[GLLUG] Network setup

[Philip J. Robar]

On Aug 9, 2011, at 1:37 AM, Richard Houser wrote:

> The 210 and an 8200 (multihead, same box) works for me on broadcast 22mbps hd and the few bluray I've tried.  I'm also running the audio over the hdmi (ac3 in my living room, required a patch that eventually went into my distro 2.6.37 kernel, prob standard now).  The nice thing about the 210 is many are fanless, relatively low power, and I think mine only cost $20.  Andy, you would be welcome to come take a look in person.  Everthing I've heard is that ATI still isn't ready for Linux hardware video decoding.

Yes, for a well defined task such as DVD/Blu-ray playback some lower end cards are good enough. This is also the case for 99% of the videos most people watch on/from the Internet. The chart I pointed to will help with deciding which card is good enough for a particular use.

I can’t comment on the state of ATI, Linux and hardware decoding since I don’t actively track the issue. I will note however, that nVidia has also stumbled on occasion when it comes to Linux support.

As to audio, whether HD audio support is important is an individual decision. I was just pointing out that support for HD LPCM and HD bit streaming is not available on all cards, and many cards that support HD LPCM do not support HD bit streaming.

It might help to know, when deciding on the importance of HD Audio, that even experts can’t or can barely tell the difference between Dolby Digital and DTS audio (both of which use lossy compression) and their HD counterparts (which use lossless compression)—even under the best of conditions, i.e. in Dolby and DTS’s own test rooms. (Of course now that I need it I can’t find the reference to the article that documents this so you’ll just have to take my word for it. :-)

Phil