Holy cow a hardware transcoder

[SHS]

Plextor PX-C200P
Now wonder if there any plan for other area of the world.

[stanger89]

Am I missing something? It only converts to MPEG-2, if it converted to H.264 it would be interesting.

[SHS]

Far I can tell the ViXS XCode II-L is supp to support Transcoding/Transrating Format conversion of multiple MPEG streams:
MPEG1 to MPEG2
MPEG1 to MPEG4 (ASP)
MPEG2 to MPEG4 (ASP)
and
Stream formats supported (In/Out)
Elementary Stream (ES), Packetized
Elementary Stream (PES), Program
Stream, Transport Stream (TS),
DVD-VR Program Streams

[stanger89]

From the plextor page though:

Video output (Video Stream)
MPEG-2 FULL D1 (720×480) 1 - 15m bit / second
MPEG-2 Half D1 (352×480) 1 - 15m bit / second
MPEG-2 SIF (352×240) 1 - 15m bit / second

[SHS]

Yup I saw but I was thinking they may have forgot add it or was planing it for later on for some know reason which could have something to do with the drivers not being 100% ready for MPEG4 Encoder.

[stanger89]

Any idea if this chip/card is better than say the ConvertX?

[korben_dallas]

Since the ConvertX is capped at 6Mbps capture limit, you could feasibly get much better results by using a retail Hauppagge 150 and this transcoder card.. both of which would cost less than the ConvertX.

I would imagine though that you'd be locked into a specific piece of software in order to use this card for converting.. unless they have some sort of DirectShow filter or api/dev kit.

[mayamaniac]

interesting...

But I would like to see Divx/Xvid/Mpeg4 to MPEG2 hardware transcoding, maybe have it work with the MVP, then you can watch all your Divx/Xvid/Mpeg4 movies on your MVP.

What's the use of hardware transcoding form Mpeg1/2 to Mpeg4 anyway, faster rate?

[dvd_maniac]

I'm sure that it is faster rate. But probably because it is only 1 pass. I was not impressed with the Plextor TV402 recording Divx in realtime. It is the most expensive of the six tuners I bought and is now sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
I get MUCH better results recording with the Hauppauge devices at 12mbit/s and using AutoGK to compress them.
I can only hope this won't dissapoint me as well...

[bluenote]

I want seamless Xvid integration in Sage so bad...

If I don't get it at some point, it would be an issue I'd switch software for, myself. I suspect as time goes on, more people will agree, too.

Cory

[stanger89]

Well, they've already announced full-blowd DivX support. But if they're going to add full support for anything else, I think it would be better to support WMV9/VC-1 and/or especially H.264. Those are the codecs of the future, in a couple years VC-1 and H.264 will be where MPEG-2 is today.

Xvid support is tricky because there are so many different encoders, so many different containers, and so many different people encoding it, I'm not sure there's one media player yet that will play them all.

[SHS]

I wouldn't count much on getting low cost hardware encoder WMV9/VC-1/AVC/H.264 becuase the license royalty are very high.
As for DivX / XviD support yes one major down side is all the different containers main problem mustlee with Audio as for standrad Video/Audio one hardware media player will play them all as long there in Simple and some Advanced Simple profiles without ¼ pixel (QPEL) and global motion compensation (GMC) and Audio is MP2/MP3 or LPCM.
I don't why some people make a deal over DivX / XviD when major pian a@@ to work with and can take long time to get done any way and what few hardware encoder that are out don't even support any of the Advanced Encoding Features.
Oh as for XviD support is not at all that tricky, the trick is to set the FourCC to DivX then the Home Player with the Hardware Decoder should be able to decode it as long as it in Simple profiles recording after I do belive a lot of them are just using the Sigma Designs REALmagic chip set.