hardware decode question

[johnnylarne]

in the config menu there is a check box for "hardware decode"

at the moment I haven't got a card which supports this , but looking to get one ...

so if I get a new graphics card which has an embedded MPEG2 decoder, and click the above check box, the video output will be directed to the S-video port and the mpg file will playback with hardware assistance - right?

but I don't want to do this. my new TV has VGA and HDMI inputs, what I want to do is drive the new telly via the VGA connector, AND use the hardware MPEG decoder on the new card - why should I PAL-encode it and use the new telly's analogue SCART connector? -

am I missing something? are graphics cards only designed to use hardware MPEG decode with S-video, or is this a GBPVR "constraint"

[stefan]

GBPVR only supports (supported) two hardware decoders: the pvr350 and the xcard. None of these work well with gbpvr, though, so they are not recommended for this purpose.

What you are after is a graphics card with hardware acceleration. In this case you'd still choose "none - use software decoder", and then use a software decoder that can take advantage of your graphics card's hardware acceleration. That will work over vga and dvi/hdmi, too. Certain cards will not use hardware acceleration on the secondary output, though.

[herbs]

Do not use scart, use the vga or hdmi port. Modern graphic cards have accelerated mpeg2 feature not fully offloading, also some newer cards have mpeg4/h.264 accelerated support. In the old days hardware mpeg2 decoding i.e the sigma designs hollywood+ card etc was welcomed as next to no graphic card offered accelerated features for mpeg2 playback so it was do all by the cpu. This when a 400mhz P2 would be near top of the line, and just about played dvd files. Obviously in these days of 2GHz cpus which can cope with mpeg2 streams without too much issue hardware decode is a less of an issue. The only something like a epia 500 would need a little help a hardware decoder can provide.