I used to watch DVD using a 300MHz IBM Thinkpad with WinDVD software decoding under windows without any problems so I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to get it to work.
I have used a program called Ogle under linux on a dual (intel) 500Mhz system and it worked flawlessly:
http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/
Ogle provides software only decoding.
Your graphics card makes a big difference to DVD playback speed if the software and drivers can make use of it, so it might be worth looking into whether you have the latest drivers and/or a change of software.
Finally, I have a system here which has a VIA chipset based motherboard (and a 433MHz proc). Upgrading the bios provided a huge increase in speed so this is worth looking into.
Good luck!
Graeme
On Friday, January 3, 2003, at 12:24 pm, Gavin McCord wrote:
I'm setting up DVD on my system (detailed below), but it's pushing the hardware to its limits by the look of it, and I want to know whether I should try a hardware decoder.Hardware -------- Monitor: CTX 1451 Mainboard: Soyo 5EHM/5EH5 V1.x CPU: AMD K6-2 533 (running at 500) Chipset: ETEQ82c663 (VIA) Sound: AWE64 Value ISA Video: Nvidia Geforce 2 MX Samsung DVD ROM drive Software --------- mplayer 0.90rc2, SDL 1.2.5From other newsgroup postings, and articles online I've read, my hardwaresetup isn't the best for this sort of thing, given the combination of CPU,
motherboard chipset and soundcard.
However, I've enabled "VIA82CXXX chipset support" and
"Use PCI DMA by default when available" in the kernel, and made
sure, using hdparm, that dma is on for the DVD drive.
My 14'' monitor is limited for practical purposes to one resolution,
640 x 480 @ 75Hz, so to be watchable, the image has to be resized
using the SDL video output option.
Analysing with vmstat, mplayer runs as follows (using the "nosound" option):
When vo=sdl and display is fullscreen, CPU usage is around 93.
When vo=sdl and display is windowed (it's larger than the physical
screen size), CPU usage is around 84.
When vo=sdl:dga CPU usage is about 96, and quality is lower.
I've tried vo options of xv, x11 and the CPU usage is about the same as
SDL windowed.
From what I've read a PCI soundcard should have less impact on CPU usagethan an ISA one, but even so, I'm not sure there'd be enough leeway, given
that the lowest CPU usage I've obtained with mplayer is in the mid 80s. When
I have tried the sound, using "ao=sdl" or "aop list=resample:fout=44100" (it
needs to be downsampled from 48khz) it won't sync at all with the video.
So, I'm tempted to buy a hardware decoder: the Creative Encore DXR2 (IIRC).
But before I do, I just wonder if there's anything else I might try, to lower
the CPU usage and watch DVDs using only software decoding. (I've tried low-latency
patches with games, but I didn't notice any difference.)
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