Hi

To my surprise I got a DVB-C card working with almost nothing to do. But now for watching HDTV programms my system is too slow. Has someone experience with the H.264 decoder in AGP graphic cards? I have a GeForce 6800, but it doesn't have that capability. Nvidia lists the 6200 as supporting H.264, which surprises me. Can someone confirm this cheap card can significantly reduce CPU load when playing H.264 streams?

To sum up:
I'm looking for a graphic card with the following features:

- AGP interface
- DVI connector
- Mpeg2 and H.264 hardware decoder
- Must work under Linux and support 3d desktop features (Compiz)
- Should be cheap
- Can require proprietary drivers (but above must be met)
- If possible passively cooled

Any suggestions or inputs?

The MPEG-2 and H.264 decoding support is only done in Windows. If the nVidia's drivers includes this support, mplayer and other video players also have to provide support for it.

On my Pentium 4 2 GHz (Northwood core) with a GeForceFX 5700 Ultra, it can decode a 720p Quicktime file. Playing back a 1080p can not be done fluidly because it needs more processing power. I use OpenGL as the video output device in mplayer.

In order to playback HD, you will need to upgrade your computer that contains a 3 GHz or faster processor.

Sure there is XvMC which helps to provide some hardware video decoding support. I tried it and it is unstable.

Thanks. So no high definition for me
Oh, well, I think I could record and convert to mpeg2, but not even sure it would work then.

> I think I could record and convert to mpeg2,
> but not even sure it would work then

It would. I used to do this with bluray 1080p files, transcoded down to 720p using mencoder. But now I run my Q6600 at 3Ghz and it works most of the time decoding 1080p. 3.2Ghz would solve the problem I think.