Freeview DVB-T compatible videocards.

Forums › Freeview (DVB-T/DVB-S) › Freeview DVB-T compatible videocards.

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30 posts

Geek

Reply # 123108 12-Apr-2008 20:05

8500GT it is then!

Rsmith

30 posts

Geek

Reply # 123424 14-Apr-2008 16:11

I have an 8800GTX which I'm not going to part with for some time. So does anyone know if it's posible to add in an 8400GS or similar and use this for the Purevideo HD 3 capability only?

My PC can decode TV3 HD ok, but i wouldnt call it super smooth, and it's using 40% CPU.

mentalinc

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Reply # 123433 14-Apr-2008 16:47

Rsmith: I have an 8800GTX which I'm not going to part with for some time. So does anyone know if it's posible to add in an 8400GS or similar and use this for the Purevideo HD 3 capability only?

My PC can decode TV3 HD ok, but i wouldnt call it super smooth, and it's using 40% CPU.

Have you enabled hardware acceleration in powerdvd? the GTX should cope no problems

CPU: Intel 3770k| RAM: F3-2400C10D-16GTX G.Skill Trident X |MB: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H-WB | GFX: GV-N660OC-2GD gv-n660oc-2gd GeForce GTX 660 | Monitor: Qnix 27" 2560x1440

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smbunn

105 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 1

Reply # 123526 14-Apr-2008 21:58

I am getting a ATI Radeon 2400 HD AGP card. $115 will be well spent if it works, which according to the specifications it should do. A few US reviews of it decoding H.264 said it was identical in speed to the HD 3850 and twice as fast as the Nvidia 8800GTS. It also said the noise reduction and de-interlacing were far superior to Nvidia.
I will let you know if this card does the trick.

Rsmith

30 posts

Geek

Reply # 123574 15-Apr-2008 07:41

The 8800GTX is Gen 1 Purevideo HD only, It isnt as good as i would have hoped.

joker97

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Reply # 123582 15-Apr-2008 07:53

what do you mean gen 1 only?

sbiddle

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Reply # 123585 15-Apr-2008 08:27

smbunn: I am getting a ATI Radeon 2400 HD AGP card. $115 will be well spent if it works, which according to the specifications it should do. A few US reviews of it decoding H.264 said it was identical in speed to the HD 3850 and twice as fast as the Nvidia 8800GTS. It also said the noise reduction and de-interlacing were far superior to Nvidia.
I will let you know if this card does the trick.

You're wasting your money.

ATI chipsets have known reported issues with DVB-T in New Zealand when it comes to decoding interlaced H.264 video and I've personally verifed the issues with 2400, 2600 and 3850 video cards in several different systems.

There also appear to be issues with hardware acceleration of H.264 content using AGP with varying reports on whether this does work succesfully or not.

askelon

460 posts

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Reply # 123587 15-Apr-2008 08:32

nVidia has 3 generations of H.264 hardware acceleration. The 7x00 series, 8800GTS/X are all Gen 1. It doesnt support Freeview hardware playback. Gen 2 was the earlier 8x00 cards which support playback with no problems, Gen 3 is the current equipment which should include all the newer 8x00 cards and the 9x00 cards.

Gen 1 will more or less require decoding via the CPU (approx 30-40% CPU Usage), Gen 2 & 3 are decoded via the graphics cards (approx 3-5% CPU Usage).

Cards that will work with no problems are as follows:

8400GS (not suitable for games though)
8500Gx
8600Gx
8800GT (not GTS/GTX)
9600Gx
9800Gx

mentalinc

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Reply # 123588 15-Apr-2008 08:37

I would have thought the GTX would have had enough raw power to cope.

Guess not

I have updated the front page based on the above info

CPU: Intel 3770k| RAM: F3-2400C10D-16GTX G.Skill Trident X |MB: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H-WB | GFX: GV-N660OC-2GD gv-n660oc-2gd GeForce GTX 660 | Monitor: Qnix 27" 2560x1440

Want to be with an awesome ISP? Want $20 credit too? Use this link to sign up to BigPipe.

smbunn

105 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 1

Reply # 124634 18-Apr-2008 09:20

Saphire Radeon 2400 HD Pro AGP was installed last night.

Note this is an AGP card and not the PCI-e version.
I had two stored .ts files, one from TV3 Bones a full HD at 1080i and this played perfectly under PowerDVD 8 Ultra at less than 5% CPU on my core 2 duo 1.6Ghz CPU. Info on the stream showed it was running at about 10MB/s with the AAC audio stream now supported by PowerDVD. The radeon drivers showed the GPU was running at about 40%.
I played back a TV One 720p stream also perfectly at 5% CPU and 24% GPU. It has a stream of about 6 MB/s.

Then tried Media Portal and it plays TV 3, C4 and Freeview | HD perfectly. It will not play TV One, TV 2, TV 6 or TV 7, just lots of green blocks and then my computer BSODs with "problem with driver" message and a reboot.

Could be a long weekend sorting this out!

smbunn

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Reply # 124863 18-Apr-2008 22:14

Fixed it!

A few choice registry changes and I have a perfectly running Saphire HD 2400 Pro AGP card running Media Portal on all DVB-T channels. CPU (Core 2 Duo 1.6Ghz) is running about 7% on TV3 1080i. Has been running now for about 4 hours and all channels working fine. Have been on "So you think you can dance Australia" and "Rove" both in 1080i HD format without the slightest shimmer, tear or problem of any kind. Rock solid. I have hardware de-interlacing working as well as hardware H.264 decoding using PowerDVD 7 Ultra codec.

Took a little work but I can now tell you that AGP and HD TV does work! And the card is only $120 inc GST from Computer Lounge.

If anyone wants details on the software versions, drivers and the important registry changes let me know and I will post them here.

thebrockoli

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 124992 19-Apr-2008 21:07

Took a little work but I can now tell you that AGP and HD TV does work! And the card is only $120 inc GST from Computer Lounge.

This is very tempting! Short of building a new HTPC ($$$), this is my only choice. That said, my AGP based system is running better than I could have imagined from what I've read here.

With a lowly Athlon 3200+ and a GeForce 6600GT, I can watch everything smoothly but for TV3 (which suffers from laggy blurry video). Every other channel plays smoothly with a clean install of Vista, MediaPortal, PowerDVD with acceleration, and EVR (much better than VMR9). It's good, but not quite good enough.

How loud is the card from Computer Lounge? That's my only concern.

smbunn

105 posts

Master Geek
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Reply # 124994 19-Apr-2008 21:18

I was surprised to see it had a fan. A number of the 2400 HD PCI cards don't have fans but this AGP card does. I haven't noticed any increase in noise, my HTPC is pretty quiet, so quiet you can easily hear the big hard disk drive fire up when it is needed. So the Sapphire isn't making any noise I can hear.

thebrockoli

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 124996 19-Apr-2008 21:24

Sounds great! Are you running Vista? Might have to spend some money next week

smbunn

105 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 1

Reply # 125175 20-Apr-2008 22:36

My set up is;
Vista Ultimate SP1
Hauppauge Nova-T-500
Media Portal 0.2.3.0 with SVN 18550
TV Engine dated 7th April 2008.
PowerDVD 7 Ultra.
Catalyst Control Centre 8.3 (DO NOT USE 8.4, it does not support the AGP version of the 2400 HD) A hot fix for this will be released soon but I found 8.3 was fine. It has a hot fix which you can download from the sapphire site at http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/support/drivers.php

I followed the cranznz guide on setting up Media Portral http://cranznz.googlepages.com/

I then applied the HD 2400 VBS script to change registry settings found at http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/

The biggest issue I faced was getting decent UHF signal. In the end my high powered UHF aerial, mast head powered amplifier and brand new RG6 cable with F connectors were useless, a pair of Dick Smith powered rabbit ears gave a much better signal (I am on the side of Mt Albert with an unobstructed view of Waitara TV tower).

Ignore the "signal strength" line when tuning Media Portal, the "signal quality" line is much more important. I had 50% strength and 100% quality.

I set hardware decoding in the "video" menu of the configuration page for PowerDVD and clicked on the "advanced" button on the video page to choose hardware de-interlacing. Still trying the five different modes of de-interlacing to see which is the best, they all seem to work OK, some better than others. Turning this option off is horrible, especially on TV3.
So good luck, I am just happy that a $120 card is quiet, and works well in AGP.

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