Nvidia PureVideoHD cards?

[Skinleech]

Hi guys,

Am in the market for a new card for my HTPC to replace the 9800 pro thats there currently. I recently read about Nvida PureVideo HD certified cards, with HDCP support and hardware acceleration for HD formats.

Have you any in stock (apart from that ridiculous GX2 card), or got any idea when they might be available? What about price, and will any of them be passive cooling?

Thanks in advance for the info.

[Lee H]

According to the nvidia website the following chipsets support the High-Definition H.264, MPEG-2, and WMV Hardware Acceleration ;

7900 series - Shown Here
7600 series - Shown Here
7300 series - Shown here

Best Regards,

[Skinleech]

According to the nvidia website the following chipsets support the High-Definition H.264, MPEG-2, and WMV Hardware Acceleration ;

7900 series - Shown Here
7600 series - Shown Here
7300 series - Shown here

Best Regards,

Cheers Lee. I don't think they're all HDCP cards though, and not PureVideoHD
certified. However, I could be wrong... I can't seem to find much info out there which doesn't help matters.

[YorkieBen]

they arent hdcp afaik

[Lee H]

Sorry - looks like I got a little confused there.

It seems that none of the nvidia cards at the moment support HDCP, and as you've quite rightly said, there is little to no information available anywhere regarding this at the present time.

[Skinleech]

Sorry - looks like I got a little confused there.

It seems that none of the nvidia cards at the moment support HDCP, and as you've quite rightly said, there is little to no information available anywhere regarding this at the present time.

Cheers for taking a peek - wasn't sure if you insiders would have any info on launch dates or whatever.

Guess I'll just wait it out - can't afford one of the cards just now anyway!

[vicar]

I believe it all in the language they are meant to be 'HDCP Ready'. Don't ask me what it means, best bet is to wait and see.

[MSIC]

I think that 'HDCP ready' is one of the biggest cons around.
It means that they are 'ready' to add it onto the board, but just havent done so yet. Of course, once you buy a card it then cant be added afterwards.
It's like me being 'death ready'. Or perhaps better would be 'millionaire ready' LOL!

[charleski]

TBH, you might be better-off with an ATI card for an HTPC. Although nVidia have been improving their drivers, ATI still seems to be the leader in this area.

Hexus has just put up a look at the new X1600 card with HDMI, which should be available soon and is probably better for an HTPC than anything from nVidia right now.

[Alistair]

The Sapphire x1600 Pro HDMI (also HDCP ready) is available now in the UK at a few online stores.

[Skinleech]

You guys might be right - do you know what the status is with hardware acceleration for h.264 as that's what I'm really looking for?

Trying to playback 19.5mbs BBC HD streams on either of the pcs listed on the 'My systems' box is a no go, so I need some hardware acceleration. Also, the 3200 with the 9800 pro is the HTPC, so it needs an update to the gfx card anyway.

The reason I like the idea of Nvidia is because of the PureVideo HD certification, especially when it eventually makes it's way to Hd-DVD /Blu-ray drives.

Cheers for all the replies to date.

[charleski]

All the ATI X1-series cards include hardware-assisted h.264 decoding in the drivers. You need to have the Cyberlink PowerDVD Deluxe package to use this, however. The same is true for the nVidia h.264 decoding - you need a commercial package to provide the actual decoder filter, but it uses hardware-decoding API hooks provided by the drivers. "PureVideo HD" is nothing more than an nVidia trademark.

[Skinleech]

Ta for the extra info - I'll investigate further once I can track down one of the cards.

Ideally I want DVI HDCP output so I don't need to buy a new cable, but from reading up, the X1600 HDMI has a dongle anyway which should be ok.

Cheers all.