Hi,

I have tried both dxr3 (well actually some clone, but still same chip)
and nvidia GF4 mx440 with tv-out. 

I would definitively recommend for going with the nvidia card. There are
several resons:

1. Effectivity. The dxr3 card decodes mpeg-2 only. Displaying a divx
(mpeg-4) movie on the card requires decoding of the mpeg-4 and then
encoding on the fly into mpeg-2 before sending the stream to the decoder
card. Needless to say it consumes a lot of CPU-cycles.. With a VGA card
everything works like using a monitor.

2. Installation. To get the dxr3 card to run it needs some modules to be
loaded. These modules have several parameters to tweek. Sometimes it
works like a charm, but usually the picture is green and it tends to
take a while before finding the right setup. Getting the nvidia card
was, at least for me, a pretty straight-forward process completed within
minutes. 

3. Life-cycle. The dxr3s are discontinued products, though still
available in some places. The graphic cards are easier to find and
cheaper as well. I gave 50 euros for my nvidia card 6 months ago. The
dxr3 card was about 80 euros. 

4. Sync. On some material I experienced drift in the a-v sync. Found it
to be an issue of mplayer, not freevo itself. Never had problems with
the nvidia regarding sync.

The quality of the output was in my case equal. The dxr3 was a bit
darker in the picture. The nvidias has had several tv-out chips (with
varying quality) over the years. Mine has, however, the tv functionality
built-in and the quality is as good as any dvd player.

One thing that was better with the dxr3 card was the lack of a window
frame when playing movies. With the nvidia card the wideo is displayed
in a window, eventhough freevo is set up to be in full screen mode.
Could be that the issue is solved in the latest versions of freevo also
under x, don't know. Using framebuffer mode there should be no window,
but some have reported decreased quality when not using the accelerated
x drivers. 


Have fun,
Per


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