HDTV on your PC is not EZ
By Erik Hanson 
posted July 30th 2006 2:58AM
posted July 30th 2006 2:58AM
Tom's Hardware recently visited nVidia to check out their new hardware decoding solutions for playing HDTV on a computer, and for long-time HTPC (home theater PC) users, the results aren't that shocking -- you need a beefy computer to play back full HDTV, even with a new HD DVD or Blu-ray drive. Sure, the drive can handle reading the data off of the disc, and your new dual-core Intel or AMD chip seems powerful enough, but how will it do in real life?
The problem is, as we've seen before, the real numbers that your computer has to deal with can be deceiving. A 1920x1080-pixel image projected 30 times a second (that would be the magic 1080p we're all trying to see) is over two megapixels per frame, or 62 million pixels per second. Compression and other techniques can help reduce those numbers, but that's still a lot to ask of your average computer, and it's one reason why the specs on most of the WMV HD boxes say you'll need a 3GHz computer to even start playing HD content. Even late model, supposedly fast computers can choke up when trying to play back such a stream of uncompressed data. Of course, nVidia being a graphics chipset manufacturer, they have come up with a solution to offload some of that burden onto the graphics card, which helps the playback quality and keeps you from dropping frames to keep up with the speed the content was recorded at. They have also made sure that at least the specifications of the cards include HDCP copy-protection hardware, even if the card licensees sometimes don't include it on their models. HDCP is the hardware that keeps your computer from breaking the encryption chain when playing protected HD DVD, Blu-ray disc, or other content, so the image can get to the display for you to see.
Competing chipset producer ATI also includes similar hardware in their reference design, which means, like next-gen DVD formats, you have choices when buying video cards for your computer as well as drives. But I think it's interesting to see computer and peripheral manufacturers getting ramped up for HDTV production, and it will certainly spur sales of higher-end video cards, CPUs, and other hardware as consumers go to play their new content on their home theater or gaming computers. Do you think your rig is fast enough and powerful enough to play back the HDTV you crave? Are you looking forward to any new hardware coming on the horizon that you think will make viewing (or recording!) HDTV easier and better? Let us know.
[Via HDTV Blog]
The problem is, as we've seen before, the real numbers that your computer has to deal with can be deceiving. A 1920x1080-pixel image projected 30 times a second (that would be the magic 1080p we're all trying to see) is over two megapixels per frame, or 62 million pixels per second. Compression and other techniques can help reduce those numbers, but that's still a lot to ask of your average computer, and it's one reason why the specs on most of the WMV HD boxes say you'll need a 3GHz computer to even start playing HD content. Even late model, supposedly fast computers can choke up when trying to play back such a stream of uncompressed data. Of course, nVidia being a graphics chipset manufacturer, they have come up with a solution to offload some of that burden onto the graphics card, which helps the playback quality and keeps you from dropping frames to keep up with the speed the content was recorded at. They have also made sure that at least the specifications of the cards include HDCP copy-protection hardware, even if the card licensees sometimes don't include it on their models. HDCP is the hardware that keeps your computer from breaking the encryption chain when playing protected HD DVD, Blu-ray disc, or other content, so the image can get to the display for you to see.
Competing chipset producer ATI also includes similar hardware in their reference design, which means, like next-gen DVD formats, you have choices when buying video cards for your computer as well as drives. But I think it's interesting to see computer and peripheral manufacturers getting ramped up for HDTV production, and it will certainly spur sales of higher-end video cards, CPUs, and other hardware as consumers go to play their new content on their home theater or gaming computers. Do you think your rig is fast enough and powerful enough to play back the HDTV you crave? Are you looking forward to any new hardware coming on the horizon that you think will make viewing (or recording!) HDTV easier and better? Let us know.
[Via HDTV Blog]
Thats where the nVidia 6600GT's and up, come into play (hardware accelerated H.264/WMV-HD/Mpeg2)
Make Sure You Upgrade Your Display Drivers Often! and dont be afraid of the Beta ones!
Thanks for that bit of information regarding the hardware acceleration of the 6600GT's and above. I'll be keeping this in mind the next time I'm getting ready to build a new PC (probably Vista and Cablecard).
Well, you need a NVIDIA GeForce 7-Series card for HDCP and PureVideo HD-support. Also, if you want Unified Display Interface (UDI) and DirectX 10 you have to wait for the upcoming NVIDIA G80..
Erik,
Decoder artifacts at 30 or 60 frames a second is the least of the things to worry about. How about a descent display that can actually show 1080 lines, and then how about some content that will actually take advantage of all that marvelous technology. I think you, ATI, Nvidia, and others are focusing on the wrong end of the elephant.
Jon
Erik
Decoder artifacts at 30 or 60 frames a second is the least of the things to worry about. How about a descent display that can actually show 1080 lines, and then how about some content that will actually take advantage of all that marvelous technology. I think you, ATI, Nvidia, and others are focusing on the wrong end of the elephant.
Jon
Hmm, they were running a Pentium D 830 Processor to decode the video. Intels processors arent very efficient (except for Conroe) when it comes to processing. AMDs processors are far superior to Intels and could handle this a little more smoothly than the setup they had used.
As for new tech, AMD is releasing its 4 x 4 tech within "Holiday Season". This allows for 4 Processing Cores via 2 dual cores (soon to be 8; 2 x 4 cores), and 4 of another/any performance tech. (GPU's, Ram, HDs etc)
I must admit that having a 1080p monitor hooked up to my monitor is not as cool as I first thought it would be. It kind of sucks having to limit myself to 720p content b/c my 2Ghz system is not able to smoothly display a 1080p video.
Hopefully I can find a $350 HD-DVD player at Walmart, but that still only leaves me with 1080i output. Debate still rages on noticeable differences between 1080 i & p but knowing you have a 1080p set & HD-DVD disks are encoded in 1080p is still a little disappointing.
HD MPEG-2 decoder cards have been around for a couple years now. You dont have to buy a top of the line video card to offload the decoding of HD MPEG-2. Purpose-built MPEG-2 HD decoder cards can be had for ~$100. I am glad to see that the big vendors are finally incorporating this into their reference designs, but this should be child's play by now.