Using h/w support for HDTV viewing on a PC

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

Hi,

I am looking for PC hardware that will offload the MPEG decoding from
the main CPU and that can be used by general video players like
mplayer or videolan. I can play a HDTV stream through these players
without any h/w support but the CPU usage is very high.

If this is not the right forum for PC-based HDTV viewing, I apologise.

Regards,
Harshal

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

> I am looking for PC hardware that will offload the MPEG decoding from
> the main CPU and that can be used by general video players like
> mplayer or videolan. I can play a HDTV stream through these players
> without any h/w support but the CPU usage is very high.
>
> If this is not the right forum for PC-based HDTV viewing, I apologise.

There are no consumer-level "general purpose" HD-capable hardware
video codecs on the market. The broadcast industry uses special
rack-mounted equipment for A/V encoding/decoding, but that runs in
the $30,000USD and up range

If you're only interested in *US HDTV* playback (MPEG-2 video),
then there *ARE* some consumer HDTV (MPEG-2 video) PCI cards, at under
$400. These are designed to record/tune/play the USA's ATSC
DTV-standard. The RF-tuner demodulates the 8-VSB signal (into an
MPEG-2 transport stream), then the card's hardware decodes the
audio (Dolby AC-3) and video (MPEG-2) without any extra help from
the CPU.

Oh well, the CPU/Windows application handles the user-interface
(channel selection, program selection, PSIP/PSAT parsing,
unattended recording, etc.)

Only a few are still made and supported in the PC market. the MyHD
MDP-120, and the AccessDTV (http://www.digitalconnection.com
sells both.)

....

If you're running under Windows 2000/XP, then you could get one
of the 'tuner-only' HDTV-cards (HDTV wonder, Fusion III.) These
use your VGA'cards video-engine to accelerate playback. Any
ATI Radeon 9000 (or higher), or a Geforce 5200 or higher offers
a lot of MPEG-2 hardware acceleration.