Re: video card with hardware mpeg decoding with free driver?
On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 10:10:34PM -0400, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> I have an nVidia EN7300GT based card. I'm quite happy with it when I
> use the nVidia driver to watch DVDs. With the nv driver the fine image
> detail is less clear. I'm assuming that this is because the nv driver
> isn't accessing the hardware decoding engine.
Which player program, which X resolution, which refresh rate, etc.
> Are there any good video cards that do hardware decoding/accelleration
> that use a free driver?
Well personally I just use mythtv or mplayer or xine or whichever I feel
like to play DVDs, and I use the nvidia non-free drivers on a 6600gt,
which has plenty of accaleration so my 700mhz athlon can keep up just
fine.
> I'm asking on this list since my box is an Athlon64 running amd64 and I
> don't know if, for example, there are fewer choices of free drivers for
> amd64.
Well the hauppauge PVR350 has hardware mpeg2 encoder and decoder, but I
guess it isn't really a video card unless you count using your TV as
your display as being a video card (you can run fb console and X on it
after all).
I somewhat doubt that a hardware decoder would make the quality any
different. Having a driver to accalerate the decoding should just
reduce cpu load, not affect the quality. Various filters and such in
the application doing the playback on the other hand could affect it.
--
Len Sorensen
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