On Wednesday 24 August 2005 07:05 pm, Michael Krufky wrote: > Jate wrote: > > I am thinking about buying a DVICO FusionHDTV5 Lite. I > > read that DVICO recommends a video card with MPEG2 > > decoding acceleration to provide hardware assistance > > with the HDTV stream decoding. > > Just curious, why the Lite model and not the Gold? I > recommend the Gold model over the Lite model, any day. > > > I have also read that Linux video card drivers do not > > necessarily have support for this hardware assistance. > > I have also read that binaries from NVidia may have > > this support. I want to know if I would need to upgrade > > to a brawnier processor in order to get this working. > > The Gold model is less CPU-intensive than the Lite model. > The Lite model does NOT have the mpeg decoder that you > are speaking of on-board, but the Gold model does. Neither card can decode the MPEG stream for rendering. There is no decoding chip on either card. Michael may be confused by the fact the the transport stream output of the lgdt3303 chip is called the MPEG interface. The main improvement in the Gold card is the analog TV section. It uses a 10 bit atod instead of 8 bit atod. > Actually, DViCO recommends ATI video boards for the DxVA > acceleration... I like to stay away from NVidia, but that > is just me... Be my guest and taint your kernel with > proprietary binaries ;-) They don't work anyway. > > If you are a FusionHDTV5 Linux pioneer, can you tell me > > your performance experience? > > I have tried all three of these models (below) with my > Pention 4 3.06 GHz HT processor... I have some slower > machines here, but I havent bothered sticking any of > these cards in there yet. They all perform very well in > my machine under both Linux AND Windows, except that > Linux DVB support for the Lite board isnt yet complete. > Mac Michaels, the author of the frontend driver for all > of these boards, has a slightly slower machine, and he > has mentioned that his machine chokes a bit on the 1080i > HDTV streams. I, on the other hand, can still compile a > kernel in less than ten minutes while watching HBO in > Hi-Def on the same machine without a hitch. Processing power is important without a hardware MPEG decoder. > FusionHDTV 5 LITE: I am currently working on the driver > for this card. I have completed analog video support, and > it is flawless. The (analog) driver for this board can > be found in video4linux cvs, and probably will not hit > the stable linux kernel until 2.6.14 (we missed the > 2.6.13 deadline for this one). DVB support for > FusionHDTV5 Lite is a work-in-progress. It is coming > along, although I wouldn't expect full support right > away. > > FusionHDTV5 GOLD: I was able to sneak analog support for > this board into 2.6.13, but DVB support requires the > newer version of the analog driver, found in video4linux > cvs. Yes, I *did* say that DVB support requires an > analog update, not a DVB update. I'd rather not explain > this now -- it's a long story. Mac Michaels wrote the > driver for the LGDT3303 frontend (used in all of these > boards), and that driver will be included in 2.6.13, but > disabled for FusionHDTV5 Gold. > > FusionHDTV 3 Gold-T: If you want a board that works in > linux NOW (as of 2.6.13) then THIS is the board that you > want to buy. Full analog AND dvb support have been > implemented, and this code is already present in Linus' > 2.6.13 stable tree. > > ---The three boards in my posession are the ones above > this line. > > FusionHDTV 3 Gold-Q: Same story as the Gold-T ... Mac has > this board. This is a slightly older model... You can > probably get this for cheaper than the Gold-T model, and > they're pretty much the same thing, although this one is > harder to find nowadays. The tuner on the "3" is not quite as good as the "5" and the digital decoder is a bit less tolerant of multipath interference. It works well for me. > If you end up getting the FusionHDTV Lite anyway, then > just cross your fingers and hope that I figure out this > IRQ problem mentioned in an email I wrote last night. > Regardless, it would be nice to have someone else to test > my work on the dvb-bt8xx driver (for FusionHDTV5 Lite) > besides just me alone. I hope this information is what > you were looking for... If you have any other questions, > please ask. -- Mac
