Blaze DVD Decoders any good?

[xred]

Anyone tried the Blaze DVD video decoders? I'm goint to try them out this weeks and I figured I would drop a note in the forums to see if there's any known issues (ie. kills Sage dead, work OK etc.)

TIA.

[dbfresh23]

I got curious so I downloaded the demo, it doesn't have decoders that show up in SageTV.

[xred]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

I got curious so I downloaded the demo, it doesn't have decoders that show up in SageTV.

Ah so they are like the FusionHDTV decoders (zulu) in that they aren't system decoders and don't expose themeselves.

Too bad, the search goes on... looks like I am going to end up going with Intervideo again.

[dbfresh23]

Have you tried the Sonic Decoders? I've used them and the Nvidia PureVideo decoders, both look pretty good on my system.

[xred]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

Have you tried the Sonic Decoders? I've used them and the Nvidia PureVideo decoders, both look pretty good on my system.

I have an ATI AIW 9800 Pro so the Sonic filters were a first choice for me when did my install (ATI shipped Sonic prior to Cyberlink). The picture quality is very good, but I never got them running smoothly on my system.

[dbfresh23]

I'd say that most people here swear by the Nvidia PureVideo decoders, may want to give them a try - yes they will work with an ATI video card...

[xred]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

I'd say that most people here swear by the Nvidia PureVideo decoders, may want to give them a try - yes they will work with an ATI video card...

Yeah, I know Purevideo works with ATI, but the ATI optimization level is... well exactly what you would expect from an Nvidia decoder =). Don't expect any great usage of DXVA etc beyond the MS SDK baseline.

Intervideo / Cyberlink / Sonic all do a good job of optimizing for both of the big 2 VGA vendors.. Cyberlink would seem like a natural given that ATI bundles them, but the visual quality on their decoder has been somewhat lacking in their latest release (6.x) in comparison to Nvidia / Sonic / Intervideo's latest.

[flashbacck]

Originally Posted by xred

Ah so they are like the FusionHDTV decoders (zulu) in that they aren't system decoders and don't expose themeselves.

Too bad, the search goes on... looks like I am going to end up going with Intervideo again.

You should be able to get the decoders listed by editting sage.properties.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

I got curious so I downloaded the demo, it doesn't have decoders that show up in SageTV.

SageTV doesn't display all decoders installed (unless something changed), if you can find the friendly name (eg from graphedit or radlight), you can add them to the additional_audio (or video) filters line in the properties file, and they'll be useable in SageTV (that's how we used ffdshow initially.

To the OP:

If you're going to purchase decoders, you really can't go wrong with nVidia, they're great decoders that work well on nVidia and ATI cards.

If you're looking for free ones, there aren't any better than the Dscaler 5 decoders.