MPEG-4 Hardware Decoder For $99 286
secondsun writes: "Tom's Hardware has the story. Apparently sigma designs has made a PCI card that decodes DiVX movies in reltime with little processor overhead." Under a hundred bucks, too.
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MPEG-4 Hardware Decoder For $99
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but the drivers? (Score:5, Informative)
Huh? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:DivX codec changes (Score:5, Informative)
"A distinction should be made regarding the different Divx codecs: only films using version 4.02 or higher of the Divx codec are supported by the Sigma Designs decoder. In our test field, the recently launched Divx 5.02 codec did not present any problems. "
So it sounds like there won't be any problems, if 4.00 is a minimum, rather than the latest supported version. I'm sure someone more acquainted with video encoding can explain why this is.
I have this. (Score:5, Informative)
I preordered one of these.
I use my software tv out for playing divx still. The drivers were shitty. (win2k fresh install) The only thing that they would have given me is the ability to fast forward and rewind with the remote control on my celeron 900.
It comes with it's own horribly skinned app, which crashes consistently on my computer.
It's still good for watching dvds. You could , in theory, throw this card into a machine that has no sound or tv out, and watch movies on your tv with it, since it provides high quality outs for both.
Note that the tv out only works for watching movies-- it's not an addon tv out card that'll let you use emulators and the like on your tv. For one of those, either get a scanline converter or tv out on your video card. I use a tnt2.
Real use -- TV out, but DXR3 does it on Linux! (Score:5, Informative)
Just a thought, as this is a linux-friendly solution, and is completely codec independent.
(caveat --> Using the DXR3 actually re-encodes the video stream into MPEG which the card can decode in hardware. Doing so is fast (using FAME), but takes a little more oompf that a pII266. 350-400 MHZ is more then enough, however, to decode DiVX, reencode at 100% MPEG, and still act as a fileserver : )
Nice chip (Score:5, Informative)
The only shortcomings are that it only provides overlay for the display on your PC, i.e. no DMA into the graphics memory like most TV capture cards. That's of course because of the paranoia of the DVD consortium.
There will probably also be Linux drivers, in the same fashion as for the em8400 (closed user space and with a pass through kernel module) which is unfortunate and ill designed. That means no video4linux or Linux DVB API support (although you can probably get the latter also closed source).
Can see the use of this... (Score:4, Informative)
1) Latency, latency, latency... You wouldn't want to miss 1 second of Baywatch just because you are compiling now, would you?
2) Embeddable solution... Look ma, no X! Just slap one of these puppies in and you can run your fav OS with high-quality TV out... assuming someone doesn't try to prevent drivers from being written for it...
3) Encoding possibility... Heck, if hardware decoders exist, hardware encoders can be built too! I just hope they wouldn't be too expensive.
4) Hiiiiiigh load... I can just see some bragging in the future: "Hey, I can play a DVD and write a CD and rip a CD and record a TV program all at once!"
5) The future... People, realise this, in a couple of years your PC architecture is going to be a CPU that delegates tasks to the dedicated sub-CPUs. Look at the 3D card industry if you want an example.
Things that might not be cool:
1) I don't need one! Nobody's going to buy this one because they can already play the stuff!.
2) Too expensive! $99 is a sizable chunk of salary where I come from. (Don't ask). I'd rather save that to invest in my next PC.
3) Not enough features! Bundled with VGA output for dual-screen, this would have been very, very useful. Bundled with TV capture, this would have been a shoe-in. Bundled with an encoder it would have been... glorious!
I'm not going to buy one. If they bring out an encoder, I will buy one!
Re:Why this is important for free software users.. (Score:2, Informative)
You can patent software. You can then sue people who make software which violates your patent. You can win.
It used to be the case that computer programs were legally considered similar to mathematical algorithms. Being abstract ideas, they can't be patented. (It's not that you can't patent math because no math ideas are novel; it's just that you can't patent math ideas because they're too abstract to be patented.)
Now, however, most governments (including USA) and other patent-granting authorities grant patents on software. You can't create unauthorized implementations of MPEG codecs without infringing on some valid, enforceable patents.
Sucks, but it's true. It would be *very* hard to argue that an implementation of an MPEG codec is somehow "natural" and not original. It would be slightly less difficult -- though futile, since this question has been decided by the courts already -- to argue that an MPEG implementation is just a reflection of abstract mathematical ideas, and is thus not patentable.
Re:Real-time DivX decoder for $37 (Score:3, Informative)
Go to www.JPG.com and download the PicVideo Motion JPEG codec. Then download Virtual Dub. Use VirtualDub to capture from your TV card to the Motion JPEG codec. If it works as well as you'd like, then pay the $19 and you'll get the coded that doesn't have the watermark on it.
You should be able to capture 2 hours of video, but I think it'll be expensive hard-disk wise. If you do at 320 by 240 (which is roughly what VHS is..) at the highest quality,it shouldn't be too bad. You could do it at 640 by 480, but I'm a little concerned that you'll have trouble with it. If memory serves, 640 by 480 will roughly mean 4 gigs an hour. (Potentially higher...)
Next you'll need a TV out. You can buy cheap-o video cards that do that. Play the video back at full screen and hit record on the VCR. Voila!
Not sure what you'll think of the quality. You'll definitely take a quality hit because VGA to NTSC isn't that good. But that's really up to your tastes.
Re:MPEG-4 =! MPEG4 (Score:1, Informative)
MPEG-LA also never developed anything they are just patent pool organisation representing all the ISO MPEG 1/2/4 patent holders, with the purpose of providing RAND patent licensing for the ISO MPEG standards (1, 2 & 4).
Re:What I want is a good/cheap mpeg ENcoder board (Score:3, Informative)
Go to www.pricewatch.com and search for PVR. The bottom entry will be for the Hauppauge PVR USB encoder at $186 after shipping. You can proably get it at Fry's for $200.
This should use the same encoder chip as their earlier PCI card, which is a fairly decent encoder based on the Visiontech KFir design. For comparison, the $750 Sigma Designs RealMagic DVR is based on the same chip design. I have used a (different) board based on this chip, and the quality is pretty good. Not as good as a $7000 encoder from Optivision or Minerva, but still good.
One of my coworkers bought the USB version of this and he did have to fiddle with the registry to get encoding rates not in the software menus, but otherwise he seemed happy with it.
Re:DivX codec changes (Score:2, Informative)
DivX 5 has advanced features such as QPel motion vectors and global motion compensation, which are not supported by this card either (since they're also extensions of MPEG4). So in my opinion it's quite useless -- if you can't use it to watch every movie you download from the net, then what good is it?