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MPEG-4 Hardware Decoder For $99
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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DivX codec changes so frequently, what are you gona do, flash your card every month?
Remember when the brand spank'n new pentiums and 486s offered hardware mpeg-decoding? Those were the days...
scott
But how long until there are Linux drivers?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Hmm, how long until theres a new codec (or modification) that makes it redundant? Just a question.
Coming from sigma designs, you can expect them to get around to releasing the drivers for it in 2008.
My old K6-2 decoded divx fine, why do we need specialized hardware?
Free software implementations of the MPEG standard (2,4) legally cannot be done because the MPEG standard is full of patents, usually requiring payment of licensing fees.. If hardware vendors implement MPEG on hardware, and open the specifications for it's hardware, it is possible to have 100% legal playback of these media on 100% free software systems.
MPEG-4 for older PCs
. To ensure that just about any Divx film can be played back without image dropouts, you should use at least an AMD Athlon with 800 MHz plus or an Intel Pentium III/733.
um right. i have a p2/500 and i can run all divx moviews flawlesly, so the "divx for old pcs" is kind of moot, isnt it?
It looks like a cool gadget none the less, but personally im more concerned by the direction the Divx project is going than what cool stuff i can do with it.
This sig was cut off by the sla
can it process my SETI@home work units?
Not trolling. Just pointing out that not all that glitters is worth $99.
I mean sure I guess now you could maybe decode divx on a 486 or something, but otherwise I can't see what the point is. It's not like with graphics cards where the cpu cycles saved are desperately needed elsewhere within the same process (the game). What, if anything, does anyone think this card's selling points would be? Maybe if someone integrated this technology into pre-existing graphics or dvd-decoder cards. . .
This card has been out for a while. Nothing new... Only thing that is new is that the DivX codec keep changing every 3 months...
No, you're a geek with too much time.
A very, very volatile combination.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
All you have to do is flip a diode and this thing becomes the world's fastest DivX encoder.
This decodes DVD and Circuit city DivX not the DivX that you movie ppl download from p2p networks :) Okay. Just to let you folks who didnt read the article know.
I wouldn't mind being flashed every month.
Actually, I wouldn't even mind being flashed every day.
My Pentium II (366)mhz costs == 10 bucks can decode it too =) Oh this is circuit city divx and dvd (nothing new then). You need a special drive for the circuit city divx btw.
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.
what the hell are you gonna use the cpu cycles for?
CPUs are getting faster and faster, and since processor intensive tasks are getting exported to cards what the hell do you need your cpu for.
If you are using that card that means that you are watching a movie so you are probably not doing anything else processor intensive.
I guess there are some porfessionals that need to do processor intensive tasks in the background but thats not true for most people.
I guess microsoft needs to work extra hard to ensure newer versions of windows soke up even moreprocessor power.
Is that better than real time? Why can't you guys do even a cursory spell check?
I don't know "a very, very volatile combination." Please rephrase.
I am a sentient ATM.
For $99 you can buy more memory and a decent video card that will benefit more than just one application.
My old computer is a Pentium II 233 w/196 MB SDRAM and 32MB video card. I have it hooked to my TV, and it plays DivX just fine.
Doesn't the MPEG-LA alliance expect a user to pay .25 cents per hour of play back?
The more I think about it, the more I wish MPEG4 would just die and something new and better would spawn from somewhere.
Sunny
This product is (right now) of little use, as linux support is not out there yet... But I am a little amused by the "need a 733+" idea of DiVX decoding! Xine (http://xine.sourceforge.net/ ) lets me decode fullscreen divx on a measley PII266, and with the addition of a Creative DXR3 (20-30 on Ebay), you can display anything that xine will decode onto a TV (s-video) through the card. New codec, no problem. The card simply outputs the xine-decoded information. Beautifully, I might add. And the card includes an S/PDIF coax output that functions nicely as /dev/dsp!
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 : )
I use a software called HHPLUS (http://www.hplus.hu) on my Duron 600MHz to decode DivX movies using my old SigmaDesign MPEG2 Decoder card (Hollywood+).
After comparing 100% software playing and "assisted " playing I can see a big difference. The H+ has been out for a while (cheap now!). I've decided to give it a second chance and use it in a Multimedia/PVR/MP3/Whatever station.
These cards are great, save for the fact that you can't pipe their output onto your monitor without using their vga pass-through cables. Real Magic cards simply lay the video image on top of the images your primary graphics card provides (that is, the image of your desktop, command line, etc), and for some reason they can't do this internally and instead use an unshielded vga cable--if anyone knows why I'd appreciate hearing about it.
The result is your video windows look great, but on a good monitor you see a lot of image degradation from the pass-through. Sigma Designs has used this poor design for a some time, at least since their first big dvd card.
This card also has spdif out and full support for AC3 (Dolby Digital) and DTS - it makes a great pc-dvd player and you can use something with as little grunt as a 180mhz Pentium Pro with 32Meg of Ram...
How fast exactly *is* reltime?
Would have been much more impressive to have a
pci card to encoding of analog/digital streams to divx:),mpeg4,whatever.
course a dual cpu system does that just fine now
once one gets the mess of software sorted out.
slashdot is trying for the Guinness Book of Really Stupid Spelling Errors
This decodes DVD and Circuit city DivX not the DivX that you movie ppl download from p2p networks :) Okay. Just to let you folks who didnt read the article know.
Which is why the article says this on the first page?:
"So what's the point in spending entire days downloading a long-awaited movie from the Internet, only to find you can't even play it properly?"
The em847x is a very nice chip and cries out for being used in STBs. It is the successor of the em8400 which was used in the netstream PCI cards and in some STBs and which provides a great MPG1/2 decoder with a very high quality TV picture. The great thing is that some of the em847x chips are pin compatible with the em8400, so that manufactures don't have to change their layout.
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).
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
So in other words, if Microsoft decides to try this angle in the hardware business, Richard M. Stallman will finally be able to try out Windows without offending his free software sensibilities.
It seems to me the real benefit of this.. is that we should see some consumer level devices playing divx soon.. ie next gen dvd player ..
Special deal on http://www.neowin.net/ for these
:)
I think they're going for $69
Get there fast cuz i think alot are taking this limited offer.
I think it would be much slicker to buy about 5 of these cards, stick them in a 19" rack with PCI backplane, and a single PIII SBC. stick it in the basement and forget about it.
well, after the software is written, that is.
Umm okay. I didn't expect nor desire to get modded up for pasting the link. I didn't expect to get modded down though. The whole reason I wrote the linked post was to specifically answer 3 people's questions. I figured if I wrote it once and pasted a link to the other two, it'd be better than re-posting what I originally wrote.
*Sigh* Oh well. I apologize for trying to answer people's questions.
"Derp de derp."
So does this mean that this will never work in Linux, or what?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Reasons why it might be useful to have a hardware MPEG-4 decoder:
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!
I would rather have a DIVX hardware ENcoder. Something that allows you to rip^H^H^H make safety copies of you DVD collection in less time.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
Me thinks we ought to find this troll and give him what he needs with a two by four...
I believe that as consumers find video and audio to be an increasingly important part of their computing experience, increasingly more operations will emmigrate from the main processors, onto auxiliary processors designed and programmed for specific purposes.
The good ol' SGI machines, for example, could have up to 12 "graphics-only" processors, if I remember correctly. Nowadays, as home computers are approaching (and perhaps even surpassing) the raw speed possible with the good ol' SGI machines, perhaps the idea of multiple specific-purpose processors and one (or more) general-purpose processors makes more sense.
Right now, these are available in the form of add-on PCI cards, but I believe that as standards converge and begin to stabilize, you'll find motherboards produced with an assortment of processors. For example, a motherboard might be produced with on-board processors for:
You might even put an implementation of X on a CPU specifically designed for the purpose, thereby offloading even more crap from the main processor. In other words, these specific-purpose processors could offload quite a bit of crap from the main processor, making your applications a lot more responsive, even while you've got a ton of really intensive stuff going on. And if you buy cheaper hardware that doesn't have one or more of these "standard" chips, it'll just happen in software, and slow down you system accordingly.
Oooooooh well.
(It could read CDs with 1 file burned on um).
That'd be good
What wouldn't be good (who needs it?) is this here card.
A beginners' guide to Portland, OR?
Apparently they weren't kidding.
Yup, you're totally screwed. :-P
here you go.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Do you even know what MPEG-4 is? Because it sure ain't CCs Divx, and you sure can't play CCs Divx discs in any drive I've ever seen for a computer. No, not even a DVD-ROM...
... In my experience, the loop connections between these decoder cards and the video card degrade the image quality so much that it's very hard on the eyes when you're NOT watching movies.
I had a hardware decoder to play DVDs on my old P2 400 years ago - it was great watching a film with only 5-10% CPU usage, but I had to keep switching the plugs around at the back to get real work done. If someone comes out with the same functionality with a card that communicates internally with the normal graphic card then I'm all for it, but I wouldn't buy another "pass through" solution...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
MPEG4 and DivX are not the same thing. The confusion arose (as all confusion does) because of Microsoft. Microsoft decided that they'd call some Windows Media Player format "MPEG-4" because they were confident that, as they had a monopoly on the OS market, their format (not compression scheme; just file format) would be chosen for the MPEG4 standard.
Instead, it turned out, the commitee working on MPEG4 chose the superior QuickTime format. DivX was based on the WiMP format. And now we have all this confusion.
MORAL: Don't count your chickens before they hatch
I built a dedicated box with a Celeron 333 and a Matrox G400 card with S-Video out just to stream my DiVx's to my TV set. Not so sure if testing this card on a Duron 600 constitutes a TRUE test of this cards capabilities.
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
"dangerous"
So if the market's still so healthy, why can't they sell parts?
I'll tell you my theory, which is just that - a theory. I don't have numbers to back this up, it's just based on what I perceive.
Gone are the days that we drool over our friend's new rig with oodles of megahertz and megabytes. A 400 MHz machine with 128 MB of RAM and a 15 GB hard drive will run pretty much anything a consumer requires, save for games. Before everybody you know had a computer, the machine you bought two years ago isn't fast enough now (meaning 2 years after you bought it) to run those productivity apps that really would make a difference in the way you work.
Add to that the fact that the low-end PC market has become hugely competitive, with computers down into the sub-$400 range. Profit margins are lowered, and while methods of reducing costs have been introduced, they haven't kept pace with the dropping "going rate" for an entry-level computer.
It used to be that $3000 would buy you a nice machine that would be a top performer, even in terms of 3D graphics. The Dell sitting next to me was about $3300 back in April '98, and it was definitely one of the nicer desktops available at the time. But to get similar performance relative to current technology now, I'd only need to spend about $2000. And there are lots of ways (including lots of companies) to arrive at that price.
Cause Tom doesnt test it. That's why. He has no idea what he's doing. I got one of these cards, it cant play ANY divx movies that I have. divx3 or 5 encoded. NADA.. I dunno what this card is good for. BTW I got it for 49 dollars (excluding tax/shipping) from LimeNet
From the article...
"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. "
wheee tommy found he can get a 10-12% cpu usage on a 650duron XP box by spending $99 on a card.
take a linux box, with framebuffer, and play a divx with mplayer. I *did*, it was a duron 700, I maxed out at 10% cpu usage. did I have to spend an extra $99 to do so? no.
More cards, more power, more heat.
Opps, there goes another slot, as well as all the driver issues involved in supporting it.
I'm not the only one to see this, but it deserves to be mentioned in any list: The card will quickly get out of date compared to the newest codecs. Updates, if they come at all, will likely be so slow to appear that most new videos will always be a version ahead of the card. And, of course, if the manufacturer goes out of business, or looses interest, or doesn't support the same favor of M$ software that you want to run, you have a hundred dollars worth of junk.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Hmm... I have a PII 450 that plays divx movies just fine. Even in Windoze Media Player!
In the spoon, there is no Soviet Russia!
I could watch those movies on my old 550Mhz machine. Today I've got an XP1800+ and that's not even close to top end. Does anyone even sell 500Mhz computers these days? How many people are watching divx movies on 500Mhz systems? How many of _those_ people have a hundred bucks to spare for a special video card?
Seems like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Nobody can sue you (and win) for writing computer programs that uses patents, because a patent must be novel. Mathematics and computer science are natural and therefore not novel.
Got friends?
What I want is a board for video capturing with a decent mpeg encoder chip on it. No a co-processor... a real mpeg encoder that does correct 3-2 pulldown detection, deinterlacing, etc. To get a really good quality video capture on a PC means capturing with any of the many video capture boards using a codec that either doesn't compress at all, or just compresses a little bit... then taking the .avi file and running it through an mpeg compressor that can do the de-interlacing, and whatnot... all to end up with a DVD spec mpeg file. Using a real-time codec usually means crummy quality.
What I want is a board that has an mpeg chip, similar to what might be in a standalone DVD recorder or a TiVo, that will take an incoming signal and spit out a good quality mpeg file in real time. Standalone DVD recorders can do it, so surely a PCI card can too.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Development of an MPEG4 chipset is very cool since it could be incorporated into PDA's and handheld movie players that wouldn't cost a fortune and feel like they just came out of a pizza oven.
I don't see a cooling system on this card, so these chips obviously don't run too hot.
Sorry, you're wrong. Wish you were right, though.
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.
Mpeg-4 is the format that DIVX movies use. Mpeg4 is the format developed by Mpeg-la that apple is includeing in quicktime 6. 2 totaly different standards that have similar names
wow... way harsh. chill out some.
...just how many empty PCI slots does the average user have available these days? Somethings gotta give...
You know I used to be in the game of having the latest and greatest, and now you can get a good box for about 600 bucks. with an audigy and geforce 3 128....
But my box is a celery 533, 392 megs of ram, a 64 megabyte radeon 7000, and onboard sound.
It runs window 2000 server, proxies 2 machines, and I can run Max Payne at 800x600 with great framerates. all this with AD, Information Server, all kicking in the background.
DIVX stuff runs just fine.
I do support from home so I need em in front of me to walk people through stuff.
The other two boxes are P// 350, one with Linux and one with XP. Developemental boxen.
So in my mind this card is worthless, I mean even my old celery plays divx fine.
I am quite proud of myself of not having done anything to it but add ram, change the graphic card and add a burner. Total of 200 bux in three years.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
*Shrug* so it was long, big deal. I explained myself in good humor.
:)
No harm has been done to my ego, sorry.
"Derp de derp."
I wish they'd make this an upgrade for their Hollywood+ DVD card - then I could watch the DVD's I've ripped to DivX on my TV ;o)
The Hollywood+ is much nicer than my All In Wonder for TV output, and it only cost me £35 three years ago.....
#include <sig.h>
DivX was only non-standard back when it was based on MS's pre-standardized MPEG-4 implementation. Modern DivX is just a particular MPEG-4 implementation. You have no idea what you're talking about.
"Why should I buy an add-in card?"
Uh, because most old systems are AT?
My dedicated video/mp3 box is a Pentium 233MMX w/ 128MB RAM in 72 pin SIMMs. I've gone through the trouble of painting the thing black, including the drive bezels, and I've loaded it up with what I wanted it to have (i.e., 100baseT ethernet, 20GB hard disk, SB AWE32 sound, etc), and the box itself was given to me by someone who didn't want it anymore. The DVD Decoder in it is a Sigma Labs Real Magic Hollywood Plus, and it outputs beautifully at 800x600 for my video projector. The computer itself plays mp3s without stuttering, and I don't really have any reason right now to replace it. It's also a desktop case, rather than a tower, and is the same size as all of my component AV equipment. There are ATX cases in that form factor, but the case alone will cost a hundred bucks, so I wouldn't be saving any money by upgrading the machine to a Duron 1.0GHz processor, new motherboard, new RAM, new sound card (mine's ISA), etc. And, I have the extra benefit of having a TV-Out on the current card (which would also be on the Real Magic X-Card) so I could send to something other than my projector, like a regular TV or VCR.
The "Duron Solution" is no solution at all.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
I'm not surprised it went over your head.
... is an MPEG4 hardware encoder for $99...
-- iCEBaLM
Anyway, wouldn't two dashes and a linebreak be a better way to clearly separate your sig from your posts? Its as close to standard as you can get.
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
wrong. MSFT's "pre-standardised MPEG-4" implementation was nothing of the sort. It was MSFT's PITCH for the simple profile video codec. It was rejected (despite being ather good), so MSFT started touting it around as MPEG-4 with the specific intention of confusing the market before MPEG-4 had been standardised. MPEG LA eventually took steps to end their shenanigans, but damage was done. DivX - right now- are doing the same shit with their awful version 5. if you're going to use a proprietry codec like DivX, why not use a good one like WinMedia 8, Real 9 or Sorenson Video 3.1?
That was classic intercourse!
- The solution involving the loop cable seems slightly antiquated, since conventional TV cards use a Conexant chip, which writes the data directly via the PCI bus into the graphics card's memory. The solution from Sigma Designs does offer one advantage, however - the PCI bus is not overloaded, thus avoiding problems, particularly with older computers. The manufacturer also cuts costs with this solution.
It's not "antiquated", it's "stupid". There has never been a technological reason for this. You don't have to use the PCI bus to write directly to the frame buffer. The "vga feature connector" has existed much longer than any local bus (even predating EISA.) The BS about bus saturation is laughable -- exactly what would be competing with the PCI transfer? As for costs, that is very much a proven lie! (They may claim that it's cheaper only because the technology is already developed and they won't have to devote developer time for a new driver interface. But don't let Sigma's marketing people fool you, the silicon for that hardware overlay is not cheap and certainly not free.)Anyone who has ever dealt with Sigma Designs, Real Magic, et. al. knows very well why the external, analog overlay is there. It's there for one almighty reason: DVD CCA licensing rules. There is zero chance the decoded content can be "stolen" in digital format. Rumor has it, even the external SDRAM on the card doesn't hold the decoded data during playback. Where I live, that's called "paranoid."
They tested this card out on Tomb Raider? My respect for Tom's Hardware just went down a notch or two.
Dyolf Knip
Yeah, just like how specific genes in DNA are natural and therefore not novel.
So tell me, exactly what DNA strands are all those biochemical companies patenting?
That's right - the ones inside your body, my body, and virtually every human being on the planet.
In the article, I mean. There's so much advertising dreck on Tom's Hardware now that it's too tough to read the articles. You get about half a screen worth of text and then have to click on a new page.
will it work in an Xbox?
Would this card also provide superior MPEG1 and MPEG2 quality vs the RMH+? I would like to purchase this card because my amd tbird 1.2 ghz is too slow. I have a RMH+ but I'm willing to replace it if need be. The tv out of my gf3 ti200 is nasty and makes me want to puke.
You have a way with words sir. I'm hoping you're unsigned or on an independent label, because I'd like to dedicate an Internet radio station to play this song nonstop.
I've seen a lot of people talking about how DIVX runs flawlessly on their computer. Apparetnly, they haven't installed Divx 5.x, which requires far more processing power than my P2-450 can handle.
To test this, go into the code settings, get the Divx 5.0.2 code, crank the quality to maximum and turn on the new features that they added(some include hardware-acceleration of some sort).
Then you'll see how slow your PC is.
The solution(for acceptable performance in most cases) is to put the Divx quality all the way down to minimum.
So there you go. Either I upgrade my CPU, get a new computer, or buy this card. I have 320 Megs of RAM if anyone cares.
Keep in mind that Dell conveniently forgot to ever update my BIOS so that it would detect Pentium III CPUs.
I'm too poor to afford a new PC. So it looks like this is the best option for me. Although the fact they're using VGA pass through sucks.
Lastly, DVD decoder cards offer much higher quality video than software decoders. It's probably due to some post-processing via the hardware.
Ok. I'm done.
Could you provide a link to "Doc Mercury's guide to DVD ripping"? Thanks.
I tell you, there is little else that I would rather do than watch a movie on my computer while I am downloading gigabytes of data, while also doing a "make buildworld". pretty cpu intensive stuff if you ask me...
why not use a good one like [...] Real 9
Parse error: You used "good" and "Real 9" in a way that I do not understand.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
I am no expert, but it seems that there are a whole lot of DivX and MPEG4-variants out there. Which ones does the card play, which ones will be developed in the future, and will the card play those? Do they provide specs for how to drive the card or do the users of Free operating systems have to reverse engineer those? Just some questions that popped up in my mind.
---
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will
be productive."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
What fraction of time could this be? I am not so sure!
Not just adequate, brilliant.
Thanks for the info. I still don't see how software is an actual "thing" since what really is going on is just a microprocessor executing instructions; couldn't someone just say they generated every possible set of CPU instructions and nullify any future patents?
Got friends?
Of course, I'm sure the price will drop to something like $20, and assume the real use of the technology is for living room equipment that is not yet out. I support that use, but a PCI card sound just stupid. Where is their market?
Neither mathematics, nor computer science (nor for that matter physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc...) are "Natural". There are patents in physics and chemistry, for sure, and patents on mathematical algorithms, too.
lol!!!
:)
No no, I'm not laughing at your insult. I'm laughing at how unoriginal it is. Did you seriously think that nobody's called me "NanoDick" or made fun of my mom? Heh. Thanks for the laugh, I needed it.
"Derp de derp."
This card quietly does what requires a fast CPU with a large power requirements and fans.
If you want to build a HTPC (Home-Theatre PC), what would you prefer:
1) A 1GHz+ CPU (AMD or Intel) with it's noisy fan and power supply, and a software DivX/DVD player - 30W-70W for the CPU alone.
2) A tiny 17cm x 17cm VIA EITX board with a fanless Eden 500MHz or 1GHz C3 CPU and a $99 hardware playback card? - 3W-9W for the CPU.
If you want to build the ultimete HTPC, you want NO fans or other noisy components. The use of EITX boards allows you to build a system with only passive cooling.
Unless, ofcourse, money is no objection - in this case, try:
http://www.signum-data.de/english/index_eng.htm
for an expensive but totally quiet system.
Udi
JTR
Vp3 - I have great hopes for this one...
Maybe it will lead the way for codecs. Being free, and hopefully pretty decent. Surely a standard free codec will lend itself to hardware implentations much easier...
But alas, we must wait... Why couldnt it have been done sooner...
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
Thanks, Tom.
Why not mention that not everybody has a motherboard with high CPU-RAM bandwidth between the processor and the memory?
In particular the 8500 chip. They have a reference DVD player design, which just needs an IDE DVD transport, front panel and PSU to be up and running. And it's tiny. I like reference designs; they make it much easier for small companies to put together interesting kit that the big guys don't see a big enough market for.
Correct me if i am wrong, but i thougt that the
1 /i ndex.html
card has linux support using the NetStream2000
driver which supports the em8470 decoding chip according to the changelog.
One other thing:
I always thougt reading news in english
is a guaranty for timely information.
tomshardware took nearly two month for the translation and now its news on slashdot.
http://www.de.tomshardware.com/video/02q2/02053
With current > 1.5GHz processors the overhead with Divx is a gnat's fart anyway! Yawn...
As far as I know the MPEG4 standard only specifies how it can be decoded. How to get from uncompressed data to a valid MPEG4 stream, is left as an exercise to the codec programmer. Not to mention how to find the best-looking stream of all the valid ones (for a given size, otherwise bigger is better). I don't think the playback filter has changed mucb, it's the encoding that is changing all the time, adding new features and settings to squeeze the most detail out of the input stream.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I have an old p2400 (...)
Yeah, I replaced that old crap with a p2533 too, 2.4GHz is just outdated. [TODO: Insert witty pun about a AMD at crawling clockspeeds still being faster]
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Personally I think that would be a lot more interesting... I'd like to have some nice little box running it. Even a mini-pc looks big compared to the DVD/mp3 players. Now a DVD/MP4 (or mpeg4 avi)/MP3 player, and I'm buying. My PC can run this without problems in software, so it really misses my marked. Or combine one of these chips with a DVR solution, would need hardware encoding and/or a network interface, but that'd also be great...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
for divx. It does okay on TV captures, but DVD rips are unwatchable.
A lot of you guys say that you can play divx movies on 500MHz boxes etc.
I'd just like to say that this is, at best, conditional.
I currently have a 1.2GHz t/bird, and I can site several examples where I get choppy playback. If, for example, I play my ST:TNG dvd rips, it gets choppy. Same for the Harry Potter rip (Reg.4 is 4:3). Both were done at full rez, and, relatively, high bitrates.
My point being that, the quality of the playback depends on how the movie was compressed in the first place. I'd LOVE to have a card like this, which would allow me to painlessly play my DivX flics in a window, while the cpu is free for me to do, for example, my LightWave work...
$99 tho stings...
Having dash dash space twice is really annoying. Why don't you just change your /. prefs?
I'm checking the sites almost daily to see if the 1 ghz Via C3 cpu has come out yet. It's been reviewed favorably, but has not hit the market yet.
Why? Because although it's kind of wimpy, it's cheap, it has the oomph to decode DVD in software, and IT CAN RUN WITHOUT A FAN.
Perfect for my own tv-companion PC project, building a TV PC inside the case of an APEX AD-1200 DVD player (the $65 one that Circuit City sells). The AD-1200 uses a standard IDE DVD drive, so all I have to do is get a C3 in there on a small motherboard along with a power supply and hard drive. Woo Hoo!
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
If you run Linux and your cpu can handle it then install the dxr3 driver from dxr3.sourceforge.net and use mplayer. Mplayer converts the DivX(or whatever format it can handle) to mpeg and sends to the card.
MPEG-4 was designed for software decode. If you want better quality, you should be using MPEG-2. My 1700xp drops frames every so often with MPEG-2, but that's why I have a hardware decoder. It makes no sense to decode MPEG-4 in hardware, unless you're trying to get a piss-poor system to render divx.
Gur svggrfg funyy fheivir lrg gur hasvg znl yvir. Jr zhfg ercrng.
For example, Winograd's algorithm allows you to compute the product of two complex numbers with three multiplies and five adds instead of the usual four and two. (This was used to save CPU cycles on machines where multiplies *used to be* expensive.) This is not patented, neither is it patentable; it is a tautology.
Inventing a new progam that does something interesting, in a novel way, with complex multiplies is patentable. (farfetched e.g.... Using complex math in a new and improved text-to-speech processing method would get through the USPTO.)
Disclaimer: I've only played movies on my work laptop, which is 1.1GHz, and haven't tried it on my 233 MHz PII at home, since I don't currently have a broadband connection and downloading by modem is too annoying :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'd pay good $$$ if the card would send the video to my graphics card over PCI, instead of the video feed-through mess.
If they can patent a gene, which is about as "natural" as you can get, they can patent a program. And who would argue that a gene is novel? After all, most everybody has all of them.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
The best use I can think of for something like this is multichannel video from one server-- if you can drop two or more of these cards in a mid-range box you could make all kinds fun multi-display distractions on the cheap.
Virtual fishtank on three walls of your cubicle! Whee!
I guess that means that Ogg Tarkin hardware is only 10 years away now!
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.