MJR wrote:
Video cards that play DVDs? Actually the card? Not use a program? I think you get the idea.
Well - maybe I've been labouring under a misapprehension all this time, but I've seen advertised some cards, such as this one: "GeForce2 MX400 AGP 64MB Graphics Accelerator - (blah, blah) Allows full-screen, full-frame DVD playback." Or there's this: "nVIDIA TNT2 M64 Graphic Accelerators - (blah, blah again) DVD playback using Power DVDXP4.0 with RCA composite and S-VHS outputs"
I don't know whether quoting those two makes it any clearer why I've been asking my question, or whether I'm barking up some sort of a wrong tree. I assumed that proper DVD decoding (whatever that might be) needed more power than a CPU could give and so some sort of purpose-made hardware did the decoding.
But why would a card's spec specifically talk about allowing full-screen DVD playback if the type of card had no bearing on this????
From http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- "If you can't get an answer, please don't take it personally that we don't feel we can help you. Soemtimes the members of the asked group may simply not know the answer. No response is not the same as being ignored"
Thanks for the reference - I'll go and find it next time I'm connected.
Clearly, though, there have been (infinitely) more answers since I made my comment than before (ratio = 6:0) so I'm not sure that the sentence you quoted above explains why I didn't get a response before.
Cheers,
Gerald.
On 2003-12-02 17:21:16 +0000 Edenyard mail@edenyard.co.uk wrote:
I assumed that proper DVD decoding (whatever that might be) needed more power than a CPU could give and so some sort of purpose-made hardware did the decoding.
I'm sure that I've seen machines without special video hardware doing DVD decoding, but presumably these things can help somehow. I think the full-screen playback is controlled by some X extensions, so you'll need something with a driver that supports them (Is that RENDER or DRI?). Maybe someone with more experience of DVDs can wade in here: anyone built a custom DVD player?
Clearly, though, there have been (infinitely) more answers since I made my comment than before (ratio = 6:0) so I'm not sure that the sentence you quoted above explains why I didn't get a response before.
Me neither, but chances are at least some were as confused as me about the DVD bit. Probably we're a little too cautious about giving incomplete answers.
On Wednesday 03 December 2003 10:58, MJ Ray wrote:
I'm sure that I've seen machines without special video hardware doing DVD decoding, but presumably these things can help somehow. I think the full-screen playback is controlled by some X extensions, so you'll need something with a driver that supports them (Is that RENDER or DRI?). Maybe someone with more experience of DVDs can wade in here: anyone built a custom DVD player?
My 1Ghz Athlon can do fullscreen dvd decoding without any DVD specific hardware, I think I was using Xv, but I've just discovered the hard way that xine's start up options are persistent, so I am not sure now.
Anyway Xv seems to work well, sdl worked too but not in fullscreen. Whether any of these are dependant on DRI, I don't know.
My trusty PIII 500 at a previous job could do it too although that, unlike the Athlon here was unable to do anything else at the same time. This machine remains surprisingly responsive.
I used to use a Hollywood card in preference to a Graphics card with a TV out simply because at the time I hadn't found a card with a good enough Composite output (a lot of them are a bit ropey) But for any reasonably powerfull machine I would say that DVD playback hardware/accelerators are not a requirement. Unless you insist on doing it with Windows XP and the useless crop of Software DVD playback utilities available for Win32.
(I find it ironic that my 1Ghz Linux Desktop can play back a DVD and have a remote VNC session open surfing the web, checking email etc, yet my 2Ghz Windows Laptop cannot playback a DVD without stuttering.)
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Edenyard -
MJ Ray -
Wayne Stallwood