Can someone explain

[Guest]

This decoder part bit?

I thought you plugged the DVD into your video card and that was that..

Do you need a seperate PCI card or something? Can someone clarify the difference, which is better, etc?

 

[Arrow]

Well, basically, the decoder will take some of the stress in decoding a DVD for your system. Video cards nowadays have decoding built in. If you have a slow CPU, you'd probably want a decoder card - it will help the DVD play smoother. Most recent PCs will not need a decoder card,a s their hardware is often powerful enough to do it.

Rob
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[peteb]

Right.

DVD plaer connections basically = CD player connections. You don't plug the DVD into the Video Card.

What'll happen is this - the DVD player is enabled to read those nice disc formats of 5.4GB+ - handy for MPEG2. Your system, via a DVD decoing application (such as WinDVD or PowerDVD) will then decode the DVD file from the player, perform the MPEG2 (in CPU) decoding and display the results on your screen.

The latter part - MPEG2 decodong can be heavy for a low end system, or a system busy doing other things. There are 'DVD' - i.e. MPEG2 hardware decoder cards that will offload this task, or your video card may already be hardware accelerated for MPEG2 decode. (have to read the box).

Without the DVD player software your system will be going nowhere - and the hardware card is totally optional depending on your system spec. I uses a 733PIII and that'll play fullscreen DVDs no problems.

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