Recommendation for DVD Decoder Card

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Guest

Guest
I'm building a new system and I'm trying to figure out what the best decoder card is. I've looked all over the Internet and maximum PC and can't get any current recommendations. I know most people use their processor and video card, but I want to take away any unnecessary CPU/video card load. I have no idea what to get. I'd heard some good things about the Hollywood Magic card but that was last year. Any ideas. Price isn't a factor as long as it's within $350.
 

Arrow

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Dec 31, 2007
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The Hollywood Magic is a good card for it's price... but if you're looking for something "this year-ish," I'm not sure what I can recommend to you.

Rob
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G

Guest

Guest
Your question seems a little strange to me. I reason why I want to take the load off my cpu and video card is because I want to build the fastest computer within my budget. My budget is quite large so I am looking into hardware decoding over software. I know that most new video cards do a great job decoding but decoding cards do a better job and allow for your system to gain in performance. These may be minor effects of software vs hardware but I still want hardware decoding no matter how minor the effects are on my system. Its just better.
 

Toejam31

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Dec 31, 2007
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The Hollywood Plus is an excellent card. The new beta DVD software that comes with the card produces beautiful playback, however ... it functions much better in Windows 2000 than in Win9x, in my experience.

<A HREF="http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/hollywood_plus.htm" target="_new">http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/hollywood_plus.htm</A>

Toejam31

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FatBurger

Illustrious
The thing is though, unless you pay money for every instruction that goes through your CPU or video card, what's the point?
Are you going to watch a DVD on one monitor and play a game on the other? That's the only reason you'd want a decoder card.

I watch DVDs on my 1.33/266 & GF2MX with no problems. No decoder card here.

<font color=green>I post so you don't have to!
9/11 - RIP</font color=green>
 
G

Guest

Guest
To answer your question, yes I probably will watch a movie and do other things at the same time in the background, such as: burning CDs/DVDs and downloading from the internet. Added CPU bandwidth may be needed. Plus as more programs are converted to DVDs a decoder card will be more useful since todays and tomarrows games will require a great deal of power from the GPU & CPU. I'm simply looking into the future. Plus if I can get the best then why shouldn't I do it. The problem is that I'm not sure I know what the best decoder card is anymore. I don't think you do either or would have answered my question a long time ago. I don't blame you, not much emphesis is put on decoder cards anymore.
 
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Guest

Guest
My experience with creative DVD kits isn't very good. With my old system, which I had a number of years, I had a creative PC DVD kit 5x w/ Dxr2 and it sucked. The DVD player worked fine and the picture looked good when I output it to my TV but the decoder card [-peep-] up my computer display. It made everything really dark, so dark that you couldn't play dark games like quake or quake 2. Plus it made text blurry and hard to read. Of course I had to have a card from STB who wasn't a company anymore. To keep my card compatible with current games & DX I had to use nvidia's reference drivers since STB wasn't making new drivers. I also tried a few display tweaking progs but they didn't work either. This is why I won’t buy a Creative DVD kit anymore even though I'm sure that they have made great improvements in their DVD products.
 

Oni

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I have a creative Labs dx-r3 decoder card and its VERY nice. The video out to TV is excelent too if you have long video and audio cables to transfer the signals. I havn't had much win2k experience with the card though, and I've heard it doesn't work, but in windows 98 its awesome, the one thing I noticed is the loop back cable does something to the video and if you plug your monitor into your decoder card, and then into your video card you will notice a slight difference in the colors, besides that I like my card a lot. Its migrated from my Pentium 3 450, to a 700 MHz AMD Thunderbird to my current 1.4 GHz Thunderbird.
Its cheap too, you can buy it WITH a dvd drive for under $180 I believe.
 

AMD_Man

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Jul 3, 2001
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Why do you need a decoder card? I multitask when watching DVDs on my Athlon when I only have a GeForce2! Get a Radeon, and you won't notice any slow downs while playing DVDs and multitasking.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor
 

AMD_cErTiFiEd

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Jul 11, 2001
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It better play nice considering the Creative decoder card uses the realmagic chip dxr2=ventura dxr3=hollywood. I love mine with great dolby digital and dts with a remote control. I use mine so I can pipe it out to my home theatre and still play games online. And it works perfect in Windows XP

Blame the newbies not the technology
 

Helpmostimes

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Feb 20, 2001
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seems too many people try to hard to get DVD to work..Too many ?,s and even more answers.But not really any good ones.Ive been in toms web site for about a year,,welll less but its just the case...Im using a AMD 1200,256 ram,16x Pioneer DVD..Slot drive....Trays suck...I am using windvd with the DTS encoder..It runs really well...By the way..I have a voodoo5 Overclocked to 380.No skips.Even in Q3 arena.Seems people are bent on the the stuff that is new..But dont look at the stuff that works..From reading posts,seems the best and the baddest,does not seem that way.Ive been building my own for abuot 6 years. I stay with the basics,and read the manual.It works.Just find a systom that you can play with..Find what works for you..Besides..all are not equell..If you follow and build one like someone elses,does not mean it will be the same.