Technology, video, phone & computer questions

[Angrboda]

DCT hardware acceleration only is helpful for DCT codecs like H263 and H264.

Finding software that actually takes advantage of it is harder, if not nonexistent.

Also, with respect to Radeon cards, Universal Video Decoding (UVD) is only supported on Linux for UVD2. Radeons older than 3 years are potentially UVD+. An HD5670 has UVD+ (found that out the hard way).

Thank you very much for your help. You've saved me a lot of work. Days even.

The E7400 system hard reset about 3 times last night. I think it might have been the fault of the video card / video drivers. So I replaced it with an ATI HD 5450, and will have to see. I think I'm going to give or loan her that combo, and just buy something else for myself when I get the money. I have a Raspberry Pi which I could repurpose as the living room HTPC temporarily, though I won't be able to use it as a DVR. She has an Athlon II or Athlon X2 that she just retired; when I give this to her, I'll talk to her about reusing that machine instead of this one. But for now, this is plenty of hardware. I won't have money until the third, but I may swap CPUs, giving her the E2180, as that processor should be ample for the job; that commits me to buying another LGA775 system for my living room HTPC, but that's not a bad choice.