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ATI and nVidia Crush High-End DVD Players
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Sep 01, 2006 11:24 AM
from the nvidia-smash dept.
from the nvidia-smash dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Hardware.Info compared the video quality of ATI and nVidia video cards containing Avivo / PureVideo technology with 12 stand alone DVD players, varying in price from $200 to over $2000. The conclusion? 'There is no need to invest $2000 or more in a high-end DVD player. A PC with a recent graphics card will produce a much better result for a lot less money. When looking at the final scores of the HQV test, both ATI and nVidia graphics cards perform a lot better than any DVD player we have tested. We would go as far as to say to get rid of your DVD player and connect a media centre PC to your LCD television!'"
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Crushed? (Score:5, Funny)
Uhm (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not all of us would buy a $2000 DVD player. I still cannot see the reason to buy anything more expensive than the $250 one I have at home. What do these multi-thousand dollar DVD players do anyway?
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
difference in video players (Score:3, Informative)
I opened the Panasonic up in an attempt to fix it, and found the design used the flimsiest of components. It was a testament to their engineers that they could get even 18 months out of the parts t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I must agree though. A media server is a godsend, especially for those with large content libraries. Mine still needs work in the organization and interface front, but even quality aside, the simplicity of not needing to look for the case is awesome. I rip all my movies to XviD at "lossless" settings (100% quality, dunno if it technically would be on a difference map, but I sure can't tell a difference
Re:Uhm (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing I don't like is that the remote control isn't really easy to use for tasks other than play/pause/menu navigation.
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Re:Uhm (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Uhm (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:There is more to movies than pictures (Score:4, Informative)
Something by M-Audio, such as the Revolution 7.1, might fit your bill.
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No shit! (Score:3, Informative)
How loud are they? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Very very loud (Score:3, Informative)
It's hard to explain what's stupidly wrong with the design without needing drawings, so bear with me. Let's just say that as the turbine sucks air from one side (as opposed to above and below) and blows it out the other, this necessarily creates a narrowed bottleneck in the airflow. The air can only enter a centrifugal turbine from above or below, so that incoming airflow has to be narrowed into a duct going under the turbi
Re:How loud are they? (Score:4, Funny)
Right... because those that want a high quality picture don't really care to use the 5.1 sound system they also have installed...
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Great sound AND it includes the wifemuting feature.
Oh sure, "PC's" and "LCD" television.. (Score:4, Funny)
trend (Score:2)
$2000 DVD Players (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$2000 DVD Players (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes they can, but the universe will fire back by creating bigger morons next generation.
The issue here is that humanity has separated itself from the good ol' natural selection, thus morons don't get booted out of the gene pool anymore.
Worse, so few morons die that we actually have to give them awards [darwinawards.com] to try and get other morons to follow suit!
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Morons cannot be stopped.
But they can cheat their way into elected office...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Gold is a relatively poor conductor compared to silver (or even copper, really). Gold is used for plating contacts because it doesn't tarnish, so if you clean your connectors regularly (or even rewire things once in a while), non-gold connectors are technically slightly better.
So what you really meant is "Gold connectors are better for lazy people." :-D
DeoxIt is your friend....
Except for all the fan noise (Score:5, Insightful)
All that is needed is a "blank multimedia" box for $200, that has DVI/HDMI and S/PDIF, with no moving parts except for the DVD drive.
Then you plop in the Open???Player (vlc based?) CD/DVD/USB and it updates the internal flash to create/update your player to the latest codecs. Or perhaps internal flash is not needed, and the root disc is USB flash.
Save time, but spend a bit more. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you really want to make it more silent (even though they're quiet), you could disconnect the power on the onboard HD and have it boot via network, although I haven't experimented with that. The MacMini is far quieter than the Xbox Media Centre it replaced, and much more capable of decoding higher-resolution movies.
Yes, the software will autoupdate itself.
Practicality (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously people, if you have the cash for a 2K 1K or even a $500 player you probably dont feel like building one. There are an enourmous amound of benefits to getting a pre-built expensive DVD player, reliability being just one factor.
Before I get a lot of posts telling my of the uptime and reliability of their MythTV box, dont forget that you have to build the thing or hire someone to build it for you if your are not a Linux Geek. Even with Media Center Edition you are still dumping 1300 into hardware and inviting a ton of issues into your multimedia system. Unless of course you love hearing that windows error Dong in full Dolby surround sound.
Seriously... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a valid comparison for a typical family (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're single and live studio apartment, this might make good economic sense if you really need high end graphics. You can just connect the PC to the TV and continue to use the PC for other purposes.
But in a typical family environment that media centre PC will have to be dedicated to entertainment purposes, so the real price comparison is the cost of the media PC + the graphics card vs. the high end DVD player. Then the comparison doesn't turn out to be that one-sided.
Re:Not a valid comparison for a typical family (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
What family, one of luddites? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it's 10x the price, but you get at least 10x the features, with the only limit being what a computer can do.
But that means using a media center PC (Score:3, Interesting)
Eh. (Score:3, Interesting)
This test would have been a bit more relevant if they had told us what hardware the PC was using and/or had tested older graphics cards. I'd consider doing this with an old computer, but wouldn't shell out new money on it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
First of all I assume that you have a 480i TV, or if you are lucky a 480p CRT. If that is all you have for a display of course the $60 is plenty for a DVD player. In fact if all you have is an standard TV then I would say you over paid for that DVD player. Amazon has players with decent features at less than $30.
However if you have a 720p 42-60in Plasma/LCD/DLP or a 1080p 60in+ then you will pr
"Conclusion" (Score:5, Interesting)
"Final scores
The total score for nVidia ends up being 93, where the total ATI score is 118. Both scores [hometheaterblog.com] [ed.] are extremely high, considering the score of the most best performing DVD player we tested (the Marantz DV6600) was only 63. The majority of the standalone players we used did not score more than 40 points in the test. The most expensive ones, the Denon DVD-3910 and Marantz DV9600 scored only 58 and 61 points.
For European readers the cadence tests are not of real importance, so we only take the first eight tests into consideration. The score then is slightly different, nVidia scored 58 in these tests, where as ATI scored 53. A pretty close result, and the slight advantage for nVidia is mainly due to the excellent PureVideo performance in the detail tests.
[score matrix breakdown omitted]"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks. I tried to RTFA, but "Slashdot and Readers Crush Low-End Website."
What about linux? (Score:2)
I've had enough problems with bugs in their linux drivers (demonstrably broken dual-channel dvi configuration), that I could have fixed with access to source code, that I expect something for having to put up with their BS. If they can't even make the video processing available under linux, I might a
DVR (Score:2)
There are actually a lot of people using PC as DVR for the longest time... nothing's surprising really.
I have RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
On a side note, the other reason most people use component players is their sound. A good Hi-Fi player has a much higher quality sound than any PC. You can probably get close to the quality of the sound of a under-1K$ player wtih a great sound for a PC, but let's face it: latest generation video card + high end sound + the PC... There is no much price difference. And that PC still doesn't play SACD.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For a regular old 480i signal, you should see very obvious color and luminance bleeding in the composite signal vs S-Video or component. Put something like the DVD player's setup menu on the screen then switch between inputs. Look at the edges of text or edges between white an
Slightly off topic question (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder what would happen if a manufacturer created a video card and just let the community write open source software and drivers for it? Save the company the expense of writing the drivers and let the community develop a large potential market for them.
It would seem to have the added advantage of forcing the others to support Linux, but I'm betting that open source drivers would be more widely received, even if the proprietary drivers were better. Just seems that would be a good way to sell more video cards.
Went that way, switched back (Score:4, Insightful)
-my wife hated to mess around with my pc just to watch a disc
-i did not find a decent remote control
-playback software was a lot more complicated than the one the DVD player has
- problems started after a driver upgrade (spdif sound disappeared on my ASUS A8n SLI after installing recent NFORCE drivers)
I mean these are mostly problems for my family, I am ok, watching with a wireless keyboard, and enjoying the better quality, but for everyone else it is just awkward
Yes, i watched my high bit DVDs, and my matrix collection (at least eyecandy parts) on it and was happy, but for everyday use, it was just a pain
especially, bc that is my gaming rig as well, so if my wife wanted to watch a chick-flick, while I wanted to shoot at people online, a clash happened
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
All these are PEBKAC errors...
Buy an IR reciever for $15, and use it with ANY REMOTE you have, to control your PC (just configure LIRC for it).
Use MPlayer (a GUI would just get in the way).
Then just write a script that will start playing your DVD when you press a button on the remote... One that will open your filemanager to the fol
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
being a linux admin since linux IS, I would say that that is the very last option I would want for myself
first of all: i do not have "movie files" I only watch DVDs. they have menus, I want a GUI for them to use the features.
last time I checked Mplayer still did not have DVD menus, and took long to find the CCS keys (since linux players still do not have a "legal player".
2nd: i use a surround AMP, last time it was 4 years ago when i started messing with ALSA's SPDIF output.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A GUI has nothing at all to do with DVD menus. Your DVD player certainly doesn't have a GUI at all.
It's not officially part of MPlayer yet, but the dvdnav patch has been working fine for probably 6 months now.
Besides, I just prefer MPlayer. You certainly can use Xine via a remote control quite easily, if you prefer that over MPlayer.
It's b
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A DVD menu is a graphical representation of the content on your disc and a user interface, so it is a Graphical User Interface for the disc = GUI
My dvd player has a GUI in fact that works by a remote control to set all the features up:)
What I meant with "messing" was that a good few years ago, the SPDIF out wasn't just a recompile of the kernel to include the drivers for your audio card, but a painful proce
Why no purely software decoders? (Score:5, Interesting)
My MythTV system uses Xine to play DVD's via an nVidia 6150 chipset straight into the DVI input on my TV. It uses XVMC motion compensation to cut down on CPU usage (not that MPEG2 decoding and filtering uses much CPU at all these days - my AMD64 3500 sits at 1GHz and uses about 15-25% CPU playing back a DVD with postprocessing activated), and the quality blows anything else I've seen out of the water. Similarly, using ffdshow on my workstation in windows mode results in a really good picture.
If you ask me, most people will be more than happy with the default decoder that came with PowerDVD or what have you. It seems silly to do a "PC's vs. DVD players" comparison and leave out what 80& of people are using. Are there any other MPEG2 decoder reviews around?
Future features of Graphic Cards.... (Score:3, Funny)
Frame rate issues kill this though... (Score:5, Informative)
Working with film, this means 24fps. If your display is 70fps, 75fps, etc. that means some ugly pulldown is in store.
What gets even worse, however, is if you use the video output feature of your card in a HTPC setup -- you wind up having it go through ANOTHER PULLDOWN to 29.97fps (NTSC) or 25fps (PAL) FROM THE PULLDOWN YOU DID BEFORE. Even worse it's resampled and scaled for this output.
This is pretty apparent in pans in movies and such -- the pans are never quite smooth exactly.
Also since sound and video are usually totally unsynced subsystems in a HTPC, the audio is often slightly out of sync with the video. This causes an occasional audio or video skip (depending on what the playback software recognizes as canonical sync). For short clips this usually doesn't happen, but the skip will often happen over the course of a movie. If it's syncing to audio, the frameskip/delay is usually not noticeable because it gets lost in all the pulldown issues mentioned earlier.
While it's possible to make a HTPC setup that syncs the video properly to avoid these issues, I've never seen a HTPC setup do it right. I've seen embedded Linux and WinCE devices do it correctly, using custom code to ensure proper video syncing.
Standalone DVD players, even most cheap ones, get everything synced properly to a reference pulldown (29.97 or 25 fps, progressive if supported). Framerate and audio sync is always correct, to the nearest level capable of the pulldown.
It's a shame, because modern LCD/Plasma displays with digital inputs should theoretically be able to handle real 24fps input for film sources, for instance, which is something current DVD players don't do. Try getting your HTPC to output 24Hz and getting your media player, going through all the video and audio APIs of your OS, to sync every frame and every audio sample exactly to it. =P It simply can't be done -- you have to code to the metal.
(In studio environments video editing PCs actually have professional video/audio cards that have custom APIs and synced internal clocks to be able to ensure perfect framerates and audio sync and to make sure playback is timed properly on them. I know someone who's built themselves a HTPC with gear like this and it works great.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The effect you're complaining about is judder, not "pulldown". Pulldown is the process through which judder is introduced.
Movies on a dvd are telecined, whereby 24fps video is encoded at 30fps as shown in this wikipedia diagram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Three-two_pulld own_diagram.png [wikipedia.org]
The judder created by this encoding
Boneheaded article... (Score:3, Insightful)
Please.
Here is a $200 DVD player that will perform better than most $2000 PCs:
http://oppodigital.com/opdv971h.html [oppodigital.com]
I'm not saying you cant do great things with video using the right PC setup, but that article failed to point out the respective costs of the hardware they used for making this comparison. I won't even get into usability comparisons...
Have you seen the inside of a high-end DVD player? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a fairly expensive NAD unit. Sure, it produces a nice picture; but the hardware is far from exotic.
The unit consists of a DVD drive assembly, a power supply, a stamped chassis, and a very small circuit board with readily identifiable (and inexpensive) parts.
I've even looked at the internals of some Rotel units. Sure, the mechanicals look like they can take a bullet, but the digital heavy-lifiting is done in some very cheap, off the shelf, components.
It's not suprising that a PC with a good video card does a better job.
-ted
Re:Why stand alone DVDs are preferable: (Score:4, Informative)
- Don't turn it off
No problem.
Parent