passively cooled eden (or a big enough aftermarket heatsink to passively cool the C3) that would make for an excellent client (assuming that the TV out was of good quality).

[edbmdave]

Anyone have any input on best way to set it up? I have used the M1000 (Ezra) for about 2 years, and been pretty happy, only replacing because it has a little trouble with larger divx that my wife finds annoying. How does one make use of the MPEG4 decoding of this motherboard?