DVD drives, and decoding???

[KennyG]

I purchased my HTPC used, and it's working very well, however, it has a pioneer slot loading DVD drive, and I hate it!!
I'm kinda old school that way, I don't like anything touching the read side of my discs.
I had decided on the ASUS drive because of it's vibration dampening suspension...however once I got in the store, one of the salesman was trying to steer me to the Creative Labs "encore", which has a hardware decoding card as part of the package. My system uses an Elsa Gladiac GTS2 card and a 733mhz cpu.
Will hardware decoding be of any benefit to this HTPC, or is it better to stay with what I've got and just replace the drive?

[JonMarsh]

Hi Kenny,
The "decoder" card is a Hollywood Plus OEM'd to Creative. It uses a pass through cable, and does a chroma key overlay to insert the picture. They have decent S-Video output, but the RGB output it kind of funky, has some jitter/noise at high resolutions, and overlay controls aren't too good. It's a good solution for a low end PC, because most of the work is done in hardware. Not the board to use in your setup, though.

Regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[KennyG]

Jon, thank you very much, I thoughts were "why mess with a good thing"...but it's always nice to hear from the person who has dealt with this kind of gear before.
See ya, gotta go to the store!!! Kenny

[rlabarge]

A 733 Mhz CPU will do a pretty good job of software only decoding for DVD titles.

I always think it is best to have an add-in hardware decoder like the Creative Labs Encore or the Sigma Designs Hollywood + boards (actually the same card sold by two vendors). With an add in card you can run the video out to your HT monitor as well as run the digital audio out to your surround sound decoder.




Ralph LaBarge
Managing Partner, Alpha DVD
Author, "DVD Authoring & Production"
rlabarge@alphadvd.com

[KennyG]

Installing this ASUS drive set off a chain of events, over a 3 day period, I had a tech spend an hour on it, had to install winDVD because it kept stuttering and locking up with powerDVD??? I took it home, it was now doing different things, he spent another hour,or more on it.
Color, and shadings changed on my screen, at first I thought it was the projector, and of coarse I started messin' with some things I shouldn't have been messin' with.(Black Bias and Drive control)
We did a Nuke and Pave, reinstalled everything, including the old DVD drive, and after three hours of battling software, and recalibrating the projector, I'm ready to go enjoy it!!! Next week I'm going to try Acer's DVD drive, it comes with powerDVD, so it should work.
See Ya Kenny

[JonMarsh]

My newest PC is built with an ACER drive; it works fine, but I didn't use the POWER DVD that came with it. I've used the same drive and software combo for a couple of other friends, for DVD playback; they've been quite happy so far. You may want to check the options and play with hardware motion compensation turned off; it usually looks better on a fast PC in that mode. See if you see a difference.

Regards

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....