[MPlayer-users] Need suggestions for Video Card & Sound Card

[rcooley]

Dan wrote:
> As an owner of an ATI Radeon 64MB DDR, I have to advise *extreme* 
> caution to those considering buying one.
I got an ATI AiW 8500...  I won't be buying from ATI again..

> Reasons:
> - TV-out support has been removed from the Gatos project, and not return.
Too true.


> TV-out working on the console. Yay. I suppose if you only use mplayer 
> then not having tv-out under X isn't such a disaster - the DirectFB 
I wouldn't recomend that too much...  My experience is having very large 
black borders around the piture (wasting lots of screen space) seeing 
iritating scan-lines scrolling slowly vertically scross the screen, 
needing to do software scaling, several mplayer options not working on 
with FB output, and more.

> quite well. Or maybe if you've got some time you can either compile the
 > old XFree86-4.1.0 ( I think ) with the ( very ) old devel branch of Gatos
 > that still supports tv-out,
The devel branch is a complete mess now...  I'm not the only one who 
thinks so.  Even with X 4.1.0, unless you are willing to do some serious 
coding, you aren't going to get it to work.  Even my older Rage128 
wouldn't work with the devel driver I compiled.

> I've heard people bitch about nVidia's drivers being buggy with respect 
> to xv support, but honestly, it works fine on my system ( with my best 
Indeed.  Their drivers work quite nicely.

> I would ( and will next time... ) buy an nVidia with an S-Video 
I have... twice now.  Both are GeForce-4s.

> to pick up a TNT with tv-out *really* cheap. Alternatively, you should 
$20 via pricewatch.  I wasn't sure how got the quality would be, so I 
spent twice as much and got a GeForce4 (with a lifetime warranty) instead.

> the GeForce 2 MX ) won't do this. A GeForce 4 MX most likely will - and 
> they're dirt cheap now too. Check the docs ( the nVidia web site's a 
Yes they do, and yes they are.  Unlike older cards I've tried, they 
produce a great (DVD quality) picture on the TV-out.

> As for the sound side of it, I'd say an SB Live 5.1 should do nicely. 
I liked my SB Live until I had problems recording audio with mencoder... 
  If you are using ALSA, you might get it working, but recording audio 
from the default OSS drivers will definately not work.  Sound quality 
between a SB Live and a $10 Ensoniq is nominal, so I'd suggest you save 
your money...  If you need digital output, that's not an option 
unfortunately.