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MPEG-4 Hardware Decoder For $99

Posted by timothy on from the remote-control-included dept.

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.

6 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. but the drivers? by uiil · · Score: 5, Informative

    Coming from sigma designs, you can expect them to get around to releasing the drivers for it in 2008.

  2. Re:DivX codec changes by DrSbaitso · · Score: 5, Informative

    from the link:

    "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.

    --
    beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
  3. I have this. by Sludge · · 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.

  4. Real use -- TV out, but DXR3 does it on Linux! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 : )

  5. Nice chip by mocm · · Score: 5, Informative

    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***
  6. Can see the use of this... by Bollie · · Score: 4, Informative

    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!