Best video card with *full* hardware mpeg decoding?

[jbromwich]

Currently I'm using an Hauppauge PVR-350 (using hardware-only decoding) but am tired of waiting for the EOF bug to be fixed. My PVR is a 500MHz machine which has been plenty of power when using the PVR-350's hardware decoding, but my machine's CPU couldn't handle the task of doing the decoding by itself.

I'd like to switch to using a seperate video card for my decoding and video output. I assume that modern video cards can do the decoding in hardware for the most part, and that SageTV can indirectly make use of the hardware decoding by using the software mpeg decoder that comes bundled with the video card. Is that correct or I am not understanding how this would work?

I need to use a PCI card (no PCI-Express or AGP slots on my motherboard).

My local store only has these 3 choices (PCI with TV-Out) for me:

eVGA e-GeForce FX 5200 128MB 64-Bit PCI w/ TV-Out, DVI ($84.95 CANADIAN)
Powercolor Radeon 9250 PCI 128MB DDR w/ TV-Out, DVI ($79.95 CANADIAN)
Powercolor Radeon 9250 PCI 256MB DDR w/ TV-Out, DVI ($109.95 CANADIAN)

Will any of these cards off-load the mpeg decoding for me enough that my computer won't be brought to its knees, and has anyone tried any of these with SageTV?

Do you have any other card suggestions for me that you *know* work on a super slow computer like mine?

Thanks for your help.
Julian.

[SHS]

What the EOF bug?
Only thing is with your system you be waste your money on card that no CPU power needless to say thoses card only off-load some of the mpeg decoding and not only being it have to use PCI base card you need CPU power but you could alway try it.
Oh you really don't 256 MB model that just overkill useless you plan todo 3Dcad or Hardcore Gaming but in case of PCI it to waste of time.

[blade]

No video card does full hardware decoding. For that you'd need something like the xcard. Sage v3.0.11 addresses the EOF bug and has a couple of new things you can try.

I don't know if any video card is going to be able to deliver smooth playback on a system that slow. Maybe someone else can answer that one.

[Mahoney]

Julian - might be worth reading this post:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...4&postcount=46

[gplasky]

Julian
You have a 500MHz Celeron with 256MB of RAM and you don't even have an AGP slot. The only thing you should be comtemplating is how to get a new machine. Without a PVR350 you would never have this app running video on this machine.

Gerry

[Mahoney]

If it's working but for the EOF field bug, sorting the bug would be a lot cheaper...

[GbrNole]

i'd just get an MVP if i was you and use your pc as a server.

[insomniac]

Ding ding ding...we have a winner!

Originally Posted by GbrNole

i'd just get an MVP if i was you and use your pc as a server.

[jbromwich]

Thanks for your responses...

...but my question about how SageTV ends up using the hardware acceleration of a video card is still outstanding. If anyone could confirm or refute my assumptions about this, I would appreciate it. And also if anyone has any [reasonably cheap] card recommendations I'd still like to hear them. (Thanks for the xcard suggestion, but that might be overkill don't you think?).

Oh, and while I take no personal offense, let's not have any more "your computer sucks" implications please. It makes a very usable PVR when combined with the 350. You might be surprised how well it works. The EOF problem is the only real issue I have.

... however, I've just put in a 1GHz processor upgrade (that a friend gave me), so do you still think that it's useless to try using a video card for output?

Thanks for the pointer to the new EOF workaround mentioned in this post:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...6&postcount=49
I'll give that a try as well.

Julian.

[ji0005]

Originally Posted by jbromwich

... however, I've just put in a 1GHz processor upgrade (that a friend gave me), so do you still think that it's useless to try using a video card for output?

I have been running with a pvr-250 and a fx5200 video card on a P3-733 for almost 2 years without issue. You should not have a problem getting a video card to work if you upgraded to 1GHz. The only thing I could see being an issue is I have 384 MB RAM. Definitely not a power house system though.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by jbromwich

...but my question about how SageTV ends up using the hardware acceleration of a video card is still outstanding

Sage itself does nothing -- it just loads up an MPEG2 decoder

The MPEG2 decoder asks the video card driver what hardware accellerated features there are, and selects some to use. Often these only work in certain rendering modes (overlay).

Search for DXVA (MS's hardware accereration API) both in these forums or on the net for more info. This FAQ covers it pretty well

Any modern video card should handle most of the things a decoder can offload, but for various reasons, this is never the same as full HW decoding...

(I had some success on a 1Ghz EPIA M1000 -- approx PII 600Mhz equivalent -- with cyberlink powerer DVD XP 4.0 decoder -- it used about 50-70% CPU on playback).

[jbromwich]

Originally Posted by nielm

The MPEG2 decoder asks the video card driver what hardware accellerated features there are, and selects some to use. Often these only work in certain rendering modes (overlay).

Not to be a complete dumb-dumb, but *where* does one acquire said MPEG2 decoder? Do I get one for free when I buy a card? Do I pay for one? Is a decoder specifically written for each video card on the market or are all decoders capable of querying all video cards for their capabilities?

[robertmcox]

Sometimes a video card will come with a decoder -- be sure to look on the box before you buy it. You will get a decoder with any DVD Player software you purchase. Typically, if you purchase a DVD-ROM drive, it will come with DVD playback software (and a decoder). You can purchase a DVD Decoder from the software developer -- most will even give you a 15-30 day trial. Finally, SageTV itself comes with a decoder

The major decoders are:
* CyberLink (PowerDVD) -- this comes with newer ATI Radeon cards
* NVidia
* InterVideo (WinDVD)
* Sonic

There are more, just search the board and google it.

Pretty much everyone agrees that NVidia and Sonic give the best quality. Both are only $15 each, which is a fair deal if you ask me.

[Mahoney]

I have a 1Ghz Athlon, a Radeon 9250 and the nVidia PureVideo decoders, and I get smooth playback of Standard definition stuff. Haven't tried any High Definition, as I only have an SD TV.

[nielm]

You get a MPEG2 decoder included with Sage, but it does not do HW accelleration.
'Free' MPEG2 decoders include dscaler (www.dscaler.org) which is at a very early stage of development, and CPU hungry, and FFMPEG which does not do HW accelleration.
Nvidia has a trial version.

Is a decoder specifically written for each video card on the market or are all decoders capable of querying all video cards for their capabilities?

the second option -- thats what DXVA is for, as mentioned in the linked FAQ!

[jbromwich]

Thanks for bearing with me. I think I now have a better understanding of how all this codec stuff works. (Thanks for the FAQ link).

Just an update... The upgrade to the 1 GHz processor didn't work at all. Maybe my BIOS can't handle it. I don't know. Maybe I'll see if anyone else has got it to work, and then I'll try again... but probably not.

So I guess I won't bother with adding a video card into the works since it seems I won't have enough CPU power to make it work.

But, as suggested, I also tryed out the new Sage version 3.0.11 PR11 to see if it could reduce the EOF bug. The new STV looks very nice and certainly more config options are available in the new STV than I had on the "original STV with COMSKIP added".

However... Video playback didn't work at all. (Still using the hardware-out on the PVR-350 of course). [I didn't get a chance to try the comskip stuff for the new STV: http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=12194].

It alternated between these behaviours:
- It played for a couple of seconds and then hung the computer.
- It played a few seconds, skipped a few minutes forward, played some more, [repeat 3 or 4 times], and then hung.
- It left the menus on the screen and just played the sound from the recorded show for a few seconds, and then... you guessed it... hung the machine.

I first tryed switching to my "original STV with COMSKIP added", but had the same problem. So I tryed a few different settings, but then gave up and reverted back to my Sage 2.2.8 (which I had backed up in full before upgrading).

Suprisingly, after a reboot, the old version (2.2.8) now had the same bug!
So I re-installed the original Sage 2.2.8 program, *then* copied my 2.2.8 install backup on top of it! Only then did it work again as it used to.

It would seem my PVR is resisting upgrades on all fronts! Anyway I think I'll continue this discussion over in this thread: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13064

Thanks again for all your help!
Julian.