Mpeg 4 decoder card

Hello all

I have a dated mini-itx mobo (epia 800) that i intended to use as a media center pc for playing dvd's and playing back movie files downloaded...erm borrowed from a friend.

After succesfully loading MCE and doing updates and such, I found that the proc on the board just doesnt have the power to playback the video files and even skips around on dvd playback. The cpu maxes out to 100%. The video files I believe are divx among others. As a preemptive measure, I will add that I have the necessary codecs installed and the movies play without a problem on other (more powerful) pc's in my home.

I pretty much gave up on the idea of using the mobo for a media center until i came across an article here - http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/xcard/ - that showed the use of a hardware decoder for mpeg4 that drastically cut the cpu utilization on playback of dvd's and avi's. The problem is the "xcard" that is being reviewed can no longer be found or bought.

It would appear that there was at one time a hardware solution to my problem and in searching for alternatives to the xcard, I have come across others that only offer mpeg2 decoding or support mpeg4 encoding only. There are external alternatives out there i know, but I am looking for an internal card to occupy the available pci slot.

Has anyone had a similar problem and found an adequate resolution or could anyone recomend an alternative similar to the xcard that would fulfill my needs?

Many thanks in advance to all who reply.