Question: Hardware decoding of MPEG2 (SD) and MPEG4 (HD)
Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 2:19 am
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Quick question rundown (for those who hate reading long posts):
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1) If my graphics card supports hardware MPEG2/MPEG4 decoding then would it make any difference if my satellite card supported hardware decoding too?
2) Are there any cards on the market that support DVB-S, DVB-S2, MPEG2, MPEG4, and Turbo?
3) What is the difference between the DVB-S2 standard and turbo (Dish Network?) coded streams?
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Long version:
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I have spent many, many hours over the past week researching on this forum and other websites, but I still cannot find answers to all of my questions. I would like to setup my satellite feed on my PC. However, I do not want to worry about skipping playback or high CPU utilization, so I have decided to turn to hardware decoding. The problem is I cannot seem to find a decent satellite card that does the job right.
Ideally I would love to find a card that has a hardware decoder chip for standard definition television (DVB-S SDTV H.262 MPEG2) and high definition television (DVB-S2 HDTV H.264 MPEG4). I do not know if a card like this exists or not, but if it does then what is the brand and model of the card?
Since I am assuming that such a card does not exist, I have begun to look at Technotrend's S2-3200 Mpeg4 DVB-S2 PCI Satellite Tuner [TT-S2-3200]. This card seems to decode everything, but uses an MPEG2/MPEG4 software decoder instead of hardware. This brings me to my second question. If I use this card, then can I still do the hardware decoding with my graphics card? If so, are there any graphics cards that support both MPEG2 and MPEG4 decoding? If not, then at least MPEG2?
I have also seen a few people mention that some satellite's use turbo coding. As far as I can gather, turbo coding is an encoding scheme that was developed after DVB-S, but before DVB-S2. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) I have also read somewhere that turbo coding is used by Dish Network's satellites, so where can I find a card that supports turbo coding?
That just about covers everything that I could not find an answer to on my own. Answers to any or all of these questions would be greatly appreciated. And just in case I cannot get everything that I want, these are my priorities from highest to lowest:
1) Dish Network compatibility
2) Hardware decoding
3) HDTV support
Quick question rundown (for those who hate reading long posts):
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) If my graphics card supports hardware MPEG2/MPEG4 decoding then would it make any difference if my satellite card supported hardware decoding too?
2) Are there any cards on the market that support DVB-S, DVB-S2, MPEG2, MPEG4, and Turbo?
3) What is the difference between the DVB-S2 standard and turbo (Dish Network?) coded streams?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Long version:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have spent many, many hours over the past week researching on this forum and other websites, but I still cannot find answers to all of my questions. I would like to setup my satellite feed on my PC. However, I do not want to worry about skipping playback or high CPU utilization, so I have decided to turn to hardware decoding. The problem is I cannot seem to find a decent satellite card that does the job right.
Ideally I would love to find a card that has a hardware decoder chip for standard definition television (DVB-S SDTV H.262 MPEG2) and high definition television (DVB-S2 HDTV H.264 MPEG4). I do not know if a card like this exists or not, but if it does then what is the brand and model of the card?
Since I am assuming that such a card does not exist, I have begun to look at Technotrend's S2-3200 Mpeg4 DVB-S2 PCI Satellite Tuner [TT-S2-3200]. This card seems to decode everything, but uses an MPEG2/MPEG4 software decoder instead of hardware. This brings me to my second question. If I use this card, then can I still do the hardware decoding with my graphics card? If so, are there any graphics cards that support both MPEG2 and MPEG4 decoding? If not, then at least MPEG2?
I have also seen a few people mention that some satellite's use turbo coding. As far as I can gather, turbo coding is an encoding scheme that was developed after DVB-S, but before DVB-S2. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) I have also read somewhere that turbo coding is used by Dish Network's satellites, so where can I find a card that supports turbo coding?
That just about covers everything that I could not find an answer to on my own. Answers to any or all of these questions would be greatly appreciated. And just in case I cannot get everything that I want, these are my priorities from highest to lowest:
1) Dish Network compatibility
2) Hardware decoding
3) HDTV support