Subject: Re: [vdr] mini-PCI card suggestion

[Simon Baxter]

>> This probably isn't the group for this, as I'm running XV and VDR really
>> shines with FF DVB cards.
>> Looks like there's very few options for s-video TV-OUT XV support in 
>> Linux.
>> I've searched the Matrox, Savage and NVIDIA - nothing has particularly 
>> good
>> support for accelerated s-video.  I am running another VDR machine with 
>> an
>> S3 Unichrome 2D/3D chipset and s-video - works really well!
>> This new VDR box is low-rise though, so I need a small card....
>
> Are you looking for a "mini-PCI" card, a low-profile PCI or low-profile
> AGP?  A mini-PCI card usually goes in a laptop or a very tiny appliance.

Sorry, I guess I'm mixing my technologies.  I'm just looking for a 
low-profile AGP

> I'm not sure where you're getting the "no on makes good accelerated
> s-video for Linux", any new ATI or nVidia card has TV-out support in Linux
> (by using the vendors proprietary driver).

In my searching, on the MythTV support pages etc, the support for XvMC and 
s-video seemed very poor.  I was searching Matrox, nVidia & Savage.

> For an AGP/PCI card, something based on the nVidia MX-4000 or FX5200
> should be cheap and low-profile.
>
> Here's a link to a low-profile AGP card:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127128
>
> And here's a link to a low-profile PCI card:
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814139174

These look ideal

> You aren't very specific by "hardware acceleration" -- do you mean MPEG2
> decoding, or something else?  Regardless, any newish nVidia card (> Ti4xxx
> series), like the MX4000, supports XvMC which allows the video card's GPU
> to perform the MPEG-2 decoding.  Xine/xinelibouput supports XvMC as an
> output method, so you could get fully hardware accelerated video decoding.

Yes, just MPEG decoding for use with Xine/xineliboutput

> I am using an nVidia 6200TC with VDR and softdevice and my TV-out (via
> s-video), without any XvMC my CPU utilization when playing StandardDef
> content is acceptable, <30% on a Pentium-M running at 800 MHz.
>
> I've done testing with XvMC on the 6200TC playing back a 1080i stream (via
> mplayer) and I get CPU utilization < 10%...that's pretty low to me.

Thanks for your help