Mpeg Decoder

[Dross]

What's a good Hardware Mpeg decoder for watching DVDs? I'm browsing Pricewatch and I see a few but I'm clueless on what's good. ;p..

BTW I did a search on mpeg decoder, DVD hardware, DVD decoder and the last two gave errors. The search here at neowin has been flakey lately. Anyway any help would be appreciated!

[bfoos]

I think that software decoders are best, and that among them, Windvd, and Powerdvd are the best.

[Dross]

Well on my Geforce 2 MX 400 with Win DVD it's all grainy and pixeled. Compared to watching on just a mere PS2 the quality is a LOT better. I thought hardware decoding would make it look like watching DVDs on the TV. Am I misinformed? If so I'm wondering why it looks like I'm watching a really badly encoded Div X while watching the New 'Army of Darkness: Directors Cut'.

[username]

  Quote

Originally posted by Dross

Well on my Geforce 2 MX 400 with Win DVD it's all grainy and pixeled. Compared to watching on just a mere PS2 the quality is a LOT better. I thought hardware decoding would make it look like watching DVDs on the TV. Am I misinformed? If so I'm wondering why it looks like I'm watching a really badly encoded Div X while watching the New 'Army of Darkness: Directors Cut'.

probably because your monitor it 3X the resolution as playing something through your PS2 on a TV. Lower your resolution down to 640x480 (same as max reg TV resolutions) when watching DVDs, that will help, it has nothing to do with software/hardware decoding

is army of darkness the one where that tree raps up the girl and you know...?

[bfoos]

I think that your video card is the culprit in this situation. I run a Geforce 2 GTS/Pro, and dvd's look smooth using software decoders.

[liar2]

I think the answer to that is that the tv does a lot of blurring. Watching a movie on your computer is pixelated because the monitor doesn't blur as well as the tv screen does. The PS2 uses the tv for that. I'm pretty sure that's the case. I wouldn't really look for any special hardware that does that. Just try using s-video out and hooking it up to your tv and see what happens.

[Dross]

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Originally posted by username

probably because your monitor it 3X the resolution as playing something through your PS2 on a TV. Lower your resolution down to 640x480 (same as max reg TV resolutions) when watching DVDs, that will help, it has nothing to do with software/hardware decoding

is army of darkness the one where that tree raps up the girl and you know...?

I was wondering about that ;p I'll maybe try that..

My res only goes down to 800 x 600 LOL

I'd rather not mess up my icons and other display configs everytime I want to watch a movie. Uhm maybe it's the MX line of cards.. The rest of my rig is higher up on the scale, maybe it's time for a new Vid card.

Army of Darkness with tree raps up girl? HUH? No this is Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness. A classic IMO :evil:

[Dross]

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Originally posted by Jaded1

I think that your video card is the culprit in this situation. I run a Geforce 2 GTS/Pro, and dvd's look smooth using software decoders.

What do you mean smooth? It's not choppy, I mean it's running good FPS, but it's pixeled. I guess this is because I run in a very high desktop res?

[Dross]

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Originally posted by liar2

I think the answer to that is that the tv does a lot of blurring. Watching a movie on your computer is pixelated because the monitor doesn't blur as well as the tv screen does. The PS2 uses the tv for that. I'm pretty sure that's the case. I wouldn't really look for any special hardware that does that. Just try using s-video out and hooking it up to your tv and see what happens.

I think you're right. The thing is my crappy Geforce 2 MX doens't have a TV out.. I thought it did, but I don't see any outlets.

I found this decoder that does Mpeg 4 and Div X and also allows hookup to a TV

http://www6.tomshardware.com/video/02q2/02...dated_computers

I dunno, it still seems to me that it looks A LOT better on TV. Not blurred or anything.

[username]

  Quote

Originally posted by Dross

Army of Darkness with tree raps up girl? HUH? No this is Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness. A classic IMO

lol yeah, i has some friends that loved that moview, anyways, its because of the higher resolutions of computer monitors, hell, DVDs are encoded at 704x576 so anything higher than that is stretching those pixels. If you have an mpeg1 (VCD) or SVCD in mpeg2, those are encoded at 352 x 240, 480 x 480, so you can see the pixel problem

[badall]

theres the hollywood plus but there a bit slow on driver updates but the company realmagic who make the hollywood plus also make a new card that does hardware mpeg 4 (divx) decodeing aswell it's called the xcard or sumin also the tv out funtion on the realmagics is alot better picture quality than the tv out of most grafix cards

[Roger H. Veteran]

the drivers they have now work fine and so did every other one the created. I had one and i sold it. I only have a Creative PC-INLAY DVD Decoder now for sale and they didn't even realease newer drivers cuz they discontinued it but it works fine.

I had a Geforce2 MX 200 and dvds play fine. It's not the card cuz i can play dvds on a 2MB Trident card just the same.... The GF2 is waay more powerful than that. A Hardware decoder wouldn't help much since they all use OVERLAY so if it's pixelated now it would be then too. The DVD decoder only takes the load off your CPU but that's all...

CPUs over 600mhz are more than capable of running DVDs better than most hardware decoders. I actually took out my RealMagic decoder when i got a 750Mhz AMD Athlon and using WinDVD was just as clear if not better. More than likely it's your display drivers (try official ones from nVidia) or maybe it's your software decoder. Which one are you using? Don't turn on "Hardware Motion Compensation" in WinDVD or PowerDVD since full software decoding is smoother and causes less problems from interaction with the GPU.

[Dross]

  Quote

Originally posted by badall

theres the hollywood plus but there a bit slow on driver updates but the company realmagic who make the hollywood plus also make a new card that does hardware mpeg 4 (divx) decodeing aswell it's called the xcard or sumin also the tv out funtion on the realmagics is alot better picture quality than the tv out of most grafix cards

Thanks for the tip :)

[Dross]

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Originally posted by SHoTTa35

the drivers they have now work fine and so did every other one the created. I had one and i sold it. I only have a Creative PC-INLAY DVD Decoder now for sale and they didn't even realease newer drivers cuz they discontinued it but it works fine.

I had a Geforce2 MX 200 and dvds play fine. It's not the card cuz i can play dvds on a 2MB Trident card just the same.... The GF2 is waay more powerful than that. A Hardware decoder wouldn't help much since they all use OVERLAY so if it's pixelated now it would be then too. The DVD decoder only takes the load off your CPU but that's all...

CPUs over 600mhz are more than capable of running DVDs better than most hardware decoders. I actually took out my RealMagic decoder when i got a 750Mhz AMD Athlon and using WinDVD was just as clear if not better. More than likely it's your display drivers (try official ones from nVidia) or maybe it's your software decoder. Which one are you using? Don't turn on "Hardware Motion Compensation" in WinDVD or PowerDVD since full software decoding is smoother and causes less problems from interaction with the GPU.

I understood all of that, but for some reason I thought it would improve the quality of the picture using hardware.

I have a 1500 amd so that isn't the problem

I'm using Nvidia 30.30

I'm using Win DVD and none of those options are ticked.

I notice like titles of movies are really pixelated and noticable, like they are mpegs. I know DVDs are mpegs, but I know they are first generation mpegs too. I guess I'm picky, but playing on a friends big screen TV somehow looks, not just a bit, but A LOT better than my 19 inch monitor. I do run in high res and I know this is why.