Recommendation on low profile video card

[smajor]

Hello, I just built my GBPVR system this weekend out of, more of less, spare components and a spare computer. It's destined to be the livingroom media center. The one thing I am disappointed with is that I have a VGA to S-Video adatper box and it is, well, crummy. Everything else works perfectly.

My PC is a 2.4GHz P4 Gateway with on-board Intel Video. The PCI slots are low profile. I can disable the internal video in BIOS, so there is no problem there.

Does anyone have any recommendations on a low profile video card with S-Video out? I saw several at Newegg.com as low as $26 for some with Nvidia chipsets.

[ShiningDragon]

Hm, Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150LP (LP=Low Profile)

[Maelwys]

I just finished doing a good bit of research on various video cards, and finally settled on the Leadtek Geforce 6200 which happens to come with a Low Profile version. It was pretty cheap, and I should have it in the next few days from Newegg. I can let you know how it performs once I've got it up and running.

Cheers,
Maelwys

[smajor]

Thanks for all your replies. I'm looking forward to hearing how the card works for you Maelwys! Does that have MP2 decoding on it? Off to Newegg to check for myself....

[Maelwys]

Trying to decipher the nVidia website is giving me a headache. But I think what they're saying is that all the 6xxx and 7xxx nVidia GPUs have the ability to do MPEG hardware decoding. Now whether that feature is crippled on the lower end cards (6200, 6600) I can't tell. The 6800 is the first one that I see actually makes mention of it. Of course, that might all be hype to get you to buy the cards, and the MPEG decoding is in fact based on the nVidia PureVideo decoder which you have to buy later.

It's all too confusing. Maybe someone else can set us straight.

[ddrawley]

Try this link for NVidia card features.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

Edit: Link above courtesy of Torque

[daphatty]

I just finished doing a good bit of research on various video cards, and finally settled on the Leadtek Geforce 6200 which happens to come with a Low Profile version. It was pretty cheap, and I should have it in the next few days from Newegg. I can let you know how it performs once I've got it up and running.

Cheers,
Maelwys

While I am not entirely certain that I bought the LeadTek brand, I have been running a low profile 6200 GPU for a quite some time now (actually, up until about 1 week ago.) I can tell you that it's a great GPU for an HTPC. I was even able to run WMVHD in AGP 4x mode!

My only complaint was the GPU fan. It easily doubled the noise coming out of my HTPC. I've since switched to a new case and am using a full sized video card (because I can) but I would recommend the 6200 to anyone with a low profile limitation. You may have to sacrifice db's for form factor but you certainly won't have to sacrifice performance.

[smajor]

Unfortunately, I hit a bit of a snag - my low profile computer I'm using has only a 180W Power Supply. Just about any video card I've found requires at least a 250W - even some PCI cards. Ug. The only one I've found so far that will work in spec is a ATi Raedon 7000. Does anyone use that with GB-PVR? How is it? Any other suggestions?

[ShiningDragon]

Let be said: The recommandations are often oversized. For testing purposes i used an AMD64 3.500+ with a GeForce 6600 GT, 2 HDD's and 2 Optical Drives with a 180W Power Supply (!)
You can even use a GeForce 5200/6200 or a Radeon 9200 with you 180W NT, if it's NOT a NoName Product of bad quality.

[smajor]

That makes me feel a little better. It's a Gateway with a Delta power supply. I got it for free so I can't complain, and it's been really good for GB-PVR. I was looking for S-Video out and then started looking at cards that support some sort of hardware MPEG (nVidia 5200's and up seem to support this fairly well with the reading I've done.)