H.264 supported video card for HTPC

[MarkJohnson]

I was looking for a low end video card that will fully support H.264 hardware decoding for videos/movies/TV/etc...

Also, I have searched a little bit on the subject and I've read a lot of users had to enable hardware acceleration and I'd be interested to learn how this is done and any software that may be needed to do this.

also, I want a very cool running video card as it will be in a small box with little to no air circulation.

Thanks in advance

-=Mark=-

[CoffeeFiend]

I was looking for a low end video card that will fully support H.264 hardware decoding for videos/movies/TV/etc...

There's lots of cards that fit the bill. I've seen a Radeon HD 3640 (for like $40 CAD a couple days ago) that would work fine.

However, you're usually limited to H.264 profile 4.1 if you want hardware decoding. That type of content (1080p @ 10mbit) plays with like 1% CPU utilization, but it very much depends on the drivers/codec/player combo (works fine here, using MPC-HC's built-in stuff and ATI's latest drivers -- never got it to work on my old nvidia card). It even works fine using onboard video from AMD's 780G chipset.

Once you want to watch contents that isn't limited to profile 4.1, then the CPU load goes up a fair bit...

[MarkJohnson]

There's lots of cards that fit the bill. I've seen a Radeon HD 3640 (for like $40 CAD a couple days ago) that would work fine.

I was actually looking at that exact card. It was the highest rated low budget card, but wasn't sure if ATI had implemented the H.264 standard yet. I currently have an X1300 and it doesn't seem to support H.264 (or I don't have it setup properly) and it uses a lot of CPU time.

However, you're usually limited to H.264 profile 4.1 if you want hardware decoding. That type of content (1080p @ 10mbit) plays with like 1% CPU utilization, but it very much depends on the drivers/codec/player combo (works fine here, using MPC-HC's built-in stuff and ATI's latest drivers -- never got it to work on my old nvidia card). It even works fine using onboard video from AMD's 780G chipset.

Once you want to watch contents that isn't limited to profile 4.1, then the CPU load goes up a fair bit...

is the 4.1 profile limitation for the sound? I can live with that if so. or would the 4000 series give me full 5.1 surround sound? If not, I have a surround sound card I could probably use.

also, what is this MPC-MC? not familiar with that yet.

Thanks for the response

-=Mark=-

Edited July 5, 2009 by MarkJohnson

[CoffeeFiend]

is the 4.1 profile limitation for the sound?

No, nothing to do with sound. Level 4.1 is a limitation imposed on the video encoder (who produced the MPEG4 video). That means the hardware decode acceleration only works if the encoder was "limited" (i.e. not use features too complex for hardware to decode easily).

Specifically, it limits the encoder to a certain amount of macroblocks/sec and macroblocks/frame, max bitrates to encode at, max buffer sized used, max resolutions/framerates and so on.

Sound wise, nothing prevents you from using 7.1 channel audio.

also, what is this MPC-MC?

Media Player Classic Home Cinema -- the best player around for video IMO (far, FAR ahead of VLC and several others). Although you may be interested in using a "front end" like Media Center (along with the remote) which is getting half-decent as of Win7.

MPC HC has a page here on which cards are supported for DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) for formats such as H.264 and VC-1.

Anyways. Getting H.264 to decode in hardware is still tricky. It rather often doesn't work due to several reasons (profile > 4.1, bad drivers, player using a codec that doesn't support DXVA, player using the wrong video renderer, and so on). In fact, I never actually managed to get it to work even once using my old geforce card (which I've since donated) -- mostly because of broken drivers.